Paper Short Abstract:

This paper considers whatever changes have occurred in the materialities of a fundamental religious practice in a rural, indigenous island of southern Chile in the last two decades.

Paper Abstract:

In the remote, rural island of Apiao, Chiloé (southern Chile), people relentlessly gather to attend novenas organised in honour of a little statue of a miraculous saint, San Antonio de Padua. The statue is brought to a private household, where an elaborate praying ritual, interspersed with food and drink consumption, music and dance, takes place during nine consecutive evenings. This paper describes the complex sections of this fiesta and its dense materiality, considering what has changed in the last twenty years of ethnographic observation, highlighting how all the elements comprising the celebration are condensed representations of local social values, indigenous identity, resistance, and adherence to modernity.

The materialities that will be considered include the ornaments of the saint's altar, originally crafted in every novena; the food and drinks offered to the participants; the presents gifted to the saint; the singing and dancing practices; the embodied demeanour that govern interaction in this highly ritualised and crowded religious festival.