Carnival, Ritual, and Race-Thinking in the Bolivian Andes

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of race, religion, and colonial legacies through the lens of the Oruro Carnival, examining its role in shaping Bolivian identity. Critical religion scholars argue that the entanglement of race and religion is a product of Western modernity and colonialism, which has influenced both historical and contemporary power relations. This framework is applied to analyse the Carnival, where religious practices and festive performances intersect, reflecting colonial efforts at religious conversion and racial categorisation. By focusing on the ethnography of Oruro’s embodied festive practices, this study investigates how the Carnival contributes to the construction of difference amid Bolivia’s socio-political transformations. This paper also examines how, by the 20th century, colonial religious frameworks intertwined with secular racial categories, particularly through the rise of mestizaje as a nation-building discourse. A historical analysis of Carnival performances reveals how race, religion, and power have continually shaped the celebration, tracing its evolution from a segregated religious practice to a national spectacle, particularly after the 1952 revolution. The mutually configuring relationship between race and religion in Carnival highlights its role in both reinforcing and challenging dominant power structures.

1. Introduction

The Oruro Carnival is Bolivia’s foremost cultural celebration, a grand religious-festive procession that transforms the tranquillity of Oruro (Bolivia’s fifth-largest city) into an all-encompassing national celebration every February/March. Tourists join locals in celebrations, while public and private gatherings unfold over the four-day public holiday. The parade pays homage to the Virgin of the Mineshaft and was declared a Masterpiece of World Intangible Heritage by UNESCO in 2001.

Studies of Carnival in Latin America often emphasise the emancipatory potential of Bakhtin’s ([1965] 1984) concept of the carnivalesque (i.e., Armstrong 2010; Rezende et al. 2023), a take on carnival and other popular expressions as spaces for irreverence and subversion. In the Bolivian context, much of the existing literature has concentrated on cataloguing dances (Revollo Fernández 2003; Beltrán Heredia 2004) and exploring religious expressions (Fortún 1961; Condarco Santillán 1999, 2005). However, a more nuanced analysis of the festivity’s history through the lens of hidden transcripts (Harris 2003) could offer more profound insights into the construction of racialised identities in post-colonial, racially stratified societies like Bolivia.

Our study examines Bolivia’s rich religious-festive expressions, known as fiestas, which blend popular practices honouring Catholic saints with Andean traditions rooted in pre- and post-colonial practices. These celebrations, held in sacred shrines, rural lands, churches, or public spaces, include ‘faith, ritual, dance, and music’ (Gutiérrez Condori and Gutiérrez Condori 2017, p. 142). Large fiestas, like El Gran Poder in La Paz and Oruro’s Carnival parade, are major public events, while others are smaller community-based celebrations occurring year-round across Bolivia and the Andean region.

The Oruro Carnival’s main feature is a parade of 70,000 performers (ABI 2024), which moves through the city to end at the Church of the Mineshaft. The festivity aligns the Catholic calendar with Andean traditions, including the ritual period for honouring the dead and the Anata harvest festival (Gérard 2010). The year-long preparation period boosts local economic activity, and food and drinks are abundant throughout the celebrations.

Historically, Oruro’s status as a colonial mining centre positioned it as a hub of capitalist modernity by the early 1900s (Thomson et al. 2018, p. 162). It remains integral to Bolivia’s commercial network, including recent trade with China, although the surrounding rural areas still experience high poverty. Social divides in the city reflect broader societal structures; for example, Indigenous, lower-class communities inhabit the northern area where the parade begins. In 2023, VIP seating for the parade near the main square cost up to $170 USD (Unitel 2023), well beyond the reach of most Orureños, given Bolivia’s minimum monthly wage of BOB2500 (362 USD as of 2024).

The interplay between Indigenous Andean religions and European Catholicism in public fiestas is evident in the fusion of Andean and Christian symbols, rituals, and practices. Mary Louise Pratt’s ‘contact zones’ notion refers to sites of tense and negotiated convergence for cultures with different historical trajectories (1996). Scholars argue that public dance festivals function as socio-cultural and political ‘contact zones’ in which power dynamics are continuously negotiated and expressed. For example, David Guss (2000) has explored cultural performance in Latin America as ‘sites of social action where identities and relations are continually being reconfigured’ (Guss 2000, p. 12), while Zoila Mendoza (2000) examines how festive dance in Peru intersects with identity, class, ethnicity, and gender.

Studies show that national festivities like the Oruro Carnival allow participants to engage in dialogues on collective representation and nation-building (Cordova Oviedo 2020; Mercado 2017). Scholars (Abercrombie 1992; Borras 1999; Cordova Oviedo 2014; Cordova 2012; Lara Barrientos 2007; Mercado 2017) highlight the religious dimension of Carnival as one factor in its socio-cultural role within political processes. Much of the literature examines these religious aspects in relation to socio-political forces like class and nation-building, without centring religion as the primary focus. Other studies, however, engage with religion as a separate phenomenon, detached from the socio-political structures that have historically shaped the region’s social landscape (Revollo Fernández 2003; Beltrán Heredia 2004; Fortún 1961).

We argue that centring religion in fiestas analysis is crucial to understanding their socio-cultural role in Bolivia, but also for revealing the interactions among two other core components of Bolivian social identity: race and indigeneity. Analysing the religious history of fiestas—first established as colonial vehicles for Christian conversion during the colonisation of the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries—highlights the intertwined evolution of race, religion, and later, indigeneity, in forming Bolivian identity and the significance of this entanglement within the broader post-colonial context.

In our study of the Oruro Carnival, we examine how the colonial legacies of racial and religious classification persist, tracing the colonial genealogy of the race-religion-indigeneity nexus in contexts where identity formation has been significant for Bolivia. First, we outline our methodology, followed by an ethnographic analysis connecting contemporary Oruro’s festive practices with the ritual religiosity of longue durée through key figures such as the Virgin Mary and the devil in the Devil Dance. The Relato performance, which serves as the prequel to the parade, illustrates how Carnival’s history intertwines with evangelisation in the Andes in the emergence of Oruro as a racialised social system (Bonilla-Silva 1997). Finally, we examine the Devil Dance’s 20th-century trajectory as a collective force in nation-building, underscoring the co-constitutive nature of race and religion in these processes.

Building on Maldonado-Torres’s assertion that European imperial expansion and early colonisation in the Americas were instrumental in producing modern concepts of both religion and race (Maldonado-Torres 2014, p. 693), and considering the Andes’ critical role in this historical nexus, we propose that incorporating this region into critical theories of religion is essential for a more profound understanding of the interplay between these ideological forces and their ongoing socio-political implications.

2. Methods

This study is based on over sixteen years of academic and personal engagement with the Carnival of Oruro. Our ethnographic research in the city of Oruro and its Carnival celebrations spans three key periods: 2007–2008, 2013, and 2018.

Both authors have spent much of their lives in the Bolivian diasporas in the UK and Switzerland, shaping their perspectives on Bolivian patron saint festivals from both insider and outsider viewpoints. Their experiences in the diaspora, while physically distanced from Bolivia, provided insight into folk dance traditions linked to these festivals, blending lived experience with analytical distance.

The first author first observed the Carnival in 2005 and became a participant observer in 2007–2008, dancing with the Gran Tradicional Auténtica Diablada Oruro (GTADO) for doctoral research, while also conducting semi-structured interviews with performers from the founding families of the troupe. Follow-up fieldwork was conducted in 2018. As a Bolivian diaspora member in the UK, her prior experience in Latin American migrant folk dance groups in London facilitated her integration into the Carnival’s dance community. The second author attended the Oruro Carnival as a spectator in 2013 and as a dancer with Centro Cultural Sartañani in 2023. His lifelong participation in patron saint festivals in Cochabamba and the Bolivian diaspora in Switzerland—as a spectator, musician, and dancer—alongside his research since 2012, informs this analysis. In dialogue with the first author’s ethnographic research on the Oruro Carnival, this paper brings together their separate inquiries into patron saint festivals and their role in constructing cultural identities and reflecting broader social, political, and economic transformations, exploring their parades, spiritualities, traditions, and power dynamics.

Coming from two different directions, our research initially approached Carnival from the perspective of folkloric expressions and popular performance, while also engaging with social and Indigenous movements and Bolivian politics. This broader lens allowed us to explore the role of patron saint festivals in shaping ideas of belonging, community and the nation and, in turn, to understand Carnival participants not merely as performers but as subjects actively engaged in these processes. This study employed ethnography, supported at times by audio-visual data collection, alongside participant experience to examine performative aspects (Potter 2008). Additionally, semi-structured interviews with performers and archival research provided insights into historical and contemporary perspectives on Carnival. We focused on public displays rather than private aspects of the fiestas to avoid disturbing informants, as public performances, rehearsals, and preparations are expected and tolerated in Oruro. The city is generally quiet and conservative, but the social lives of many shift to public spaces leading up to Carnival. A focus on more intimate matters would have yielded different data, which is important to consider in the analysis.

The ethnographic study included key events leading up to Carnival, such as public dance rehearsals, other related events in the ritual calendar like the Entrada a Santa Cecilia, and visits to Andean pilgrimage sites and public religious gathering organised by the Church of the Mineshaft, as well as the main public parades conducted over Carnival Saturday and Carnival Sunday, and some related festive events that follow which are less concurred.

For this paper, our data focuses on urban folkloric dancers, paying less attention to other key Carnival participants such as religious and cultural authorities, traders, miners, and rural dancers. The emphasis is on the Diablada (Devil Dance), which plays a central role in Carnival imagery. We approached a range of troupes, from larger, well-known groups to smaller ones, with special attention to the GTADO, the oldest troupe on record, which established many of the practices now considered Carnival traditions.

However, the majority of the ethnographic data presented here is derived from fieldwork conducted in 2008, with follow-up research in 2018, in collaboration with the GTADO, who willingly consented to participate. In incorporating data, we ensured that informed consent, potential harm, and respect for participants has been considered. Ethical considerations were addressed through adherence to principles of informed consent and anonymity, cultural sensitivity, and ongoing dialogue with community members and elders. The community primarily consists of families with a long history in the meat trade. Carnival practices are predominantly passed down orally and through performative traditions from generation to generation. In some of the older community-based dance troupes, a few families form the core of Carnival dancing, costume, and mask-making.

To explore the regional underlying power dynamics and cultural significance embedded in Oruro’s Carnival, we drew on Max Harris’s (2003) work, which emphasises uncovering the concealed meanings within popular religious festivals and the embedded power dynamics of the societies that produce them. We align with Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) view that research has historically been used by non-Indigenous groups to legitimise hegemonic actions, often privileging certain academic agendas that marginalise Indigenous voices. At the same time, we acknowledge our own positionality as Bolivian stakeholders in heritage discourse making and cultural recovery, despite our outsider status as academic researchers and diaspora members.

Additionally, we conducted a literature review on Andean festive practices, religion, indigeneity, and nation-making and consulted colonial archives on theology, race-thinking, and festive practices from early European chroniclers. This article examines the Carnival’s development from colonial times to the 20th century, situating it as a lens to understand and conceptualise broader Andean social transformations.

3. Race, Religion and Colonial Legacies

Critical religion scholars have shown that the intersection of race and religion is a deeply entwined product of Western modernity and colonialism, shaping both historical and contemporary identities, power relations and social structures. For instance, Matthea Westerduin (2020) explores how early European Christian practices influenced modern race-making and nation-building in Europe. She examines how Christian vocabularies and religious frameworks, particularly through 12th- and 13th-century religious texts (p. 137), shaped European racial formations by constructing Muslims and Jews as religious and political ‘others‘ on the basis of mediaeval ideas connecting ‘worship, body, and communities’ (p. 146), particularly regarding perceived notions of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’ between Christians and the bodies of Muslims and Jews as non-Christians. This genealogical approach reveals how Christian narratives of inclusion and exclusion laid the groundwork for racial hierarchies that persisted into colonial and modern eras. It also helps connect these broader historical frameworks to the context of this study, in the Spanish inferiorisation of Andean Indians1 as racialised ‘others’ in the early colonial period (Lamana 2019; Maldonado-Torres 2014), as well as the subordination of Indigenous traditions under colonial Catholicism.

Malory Nye (2019) examines discourses of whiteness in the English-speaking world and argues that discourses of race and religion share a common colonial genealogy, where religious frameworks have historically been employed as tools for classifying populations, with race and religion coalescing as mechanisms of control within fields of power (p. 215). Similarly, but looking at the context of the early colonisation of the Hispanic New World (15th–16th centuries), Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2014) argues that both religion and race play a fundamental role in shaping modernity and coloniality—a concept rooted in the works of Mignolo (2001) and Quijano (2000). Here, the nexus of race, modernity, and colonialism is identified as central to understanding that colonial enterprises often embodied a modernising or civilising agenda intertwined with racial differentiation (Maldonado-Torres 2014, p. 694). This framework illustrates how early modern ‘discoveries’ and colonisation gave rise to a form of power characterised as ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano 2000), which is intrinsic to Western modernity. His analysis is enriched by Sylvia Wynter’s (1991) exploration of the relationship between discovery, modernity, and colonialism, particularly through the figure of Christopher Columbus. Wynter notes that Columbus, later missionaries and conquistadors, viewed the world through a Judeo-Christian lens, categorising populations into Christians, infidels, and pagans (p. 266). This categorisation was informed by the ‘deployment’ of the religious term ‘idolator’, which she argues, contributed to the emergence of the secular term ‘Indios/Indians’, and in turn, the secular classificatory system of modern Europeans that ultimately shaped the European concept of the Christian ‘Man’ as, in meaningful opposition of the Indian ‘idolator’ (pp. 266–67), which as Maldonado-Torres observed, ‘later came to be known as race-thinking’ (Maldonado-Torres 2014, p. 697).

Tomoko Masuzawa (2005) reveals how modern European intellectuals constructed racialised discourses around Christianity and Islam in response to the discovery of language families and the Semitic roots of Christianity, at odds with other cultural and spiritual legacies of Europe (pp. xii–xiii). She highlights a 19th-century drive to ‘Hellenize and Aryanize Christianity’ and to ‘semitize Islam,’ increasingly linking Islam to the ‘Arabs‘ national, ethnic, and racial particularities’ (p. xiii). This context, we could argue, may have contributed to the ‘whitening’ of Christian influence in newly independent Latin American nations.

This theoretical foundation sets the stage for examining the race-religion nexus in the Andes, where colonial evangelisation and racial structures were mutually formative, each giving rise to and reinforcing the other. This dynamic continues to be relevant in modern nation-building processes and contemporary debates on ethnic difference. The second half of the article will explore how these issues manifest in current practices and socio-political phenomena at play in the Oruro carnival.

4. An Introduction to Oruro’s Festive Religiosity

The Spanish discovery of Andean silver in 1545 was a turning point that made Indigenous populations essential for labour, despite their initial decimation by disease. This reliance deepened with the establishment of the Potosí mines, which produced nearly half of the world’s silver, underscoring the role of Indigenous subjugation in imperial mining and the connection to colonial race dynamics (Lane 2019, p. 7). Managing Indigenous populations became critical for the Spanish, who simultaneously sought to Christianise them, aiming to erase their perceived ‘otherness’ (MacCormack 1991, p. 185). Despite these efforts, many pre-Christian practices endured in transformed forms (Pratt 1996), laying the groundwork for the Andean Carnival—a blend of Indigenous and colonial influences that emerged from this complex context.

In Andean worldviews, the sacred is deeply embedded within the landscape (Astvaldsson 1998), with nature and community life inseparably linked to spiritual and ritual expression, transcending the Catholic Church’s efforts to eradicate Indigenous beliefs. Saints from early in the colonial period began to be venerated similarly to Andean deities (MacCormack 1991, p. 180), with offerings such as coca leaves, ritual foods, and chicha (maize ritual drink), mirroring traditional Andean ceremonies. Patron saint festivals, albeit framed in official and popular discourse as purely Catholic celebrations, reveal a more complex religious identity, as we will demonstrate. One of the most significant expressions of Andean Catholicism unfolds in the world-famous Carnival parade in Oruro.

4.1. The Oath to the Virgin

The journey to becoming a carnival dancer begins with la promesa a la virgen (the oath to the Virgin), held a week after All Saints’ Day (November 2). This ritual marks the start of the festive period, lasting until February-March, when the city shifts from a quiet market town to a bustling hub of Carnival preparations and increasing tourist activity.

After the first public rehearsal along the Carnival route, starting from the old neighbourhood of La Rancheria and crossing the main roads, dancers enter the Church of the Mineshaft for the rite. New dancers vow to dance for at least three years and lead ‘a good Christian life’, both personally and as Carnival participants. Veteran dancers renew their vows. In 2008, the article’s first author recorded this exchange between the officiating priest and the Butcher’s Troupe dancers, who perform the emblematic Devil Dance. Kneeling in their rehearsal costumes before the Virgin of the Mineshaft painting on the altar, they participated in this ritual:

• —(Priest) Do you promise to dance for at least three years?
• —(Dancers, in unison) Yes, we do.
• —(Priest) And do you promise to behave as good team-mates in your conjunto and as good Christians?
• —(Dancers) Yes.
• —(Priest) Do you promise to subject yourself out of your own free will to the sacrifices that are required for the preparation for Carnival religious dancing in honour of the Virgin of the Mineshaft?
• —(Dancers) Yes, we promise.
• —(Priest) May God bless your good aims, and the Virgin, our patron saint, help us fulfil our promise. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

With this oath, people become Carnival subjects, and their participation is contingent on their relationship with the Virgin, as well as the social and material aspects involved. It is not just a physical or moral commitment, but a financial one too, requiring funds for joining fees, costumes, and social gatherings over the next three years (and often more), which limits who can fulfil the oath

The Virgin’s cult in Oruro’s dancer initiation highlights the dynamic link between performance and its meaning. Dancers enter frameworks of pre-assigned meanings, generating a social force that impacts both the dancing community and wider society. This is crucial, given Carnival’s role in national identity (discussed later) and its status as a UNESCO Masterpiece of Intangible Heritage since 2001. The festive-solemn nature of Carnival underscores the connection between faith and performance, establishing Oruro’s unique ‘brand’ of religiosity centred on public devotion to the multifaceted Virgin of the Mineshaft—considered a Christian figure, a festive icon, and a symbol of Oruro. This also opens a discussion of the devil in the Devil Dance2, Oruro’s other most iconic Carnival figure.

4.2. The Devil of the Devil Dance

Carnival participation today is not only determined by religious devotion. There are two prerequisites for Carnival performance: to dance under oath to the Virgin and to be part of a conjunto (a dance troupe), which can range from hundreds to thousands of members. The city’s oldest troupes are often organised by trade, such as market traders and foundry workers, many of whom are of Aymara origin.

The ethnography of the 2008 oath ceremony features the Gran Tradicional Diablada Auténtica de Oruro (GTADO), commonly known as the Butcher’s Troupe, as its members are primarily families who trade meat in Oruro’s markets. In Bolivian vernacular, these butchers are called ‘Mañasos,’ and their Diablada (Devil Dance) troupe is known as Diablada de los Mañasos. Founded in 1904, the GTADO performs the Diablada, the oldest and most iconic dance of the Oruro Carnival.

The relationship between GTADO, the city of Oruro, and the polysemic significance of the devil and the Devil Dance highlights the complex interplay of religion, identity, and cultural symbolism in this festivity. Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the ‘carnivalesque’ provides a useful framework, describing how carnival events temporarily invert or disrupt traditional power structures, allowing for the coexistence of diverse voices (1984). Central to the carnivalesque is polyphony—the coexistence and interplay of multiple perspectives in open dialogue—capturing the carnival’s blending of nature with popular culture (Burke [1978] 1994). The Devil in Oruro, with its layered meanings, embodies this rich multiplicity.

A large monument of a dancing Devil greets visitors upon arrival in Oruro, with posters advertising events and products featuring Carnival devil figures. During the Carnival Saturday parade, GTADO’s Diablada dancers, adorned with massive devil masks, perform striking steps and elaborate street choreographies. Four other Diablada troupes also participate in the annual Carnival parade.

The significance of devil-like entities in Andean culture and ideas of hybridity and acculturation in Andean Catholicism are highlighted in studies by Nash (1993), Taussig (1980), and Absi (2005) in the context of Oruro and other mining towns. Carlos Condarco Santillán (1999) links El Tío de la Mina, a ‘specialised deity’ for mining, to Huari, an ancient Uru deity which ‘resurfaces’ in the Devil in the Diablada during the Oruro Carnival (p. 56).

At the same time, discourses, particularly those associated with the Church of the Mineshaft, promote the event as primarily Catholic and interpret the Carnival devil through a biblical lens. This is supported by local oral histories and myths connecting the Devil Dance’s origin to Marian apparitions in the mines. Oruro authors often view the region’s religious character as deeply tied to the landscape, with the Carnival parade reflecting this ‘innate religiosity’ (Revollo Fernández 2003; Beltrán Heredia 1962; Condarco Santillán 1999). Michael Sallnow (1987) discusses how Indigenous shrines were transformed into Christian temples, merging ‘Christian and Indigenous notions of divinity’ (p. 142). This blending is evident in Oruro, where both Christian sites and Indigenous wak’as (sacred shrines), such as the Toad (a rock formation) on San Pedro Hill and the Snake (a granite formation across the landscape that resembles a giant snake) at the Chiripujio hills, are part of the myths and legends that provide the origins narrative of the Carnival, creating a sense of continuity with ancient practices (Condarco Santillán 1999). Key narratives include the Chiru-Chiru legend (‘La Virgen del Socavón y la Corte Infernal,’ Zaconeta 1925), the Nina-Nina (Villarroel [1908] 1999), and Beltrán Heredia’s ‘La Virgen del Socavón y sus Devotos Danzarines’ (Beltrán Heredia 1962, p. 67), which provide an ‘explanation’ for Oruro’s particular mix of pre-Hispanic and Christian religious practices.

The superimposition of Christian figures onto sacred Indigenous landscapes in the origin narrative of the Devil Dance sought to instil Christian beliefs within Indigenous frameworks (Cordova 2012, p. 108). Examining two central figures of the Oruro Carnival—the Virgin and the devil in the Devil Dance—reveals that Andean Catholicism is more than a simple fusion of distinct religions or traditions. According to Nico Tassi (2012), it represents a unique religious synthesis where, rather than passively adopting Catholic iconography, Andean communities have actively re-signified it over the centuries, creating a space where saints embody not only Christian ideals but also Indigenous spiritual forces. Tassi (2012) notes that this Andean Catholicism is marked by material richness and sensory engagement, with saint images—such as the figure of the Archangel Michael in the Diablada at the Oruro Carnival—being ‘worn’, danced with, and offered elaborate adornments as expressions of spiritual devotion. This also illustrates the Indigenous Andean Catholicism that evolved in response to colonial religious and political impositions, highlighting the complex interplay between Indigenous knowledge and European Catholicism.

In this context, the carnival can also be viewed through Diana Taylor’s contention that oral and embodied practices are ways of knowing that are deeply intertwined with cultural traditions (‘an episteme’) used to transmit social knowledge and memory beyond written records (Taylor 2003, p. xvi). In this process, selection, memorisation, and transmission take place within specific structures of representation, which are also reconstituted in the process (p. 21), first as stored forms in the body, then transmitted ‘live’ in the here and now to a live audience: ‘the past experienced as present’ (p. 24). As we have seen, this dynamic context highlights how different cultural and religious frameworks are interlinked within the Carnival. This embodied transmission allows the Carnival to function as a living archive, revealing complex layers of cultural memory, identity, and resistance that are central to Bolivian society, as we will see.

5. Carnival in the Andes: Festive Trajectories of Religion, Race, and the ‘Other’

Founded as a mining hub under Spanish rule in 1606, Oruro evolved into what Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (1997, p. 469) terms a ‘racialised social system,’ in which economic, political, social, and ideological structures are shaped by racial categorisation. This section examines how embodied transmissions within the Carnival reflect the coalescence of race and religion as mechanisms of control within this system. It then traces the evolution of race in the Andes, from a colonial-era theological and biological construct to a fluid, multidimensional concept in which race, class, and identity intersect and coexist within shifting governance models.

Carnival celebrations in Oruro vary each year according to the date of Easter. While the festivities span several weeks, the main events take place in the days leading up to Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent in the Catholic calendar. As Shrove Tuesday is tied to the date of Easter, it changes annually. The highlight of the Oruro Carnival is a series of grand parades over the weekend, followed by performances on Monday—referred to here as Carnival Saturday, Carnival Sunday, and Carnival Monday—culminating on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday.

5.1. Festive Evangelisation, Coloniality, and the ‘Other’

The theatrical performance of El Relato de los Diablos, or the ‘tale of the devils’, is a key event in the carnival performance schedule, occurring on Carnival Monday at a public space near Avenida Cívica by the Church of the Minecraft that we observed in 2008. While most tourists have departed by this point, the locals turn out in large numbers.

The GTADO, the founding troupe of the Oruro Carnival, inaugurates the parade every Carnival Saturday and performs El Relato. According to their founding documents, its performance was the main Carnival act until the late 1920s (GTADO n.d.), when parading was still performed by ‘full-blooded Indians’ (Beltrán Heredia 2004, p. 66). As membership and audiences grew, they expanded the performance with new choreographies, evolving into today’s spectacular festivity (this evolution will be covered in later sections).

Plot-wise, Relato is a drama of salvation that depicts the struggle between evil forces and God’s representative, Archangel Michael. Its key characters are Lucifer, the Devils, the Angel (Archangel Michael), Satan, the Seven Sins (Pride, Avarice, Lechery, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth), and the sole female character, the China Supay (representing Lust, as the Devil’s wife).

In the first act, Lucifer confronts Michael, who vows to make all evil repent at the Virgin of the Mineshaft’s feet. The second act sees Michael forcing Lucifer to kneel and confess his sins, followed by the defeat of each sin: Pride, Avarice, Lechery, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth. As each sin is vanquished, the audience proclaims the corresponding virtues: humility! generosity! chastity! patience! temperance! charity! diligence! Finally, Lucifer’s wife is also overpowered (GTADO n.d.). The Relato serves as a prequel to the Carnival parade, which acts as a public act of the Devil’s repentance, culminating in the vanquished devils dancing to the Virgin’s feet, led by Michael.

To examine the coalescence of race and religion as mechanisms of control (Nye 2019, p. 215), we consider the emergence of El Relato within the context of the Tupac Amaru and Tupac Katari uprising (1780–1782), which reached Oruro in 1781, a pivotal moment of political and racial conflict between colonial elites and Indigenous communities.

Oruro’s oral literature links the Diablada and key carnival traditions to the late 18th century, when Oruro was still a major mining hub. While the festivity has roots in earlier pre-Hispanic practices, its development is also shaped by the religious, festive, and racially segregated dynamics of colonial Oruro. The authorship of El Relato is often credited to Oruro priest Ladislao Montealegre, who, in the early 19th century, wrote the play ‘to educate the people’, showing them the seven deadly sins’ due to their ‘unbearable level of depravity’ (Zenon Goitia 1948, cited by Beltrán Heredia 2004, p. 64).

The 1780s Great Andean Rebellion was a major civil war in southern Peru and Bolivia that resulted in the deaths of approximately forty thousand Hispanics and sixty thousand Indigenous people, marking it as the region’s largest and most violent conflict (Robbins 2007, p. 168). In Oruro, a multi-ethnic coalition led by Indigenous leaders launched a failed rebellion against Spanish authorities, with arrests from 1784 to 1791 and judicial proceedings lasting until 1804 (Harris 2003, pp. 207–8). Following this lengthy period of judicial retribution, anti-Indian sentiment, and economic decline (Harris 2003, p. 298), oral histories attribute 1789 as the year of the first Carnival in honour of the Virgin of the Mineshaft (Zaconeta’s Nina Nina legend, 1925; Villarroel’s Chiru-Chiru legend, 1999) and the later emergence of El Relato.

Although not the first major uprising, its scale challenged colonial structures and significantly impacted the collective consciousness of both Indigenous and Creole3 populations (Stern 1987, pp. 35–36). The aftermath may explain the subsequent anti-Indian backlash that fuelled efforts to ‘re-educate the people’ away from the perceived ‘depravity’ of Indigenous subversion. The Indigenous revolts of the 1780s demonstrated to colonial and ecclesiastical elites that the colonial religious, cultural, and political project could be overturned, prompting a need to reinforce the cultural project of Christianity, preventing the re-emergence of discontent among the urban Indigenous population via the three main themes of El Relato: repentance, the miracle of Marian intervention (as a counterbalance to the cult of devil figures), and Indigenous salvation through conversion.

As discussed earlier, the association of indigeneity with ‘demonic idolatry’ has earlier colonial roots. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra writing on notions of the Devil across the Atlantic world shows evidence that sometimes 16th century colonisers represented New World natives as closely connected to the devil (Cañizares-Esguerra 2018, p. 30). Similarly, Sabine MacCormark finds evidence that 16th-century Spanish explorers believed that Andean Indians communicated with the Devil through the dead (MacCormack 1991, p. 92). Chronicler Bernabe Cobo ([1653] 1890–1895, p. 451) also described rituals with plants in which the devil spoke through Indians. These accounts—shaped by mediaeval Christian narratives of inclusion and exclusion that demonised religious and political ’others’ (Wynter 1991; Westerduin 2020)—fuelled efforts to convert and control local populations, laying the groundwork for constructing Indigenous people as inherently idolatrous and in opposition to the Christian-European ‘Man’ (Wynter 1991, pp. 266–67).

To understand the relevant nexus of colonial politics and theology, Wynter examines what she calls the ‘paradox of 1492,’ in which the ‘glorious achievement’ of the ‘discovery of the West’ and conversion efforts also entailed violence and genocide against native peoples in the New World (Wynter 1991, p. 258).

To reconcile Judeo-Christianity with this harsh reality, non-Christians (such as Indians) needed to be seen as beneath ‘noble’ Europeans (p. 259) and were therefore equated to the religious term ‘idolator’, in opposition to the Christian-European noble ‘Man’ (pp. 266–67). As Maldonado-Torres suggests, this ontological difference sets the seeds for what he calls ‘misanthropic scepticism’, leading to cynical scrutiny of the religious and racialised ‘other’ that casts doubt on the extent of their humanity, asking, ‘Are you really rational?’, ‘Are you completely human?’ (Maldonado-Torres 2007, p. 246). As though humanity (and associated rights) can only reach a selected few.

Building on this framework, Wynter and Maldonado-Torres show that religion and racial conceptions intertwine with dehumanising Indigenous populations, providing moral grounds for exploitative and coercive labour practices in the New World. This reinforced theological-racial hierarchies, which later evolved into secular and pseudo-scientific ideologies, enduring throughout colonial rule and persisting into the present.

In this framework, scholars have highlighted the critical role of Christian conversion in shaping the Spanish colonial order (MacCormack 1985; Estenssoro 2003; Benavides 2022). Gabriela Ramos emphasises the ‘unavoidability’ of conversion under Spanish rule due to state-church cooperation in evangelisation (Ramos 2010, p. 2), while MacCormack notes the profound subjective transformation for natives (MacCormack 2004, p. 101). The evangelising effort aimed to create a new racialised religious identity marked by the rejection of Indigenous customs and altered relationships with ancestors and the landscape; however, this project was limited by the underlying scepticism of Indigenous peoples’ conversion.

The complex and multifaceted efforts of evangelisation become tangible when looking at the invenciones, a type of Baroque comedy staged during public festivals in early 17th-century Potosí. Beatriz Peña Núñez’s (2016) archival analysis of invenciones shows how Christian public celebrations were used to legitimise social and political control in the Andes. Her work reveals how ancestral religious figures were woven into religious narratives to support Christian conversion and reinforce colonial authority over Indigenous peoples (p. 715). This strategic integration of festive rituals highlights how identity-shaping practices advanced colonial projects. Peña Nuñez emphasises two recurring performative elements in such plays aimed at capturing the attention and empathy of the audience (p. 716). First, the participation of Indians as themselves, identifiable by their clothing, adornments, and musical instruments; and second, the involvement of a native authority figure in the representation (p. 727).

Even though Peña Nuñez’s empirical data and El Relato’s ethnography are separated by four centuries, both evangelising elements are still hinted at in El Relato. Today’s carnival may attract participants of diverse ethnicities and socioeconomic standing, but Bolivian scholars have pointed out that until the 1940s, devil dancing was performed by ’full-blooded Indians’ (Beltrán Heredia 2004, p. 66). Historical records, such as Jose Zaconeta’s (1925), document instances of Indians dressed as devils and wearing devil-like masks (discussed in Beltrán Heredia 2004, p. 61). The dance itself is attributed to Indigenous origins, citing ethnographic accounts from early explorers like Antonio Ulloa (1772, cited in Beltrán Heredia 2004, p. 62). The participation of Indians ‘as themselves’ is mirrored in the many dancing devils, who, as the real protagonists of the whole festivity, must forsake idolatry and pledge their Christian oath to the Virgin to be able to participate (see Figure 1).

Finally, the ‘authority figure’ involvement is achieved by the representation of Lucifer, who invokes Andean deities such as the Tío de la Mina, Huari, and the cult of the dead. In El Relato, Lucifer is forced to forsake his ways and submit to the powers of the Virgin Mary and Archangel Michael. Carnival devils annually renew this symbolic redemption by solemnly entering the Church on their knees at the parade’s end (see Figure 2 and Figure 3).

Sallnow (1987) and Condarco Santillán (1999) previously observed the superimposition of Christian practices onto Andean religiosity during times of crisis, particularly within regional expressions of popular Catholicism. Sallnow (1987) argued that divine apparitions in the Peruvian Andes ‘functioned as Christian transplant[s], propagated by the clergy’ (p. 54), aligning with the 16th-century expansion of Christianity, as temples to Christ were constructed on Indigenous sacred sites (p. 76) to merge Christian and native divinity (p. 142). Similarly, Condarco Santillán (2005) suggests that the Virgin’s miraculous apparition in Oruro could be interpreted as an attempt to reinvigorate the miraculous powers of Christian figures, projecting them over the 1781 Indigenous revolts.

As discussed, examining key polysemic figures such as the Virgin and the Devil in Andean Carnival historiography reveals the complex blend of race and religion in the context of Andean Catholicism. Through El Relato, we saw how political control, racialisation, and ritual festivity intersected, transforming religious expressions into theatres of ‘cultural and religious transformation of originally non-Christian ‘others‘ (Greer and Mills 2018, p. 14). This analysis highlights the tension between evangelising efforts and colonial governance over Indigenous majorities amid Indigenous resistance. The following sections will trace how these tensions evolved into Bolivian national discourse throughout the 20th century and explore how Carnival performance provided openings to challenge these structures.

5.2. The Post-Colonial Carnival

After the Creole-led independence wars that granted Bolivia sovereignty from Spain in 1825, Bolivia initially sought to grant Indigenous rights but soon reverted to relying on Indian tribute for financial stability (Klein 2003). By the mid-19th century, Bolivia mirrored a global shift from ‘ambivalent republics to aggressive, oligarchic states’, aligned with capitalist and modernising agendas (Larson 1999, p. 559). While Creole elites promoted free trade and foreign investment, Indigenous communities became increasingly isolated, using traditional llama trails for trade, even as modern technologies like steam engines and trains appeared. This dual structure—reflecting a colonial legacy—perpetuated a division in which Indigenous spaces operated separately from Creole-dominated economic frameworks (Thurner 1997, p. 5), setting the stage for transformative nation-making projects in the 20th century and the emergence of Carnival’s role in the delineation of these projects.

Carnival has evolved into what Daniel Goldstein (2004) described as a spectacle of citizenship, marked by coordinated, synchronised dances, massive participation, and international attention. However, official written records of the parade, dating back to 1904, depict it primarily as a marginal, urban Indigenous event centred around family and trade networks. Early performers danced alone or in small groups (Lara Barrientos 2007, p. 41), winding through the streets with bamboo or wooden wind instruments (Gutiérrez Condori and Gutiérrez Condori 2017, p. 27).

As put by Thomas Abercrombie’s archival analysis of early 20th-century festivities:

There were two Carnival parades in Oruro: one belonged to the elite, who on Carnival Saturday held a small procession, adorned with a variety of Orientalist visions (such as characters dressed as sheikhs and harem maidens), which ended in gala dances, and the other belonging to the ’vulgar Indigenous masses’ who in the Carnival Sunday procession (which successive municipal ordinances sought to prohibit), represented the old themes of colonial theatre.

(Abercrombie 1992, p. 298)

In this climate of racial discrimination and elite disdain, the 20th-century evolution of the parade honouring the Virgin of the Mineshaft in Oruro unfolded in La Ranchería. The historical significance of La Ranchería neighbourhood (where the parade still commences today) underscores its role as a pivotal social stage in Oruro. During the late 16th century, colonial authorities segregated urban settlements into two socio-fiscal entities: the ‘Republic of Spaniards’ and the ‘Republic of Indians’. This dual republic system aimed to regulate the internal organisation of space and society by assigning corporate rights and legal jurisdictions along racial lines (Thurner 1997, p. 5), thus reinforcing cultural separation and preventing miscegenation between colonial elites and Indigenous populations. La Ranchería, once the ‘República de Indios,’ housed Indigenous migrants who worked in Oruro’s primary industry, mining. Oruro’s colonial legacy of economic disparity and racial segregation had not been much disturbed with independence, and this is how the oldest Carnival dance troupe on record, the GTADO, emerged in 1904 in the Ranchería neighbourhood. Many families and elders in the GTADO still reside in this quarter, maintaining ties to market trading and the countryside, and anchoring the Oruro Carnival in Aymara festive traditions some viewed as ‘uncultured.’ In 1924, Manuel J. Rodríguez wrote in the La Palestra newspaper:

As is usual, the groups of Diablos; Incas; Sicos; Tundikis [?]; Llameros; etc.etc., continue dancing through all the streets of the city. These uncultured customs persist again this year, but we harbour the hope that they will have been abolished by next year.

(cited in Abercrombie 1992, p. 298)

Although Carnival had become an urban, Catholic celebration by the 1920s, some contemporary observers still saw it as a tradition that needed to be eradicated, as it disrupted the social order of a racially divided Oruro by bringing carnival dances ‘through all the streets of the city’. This view reflects the still prevailing colonial episteme of race in the region (Oliart 2002, p. 8), whereby the ‘urban plebeian class’ was marked as ‘outsider’ because of their occupations and marginalised living areas (Abercrombie 1992, p. 297), whose practices were seen as needing control.

More importantly, the continuous scrutiny of this group highlights a longstanding trope of dehumanising Indigenous peoples, rooted in earlier theological distinctions between believers and non-believers and their interlinkage with racialised fears that connect Indigenous bodies to the perceived threats. This scepticism toward Indigenous humanity, common among elites, normalised violent practices, and embedded a persistent fear of Indigenous uprisings within the colonial and republican mindset (Maldonado-Torres 2007). Over time, overtly theological justifications for ’otherness’ receded into the background, yet their underlying logic persisted—that Indigenous people were inherently inferior (Lamana 2019, pp. 51–53). This logic was instead expressed through cultural and temporal concepts, framing certain groups as bound to the past, in contrast to the ideals of ‘modernity’.

In contrast to the racially stratified society of early 20th-century Bolivia, the Carnival’s expansion in the context of a modernising Bolivia in the 1930s and the 1940s represented an assertion of legitimacy by marginalised urban Indigenous groups. Fuelled by rural-to-urban migration and the economic opportunities emerging from the tin mining boom, an Aymara merchant and artisan class rapidly grew in cities like Oruro throughout the first half of the 20th century. Festive performance provided this nascent Indigenous urban sector with a platform to negotiate its place within Bolivian society through religious and cultural expressions.

This reversal is generally attributed to Bolivia’s devastating loss in the Chaco War against Paraguay (1932–1935), through which Bolivian society was exposed to its own crippling divisions, leaving it feeling directionless and searching for a new sense of purpose (Kohl 2021). In the aftermath of the war, political leaders made concerted efforts to construct a new, unified Bolivian identity, ultimately leading to the Nationalist Revolution of 1952. This identity was centred around the concept of a mestizo (denoting ‘of mixed-blood’) nation, which aimed to downplay cultural differences between ethnic groups in favour of promoting a homogenous Bolivian mestizo identity (Breithoff 2020). This ideal grew from the earlier indigenismo movement, which celebrated Indigenous heritage and was embraced during the Revolutionary Nationalism of the 1940s and the 1950s, led by the MNR (National Revolutionary Movement).

The MNR’s political agenda was supported by a cultural project that aspired to social equilibrium by blending Indigenous and popular culture and promoting the racial mix of Latin America in a positive light. However, despite its apparent celebration of indigeneity, mestizaje retained contradictions: it both relied on the stereotype of the ‘savage Indian’ and upheld whiteness as the ideal (Cordova 2024, p. 10). This tension is reflected in the evolution of the discourse of difference in Andean politics, where the emphasis shifted from a biological and phenotypic framework to one defined by class, education, and socio-cultural background (De la Cadena 2007), and Eurocentric ideas of progress. Difference was thus reframed in terms of ‘worth’ relative to modern liberal ideals, casting indigeneity as ’backward’ and in contrast to these aspirations.

The 1952 Nationalist Revolution ended conservative military rule, with young MNR elites leading a political project that shifted away from openly segregationist policies aimed at eradicating indigeneity. For the first time, the Bolivian State implemented policies to culturally ‘integrate’ Indigenous cultures into a unified national identity while reclassifying ‘Indians’ as ‘peasants.’ This ‘raceless’ reclassification sought to simplify the management of Indigenous labour by eliminating racial and ethnic distinctions in public discourse and supporting a homogeneous national identity.

In this post-1952 context of the nation-state as ‘an ongoing and ever unfolding political production’ (Goldstein 2004, p. 18), spectacles become instruments to reimagine social order, particularly for marginalised people.

One such shift began in the early 1940s, when a group of elite youths, known as the pijes (meaning well-dressed), intrigued by the vibrant masks, costumes, and movements of the Diablada, found themselves drawn to the ‘Indian’ Carnival and joined the processions to the Virgin of the Mineshaft, alongside the Mañasos’ Devil Dance troupe. The Carnival’s expansion into the main square—the heart of elite power—symbolised newfound social integration that supported the national project.

In contrast to earlier elites who dismissed these festivities as mere entertainment or relics of a ’backward and savage’ culture (Abercrombie 1992; Lara Barrientos and Córdova 2011), the participation of the pijes sparked surprise and curiosity within their circles. Their involvement aligned with the cultural and political changes of the time and transformed how the Diablada was perceived and organised, elevating the status of this once-marginalised parade.

For the post-1952 mestizo elites, Carnival, with its intertwining of rural Andean and European religious and cultural elements, presented the perfect vehicle to construct a ‘progressive’ new homogenous national identity. One that was firmly rooted in an imaginary pastiche of Spanish colonial and Indigenous heritage, but decisively modernised and ‘improved upon’ by an urban mestizo sensibility. This nationalist project was advanced through vast homogenising efforts—education reforms, mandatory military service, and promoted ‘national folklore’ expressions like the Carnival itself—all aimed at slowly absorbing Indigenous populations into a new ‘modern’ Bolivian cultural and political mainstream. However, this popular Indigenous articulation of identity and demands was inevitably filtered through the MNR’s overarching vision and policies of cultural assimilation. In the new nation-building framework, indigeneity was portrayed and consigned to a mythical and glorified past, as an abstract source for reclaiming cultural roots (Hurtado 1986) but was sharply divorced from validating Indigenous peoples as real and equal political subjects with autonomous demands and subjectivities of their own.

Yet, as the Carnival entradas (meaning parades, but also ‘entering the city’) swelled into massive celebrations symbolically encroaching on urban centres of power, they simultaneously challenged and reinforced the colonial marginalisation of the Indigenous population.

The nationalisation of the Oruro Carnival, as Lara Barrientos and Córdova articulate, precipitated its accelerated massification driven by profound socioeconomic and political transformations occurring in Bolivian society:

The Carnival became massive, incorporating new dances and involving actors from all social strata. In the late 1960s, there was a shift towards the systematic organisation of the festival, with the construction of temporary seating stands for spectators. Prior to this, people would simply gather on the streets to watch the carnival.

(Lara Barrientos and Córdova 2011, p. 23)

This process transformed the Carnival into a veritable spectacle beyond its ritual underpinnings and rendered it synonymous with Bolivian culture and folklore (ibid.), paving its rise from a fringe event to a UNESCO Masterpiece of Intangible Heritage.

For Borras (1999), Guss (2006), and others, the patron saint festivity became a powerful event where the disenfranchised sectors participated in constructing a counter-narrative around the dancers and musicians, as well as through the economic and social bonds it created. As Borras (1999, p. 217) concludes:

The entradas are in this sense a unique form of revenge. It is in the realm of music and dances, once so decried or persecuted, that a moment of Bolivian history is unfolding today. They confirm the importance of symbolic representations, a privileged means of expression for marginalised social groups in a society that has not yet freed itself from colonial rigidities.

Our ethnography of the Mañaso dancers entering the plaza on 2008 Carnival Saturday supports this claim. Dance captains can be heard shouting to the troupe: ‘Don’t mess up’, ‘Remember where you are’, as the dancers’ energy rises, and the shouts and choreographic figures become more pronounced, highlighting the square’s historical significance. It is important to recall that before the 1950s, entering the main square (originally in the Spanish Republic quarter) would have been prohibited for those ethnically classified as ‘Indian,’ such as the Mañasos. In the context of longue-durée memory, entering the square today can be considered an act of contestation. These physical incursions into the heart of colonial power thus become ‘critical means by which those ordinarily cast as the audience for state-sponsored performances of the nation take the stage themselves’ (Goldstein 2004, p. 19). In other words, the festivities’ very nature, with long processions cutting through the city and advancing towards power centres, meant that the parades were never just symbolic challenges but literal challenges and (re)conquests of the city by both participants and elites.

Thus, while patron saint parades offered marginalised groups a space to assert their social and political relevance, they also became platforms for the emerging middle class and the Aymara merchant bourgeoisie. These groups used the parades to showcase their wealth and societal status by wearing increasingly extravagant costumes, performing with grandiose brass bands, and organising lavish feasts and gatherings each year (Mercado 2017, p. 212).

More recent theoretical lenses provide alternative ways to conceptualise the nationalist narrative of mestizaje by challenging its homogenising tendencies. Rene Zavaleta Mercado’s (2015, p. 129) concept of ‘lo abigarrado’ (motley) highlights the pluralistic coexistence of diverse elements within Bolivia—Indigenous/non-Indigenous, traditional/modern, commercialisation/authenticity. Similarly, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s (2010) ‘ch’ixi’ (which also means something like motley in Aymara) points to the cracks and divisions persisting beneath seeming homogeneity, just as Carnival projects an idea of a unified national identity, but when looked at closely, the cracks start to appear. The coexistence of multiple elements—religious, ethno-racial, and epistemological—that shape the broader social fabric.

Rather than the sanitised integration promoted by mestizaje, these concepts reveal tensions regarding visibility, belonging, and decolonisation within national popular spaces. They show how supposedly unified nationalist imagery contains the fragments and ‘abigarramiento’ (motley mixture) of Bolivia’s plurinational reality, more accurately reflecting the ongoing conflictual process of defining what it means to be Bolivian.

As we have shown, independence did not bring equality to Indigenous groups, who continued to be relegated by tropes that originated in the interlinking between race and religion, albeit through a new vocabulary set (class, modernity, education). Even as hegemonic projects incorporated Indigenous elements into nation-building, the nationalist narrative continued to marginalise indigeneity by constructing a temporal framework in which modernity and Indigenous memory are posited as fundamentally antagonistic. Indigenous representation remained confined to abstract symbolism within this homogenising national identity, perpetuating, as Webber (2011) argues, the MNR’s vision of a national subject who has Indigenous roots but ultimately overcomes his or her indigeneity to become a modern liberal citizen.

This ‘eclipse of the Indian’, adapting Enrique Dussel’s (1994) framing, stemmed from racialised notions of acceptable cultural heritage inherited from the colonial period, whereby Indigenous cultures, rituals, dances, and music are reduced to decontextualised ‘national’ identity markers, detached not only from their places of origin and localised cultures but also crucially from the political and economic context they emerged from, and systematically disregarding recent or contemporary contributions from Indigenous actors (Cordova Oviedo 2014, p. 59). At the same time, these spectacles enabled urban elites to create a more sophisticated cultural expression through the appropriation and co-optation of Indigenous elements.

6. Conclusions

Gonzalo Lamana (2019) and Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2014) have both demonstrated the importance of incorporating Latin America into critical discussions of religious theory, arguing that in the early colonial context of the New World, religion, and race interlinked to form central categories for mapping ‘subjectivity, alterity, and sub-alterity in the modern world’ (p. 691). The significance of situating the Andes within critical religious theory also stems from the region’s pivotal role in the European expansion and colonisation of the New World during the 15th and 16th centuries, where Bolivia played a key role in the transformative development of a global economy around silver, the first global currency.

Focusing on the rich religious-festive expressions known as fiestas in the Andes, which combine Christian popular practices honouring Catholic saints with Andean traditions and religions from both before and after the colonial period, we have explored the relationship between race and religion in the configuration of indigeneity in the context of some of Bolivia’s main economic and political transformations. Our analysis has explored the intricate relationship between colonial legacies and contemporary practices within the Oruro Carnival, a key representative of the transmissive power of embodied practices and patron saint festivities in the Andes. By examining ethnographic data from Bolivia’s oldest Carnival troupe alongside archival data from the colonial and modern periods, we revisited key moments in the region to show how the mutual reinforcement of colonial evangelisation and racial structures has left a lasting imprint on contemporary nation-making processes and the discourse surrounding difference. Our findings align with Maldonado-Torres’s (2014) assertion that European imperialism and colonisation were fundamental in shaping modern concepts of race and religion.

Through El Relato, we examined the intersection of political control, racialisation and ritual festivity in the context of colonial evangelisation. This intersection reveals a genealogy in which popular religious performances evolved into tools for converting and defining non-Christian ‘others’ (Peña Núñez 2016), shaped by discourses of idolatry and Christian humanism that drew on European mediaeval ideas of theological difference (Westerduin 2020; Nye 2019). By tracing this genealogy, we can better understand how these concepts later transformed into secular notions of race and indigeneity (Wynter 1991; Maldonado-Torres 2014, 2007) as historical forces that continue to influence contemporary popular religious practices and nation-making narratives more broadly. We also discussed how these tensions evolved into Bolivian national discourse post-independence and throughout the political transformations of the 20th century at the nation-state level, as the language of difference changed from colonial conceptions rooted in theology and race to ideas of ‘higher’ culture, progress, and nation-making.

At the same time, we have shown that embodied festive practices in the Andes reflect a dynamic interplay of cultural memories, identity, and resistance that transcends mere historical narratives, revealing how subaltern communities harness these spaces to assert their identities and challenge hegemonic hierarchies.