Animitas as Material Manifestation of Popular Religiosity: Study of Cenotaphs in Santiago

Abstract

This work consists of the study of animitas, which are built in the urban spaces of the city of Santiago, as a material manifestation of Latin American popular religiosity. For this purpose, two cases that shocked public opinion will be taken: the animitas of the victims Marina Silva and Hans Pozo. The study of this construction aims to know and to describe a material shape of popular religion that is experienced daily in urban spaces of Santiago, emphasizing its materiality and its ritual practices. Through the ethnoarchaeology, it is analyzed a spiritual experience outside the normative and institutionalized cult and its mixture with secular and modern elements, understanding that popular religiosity is a space that is based on the syncretism of religious beliefs and experiences that give world’s meaning to individual. The animita is a cenotaph that is born of human agency by a death in public space, but also would have the capacity to act in the world, because it has a powerful symbolic effectiveness, being a mediator between the invisible and the visible, it would transform the reality of those who pray.