"....argentinos, bolivianos, todos somos lo mismo": La comunidad cultural feriante y la disolución de los límites espaciales

Abstract

En la actualidad , la cuestión de las fronteras nacionales tiene gran relevancia en los estudios sociológicos y antropológicos , políticos y económicos. Este trabajo, un aporte más a la discusión sobre las fronteras, pretende examinar cómo perciben los agentes campesinos andinos, que llegan a la feria de La Quiaca a intercambiar sus productos y sus formas culturales, la línea que divide La Quiaca de Villazón, Argentina de Bolivia.

This paper aims at contributing to the discussion about national frontiers, by examining how those Andean peasant social agents who come up to indigenous ferias (open-air markets) in order to exchange their produces and their cultural forms, perceive the line dividing La Quiaca and Villazón, Argentina and Bolivia. The paper takes as a point of departure the assumption that the perception of social agents varies according to the actions they perform as well as to the agents with which they interact. For this reason, although the frontier can be seen as the materialization of the state, it is not necessary that every agent should see it this way. The territorial boundary is perceived by feria agents as an obstacle for reaching their practical ends and not as a variable of nationality (Argentine, Bolivian ones). On the basis of a description of an exchange feria and the practice of bartering between groups, we see how the image of the frontier is built into the subjectivity of the agents and out of what actions and interactions it becomes relevant; and how the national state delimitation loses relevance within the interactions played by those peasant groups participating in these meetings. We conclude that the relevant space is that defined within the cultural community of the ferias.