ABSTRACT
In Buenos Aires, each October Bolivian immigrants of the Charrúa barrio stage the Fiesta of Our Lady of Copacabana, which attracts many native Argentines to its displays of Bolivian dance, crafts, costume, and cuisine. The gala festival gives usually downtrodden bolivianos a vital, visually attractive setting in which to assert their distinctiveness, and even their superiority. An announcement of the 1996 fiesta in the local paper included these words:
We Bolivians are landholders, while you Argentines—especially you porteños—are not landholders, but emigrants who came to occupy a territory. You are all descendants of foreigners; your ethnic group and your ancestors were European. Instead we own our own land, the land called Bolivia, as descendants of Aymaras and Quechuas. It is therefore important that we preserve our identity, since we own a specific territory, since our ancestors tilled that soil and the land is ours. People from Jujuy own their own land because the Incas formerly extended all the way to Tucumán. For these reasons it is important for us to maintain our identity because we are lords of that land, we are lords of all South America, we are the natives, we are not from Europe, we are not immigrants. (Grimson 1999: 71–72)
