Lucila Bugallo

LUCILA BUGALLO, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina, was awarded funding in October 2019 to aid research on ‘Circulation and Incorporation of Ritual Products in South American Highlands (Bolivia and Argentina).’ This project focuses on the incorporation of external ritual products and the way they catalyze local processes related to fertility, growth, and renovation in the Andean highlands of Jujuy, northern Argentina. It was developed through an ethnographic strategy that combined: 1) participant observation in two fairs of medical-ritual products, during the dry season (in Argentina) and the wet season (in Bolivia); 2) participant observation in stable (non-seasonal) markets on the Argentinean-Bolivian border (Villaz’n); and 3) open interviews with vendors in both fairs and markets. The work included: product inventories (including raw materials, origins, uses); systematization of discourses and terms associated with sales; reconstruction of the trajectories of people and products; and the formation of a collection of ritual/medicinal products. The research highlighted the importance of ‘external’ products traded at fairs and markets for buyers from the highlands of northern Argentina and southern Bolivia. It showed the centrality of frontier women vendors in the circulation of these products throughout the year, and identified the prominent place of a type of ritual assemblage prepared by these women: the ‘mesas’ that are burned in most of the rituals of the highlands of Jujuy.