Rebuilding the pre-Hispanic religiosity in an urban area: The case of the urban Sikus' bands in Buenos Aires

The emergence of the first urban sikuris’ bands, which can be traced to late S XIX, was closely related to the performances of such ensembles in the Andean traditional religious celebrations of Catholicism.  At the present time, the relationship between Catholic devotion and these bands is preserved in the small populations of the Andean region of Bolivia, Peru, northwestern Argentina and northern Chile.  On the contrary, in the context of the current processes of re-ethnization, the sikuris’ bands of large cities have not only lost the strong bonds with the Church, questioning its role during the Spanish conquest, but adapted and recreated pre-hispanic beliefs and appropriated Eastern concepts, notions and ideas of the sacredness disseminated and reformulated by the New-Age movements. I will explore and analize the contrasting narratives that dispute the “religious authenticity” among the members of siku’s bands in Buenos Aires.