LA MAMITA DE COPACABANA: a celebração da Virgem boliviana na fronteira de Corumbá/BR e Puerto Quijarro/BO

Abstract

The story of the Virgin of Copacabana narrates the devotion of an Inca descendant, catechized by the Spanish Catholic Church, Francisco Tito Yupanqui. Reports narrate that he wanted the image of Our Lady to be on the altar of the Copacabana Chapel. The first sculpture would have been ugly, but Yupanqui studied the techniques of sacred art and sculpture and reproduced an image of Nossa Senhora da Candelária, which ended up being adopted by his city, with its own name: Copacabana. The Virgin of Copacabana is considered the patron saint of Bolivia and is part of one of the cultural manifestations that Bolivian migrants carry out in Corumbá. This celebration is part of an extensive religious calendar, representing important cultural manifestations on both sides of the border. It was proposed for this thesis the analysis and description of the celebration of the Virgin of Copacabana and the relevance of devotion in the relations between Bolivians and Brazilians on the border between Corumbá and Puerto Quijarro. This festivity, which has been taking place for twenty-three years, highlights the resistance strategies of Bolivian migrants who live on the border. The ethnographic approach research sought to observe, feel, describe and analyze the religious celebration. For this, it used different tools, such as: fieldwork, logbook, images, faceto-face/virtual interviews and informal dialogues. The study indicated that relations between Bolivians and Brazilians are ambiguous and contradictory. Through various aspects, be they social, economic, cultural, religious and touristic, these relations have been shown to be friendly and/or prejudiced. Although the Bolivian migrant is important for local trade or the provision of services, pejorative discourses regarding this group still persist, demonstrating the particularities of the way in which the border societies of these two countries relate to each other.