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Paper Short Abstract:

This paper addresses the interplay of the festive culture and the socioeconomic success of the Peruvian Altiplano population. It shows how Andean people engaged in trade and production business (re)create festivities providing opportunities to invest and generate diverse capitals.

Paper Abstract:

Through ethnographic work and a longue durée perspective, this paper analyses the festive culture expanded by migrants from the Andean Altiplano, particularly of Aymara origin, settled in large cities such as Lima and Puno. This festive culture is a space where values, symbols, practices and capitals are created and circulated, strengthening cultural-regional ties and identities as well as shaping a reciprocity system. This system has developed historically in the Altiplano through experiences of mobility, exchange and support networks into its current form intertwined with urban and capitalist dynamics. The festive events are seen as investment to increment economic capital then redirected to their enterprises, as an asset for their social mobility.

Based on reciprocity practices to access different material resources, the making of fiestas is a collective effort. Ensuring the participation of other people is crucial. Ritual kinship relations (compadrazgo and padrinazgo), reciprocal bonds (aynis) and the act of giving festive gifts (apjatas) are set up as commitments that reinforce mutual support even beyond the fiestas. Social relations must be cared for and strengthened by offering a good organization and personalized attention. All this shapes a kind and caring treatment highly valued and mostly stressed by the notion of cariño. Overall the fiesta is a multiple investment encompassing social relations, cultural values, emotional bonds, and money among the Altiplano population.