The ethnographic record of rituals and festivities linked to the agricultural cycle in the northern Calchaquí Valley and the memory of the indigenous past

Abstract

The link between past and present has been a topic long debated from different approaches, bringing into play the notions of time, identity and memory in the constructions of meaning that are made around societies and their territories. One of the dimensions from which it is possible to analyze this relationship is agriculture, due to the importance it has for the valley societies, as it occurs in the northern sector of the Calchaquí Valley (Salta, Argentina), the referent of this research. Based on the idea that the importance of tilling the land dates back to pre-Hispanic times, in this work we have proposed to analyze those ritual aspects that go through the contemporary practices of sowing and harvesting, with the intention of helping us to understand the material aspects of the past. For this purpose, the oral record has been related to the material record within a theoretical framework in which the notion of long time and the importance of memory as a device of resistance are emphasized. The conclusions reached allow us to rescue the idea of fertility, defined from the notions of relationality, complementarity and reciprocity, as well as to discuss its validity today as non-hegemonic rationalities that resist through the exercise of memory.

ARK CAICYT: https://id.caicyt.gov.ar/ark:/s16688090/mn99hkw4c