BIO

Katherine Fritis Lattus holds a Diploma in Anthropology from the Bolivariana University of Chile. She has lived most of her life in the city of Antofagasta, in the north of Chile, where she is completing her thesis on religious dances. Her research is focused on the identity of this industrial city where people find their roots in popular religiosity, especially the annual pilgrimage to the religious center La Tirana, shrine of the Protector of Chile, the Virgin of Mt. Carmel.

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Hanging around the Fiesta: Non-Places and Popular Religiosity in Antofagasta, Chile

In the coastal city known as Antofagasta –which was incorporated by Chile after the War of the Pacific in 1879, copper is exploited and exported. This element is the main economic sustenance of the country and has brought modernization to this industrial port. In order to procure its exportation, the streets of Antofagasta have been transformed into highways. The expansion of the old street “Salar del Carmen”, now known as Salvador Allende Avenue, caused the expropriation of many old houses and half of a public square; the “Olivar” main square, where for 30 years religious societies based in Antofagasta have celebrated “La Tirana Chica”, a festival of closure of the annual cycle of celebrations to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (la Virgen del Carmen). “Rodando la Fiesta” tells the symbolic struggle of this square, a non-religious place, understood by the mining companies as a “non-place”. Faith and copper find a middle point between modernization and tradition.

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