“Pilgrims of the Puna” in the Miracle city: practices and spatialities around the Miracle Sanctuary of Salta

Abstract

This paper addresses the pilgrim practices around the Sanctuary of the Lord and the Virgin of the Miracle in Salta city (Argentina), from an anthropological perspective and under the prism of spatiality. I will focus on the collective called “Peregrinos de la Puna” which brings together, since 1988, devotees from different Puna localities among the Argentine provinces of Salta, Catamarca and Jujuy. Through ethnographic materials and archival sources I will investigate how the spatiality of this cult has impacted pilgrim practices and memories, considering representations of the city of Salta as a Catholic hieropolis and the sanctuary as a sacred geosymbol. At the same time, I will analyze how such practices and memories, deployed in their journeys andtheir participation in annual rituals, have affected the spatiality of the fiesta del Milagro, as a central event of Salta Catholicism.