PERFORMING SUBJECTIVITY AND CITIZENSHIP:

El SEÑOR DE LOS MILAGROS IN THE PERUVIAN DIASPORA

Ulla Dalum Berg (Ph.D. candidate)Department of Anthropology

New York University25 Waverly Place, 1st Fl.New York, NY 10003

Draft version – please do not circulate without author’s permission

Paper prepared for delivery at LASA, Las Vegas, 6-8 October 2004

Panel: Desplazamientos Migratórios y Subjetividades Diaspóricas I

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INTRODUCTION1

The yearly procession of El Señor de los Milagros on 51st street in Manhattan is the largestpublic event organized by Peruvian migrants in the urban autumn landscape of New YorkCity. Religious confraternities or brotherhoods (hermandades) devoted to el Señor de losMilagros has existed in Peru since the 18th century (Millones 2003), however, the Peruvianethno-historian Maria Rostworowski argues that it has roots further back to the pre-hispanicindigenous cult of Pachacamac (Rostworowski 1992:135-48). With increased migration fromPeru to the U.S., Europe and Asia in the past decades, Catholic brotherhoods devoted todifferent saints including Señor de los Milagros, San Martín de Porres, Señor de Muruguay,Santa Rosa de Lima and regional cults such as Señor de Qoullur R’iti (Avila 2002), havemushroomed all over the Peruvian diaspora. Currently more than 50 brotherhoods devotedto Señor de los Milagros exist in countries like the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Spain, Italy,Japan, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela (Paerregaard 2001:3). In the United States,hermandades devoted to El Señor de los Milagros have emerged in major urban centers withlarge concentrations of Peruvian migrants as for example New York City where more than 6brotherhoods in Manhattan and boroughs celebrate El Señor de los Milagros in the month ofOctober.2

This paper will discuss the yearly procession of the Señor de los Milagros in New York Cityas a site of cultural and political mediation and explore some of the issues at stake in thepreparation and staging of the event for participants, organizers, and spectators. Whathappens when a religious practice historically associated with one place (Pachacamac) andone city (Lima) gets lunched into transnational circulation? What kind of transnational linksdoes this religious performance enable? In what ways does this kind of self-representationand self-objectification, as enacted discourses on Peruvianness, generate and mediate, anauthentic way of being Peruvian in a global, multicultural setting like New York City? Doesthe event as mimetic spectacle, animating the urban landscape of Manhattan, provide anarena for the cultural construction and contestation over the parameters of citizenship andof national cultural politics in the United States? Through an analysis of this particulartransnational practice, I will explore how this kind of public spectacle mediates not only thelinks between subjectivity and nations (Peru and the US), or between subjectivity and otherforms of de-territorialized or transnational communities (for example Catholic Hispanics inNew York City), but also of past and present Peruvian immigrant lives.

1 The material presented in this paper stems from a short-term fieldwork in New York City carried out in thefall of 2002 while shooting a documentary titled “Waiting for Miracles” (2003). Both the film and the researchis part of my ongoing dissertation research on the intersubjective effects of new communicative practices onsocial life in the context of Peruvian migration to the U.S. An earlier version of this paper was presented at theSSRC Translocal Flows conference in Guadalajara in May 2003. I thank Marcial Godoy for this opportunity andRossana Reguillo (ITESO) and Alejandro Grimson (IDES) for their useful comments and constructive criticism.2 According to the Mayordomo of the Hermandad del Señor de los Milagros de Nueva York, Inc. there are 32hermandades devoted to Señor de los Milagros in the U.S. (Interview, January 26). A quick web-search onGoogle identify processions in cities like Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Sarasota, Chicago, Cleveland,Houston, Denver, Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Pasadena, San Diego, San Francisco, Baltimore, Pittsburgh,Paterson (NJ), New York City, and Washington DC.

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Scholars of transnational migration have argued that religious institutions and churches arecrucial sites for the articulation of transnational networks (Levitt 2001; Mahler n.d.). AihwaOng for example has shown how church groups in “receiving locations” can be vital agentsin converting immigrants into “acceptable” citizens by sponsoring, helping and socializingnewcomers into the host society (1996:745). But rather than primarily seeing the CatholicChurch as a powerful transnational organization converting immigrants into assimilatedAmerican citizens, I am here concerned with the ways in which religiosity is deployedtransnationally by Peruvian migrants in order to make sense of their experience as migrantworkers in the U.S. Instead of dismissing devotional practices as “folkloric” or as “falseconsciousness”, I wish to show how participants understand these as having not onlysymbolic but also material effects on their livelihood and everyday social lives. In the firstpart of the essay, I will discuss subjective aspects of this devotional practice. I am especiallyconcerned with the ways in which participants see their own participation in the processionand in the activities of the Hermandad and how they explain occurrences related to theircurrent or previous immigration status according to their faith in Señor de los Milagros. Inthe second part of the essay, I examine the Hermandad as an institution and the processionas a site for the articulation not only of transnational links with institutions and social groupsin the homeland, but also a site for articulating relationships vis-à-vis a larger community ofLatinos in New York City, providing Peruvians with a modality of belonging.

‘SETTING THE SCENE’: PUBLIC EVENTS AS AN ANALYTICAL LENS

Public events have long been of interest to anthropology - often under terms as diverse asritual, spectacle, processions, parades, carnivals, festivals, etc. Early studies of public ritualswere influenced by the Durkheimian tradition of looking at rituals as collectiverepresentation and by Levi-Straussian structuralism, which interpreted these practices asreflections of an underlying normative and universal structure (Handelman 1998:9-10).Others highlighted that ritual and public events address, display and often contest andrework social discontinuities embedded in wider social contexts and relationships (see forexample the works of Gluckman, Mitchell, Turner, and Leech). Poststructuralist andmaterialist critiques later dismantled the premises of anthropological studies which gavemyth and belief systems analytical primacy over ritual as practice, arguing that these studieswere a-historical and inaccurately saw ritual as simple reproductions of pre-existing socialpatterns without room for social change and renewal.3 The study of ritualized social andcultural practices has in recent years experienced a revival in anthropology with a renewedinterest in public spheres and larger mediated spectacles. The idea that public events canwork as an analytical lens to look at larger social formations which goes beyond the events

3 Catherine Bell’s term ritualization (1992) became very influential in ritual studies and in anthropological studiesof ritual. Bell defines ritualization as practices or actions, which differentiate themselves from other kinds ofmore mundane social actions. Bell’s approach stresses the primacy of the social act in itself (ibid:67). She arguesthat a focus on ritualization can show not only the purpose of the ritual activity and it’s social efficacy but alsothe embodiment of ritual in complex situations, that is the interaction of the social body within a symbolicallyconstituted spatial and temporal environment (ibid:93).

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themselves are now articulated in a series of recent works (Guss 2000; De la Cadena 2000;Cánepa Koch 2001; Mendoza 2000).4

Works on Peruvian public performances outside the borders of the Peruvian nation-statehave mainly focused on the composition and razón d’etre of the cultural associations, sportclubs, or religious confraternities which organize and stage such public events (Altamirano1998; Ruiz 1999). These studies often assume that Peruvians are reproducing a ‘Peruviannational identity’ or even a specific ‘Peruvianness’ in order to insert themselves in thereceiving society and thus somewhat echoes the “immigrant to ethnic paradigm” inimmigration studies (Portes & Rumbaut 1990). Other scholars have chosen to “track down”social and cultural phenomena in global circulation by focusing on processes of de-territorialization (Avila 2002) and expatriation (Paerregaard 2001) of cultural practices andsymbols as for example religious icons. These two latter studies, the first about the regionalcult to Señor de Qoyllur R’iti and the second about Señor de los Milagros, vary in the degreeto which they attribute importance to horizontal transnational ties as shaping these socialand cultural practices abroad. The conclusion in both cases is that whether used to sustaintransnational ties with parallel institutions at home or to respond to relations of inequalitiesthat shape the identities of participants as immigrants and ethnic minorities in the hostcountry, such public events provides a source of collective identity through which Peruvianscan assert themselves as such within global contexts. What I hope to show here is that whenfocusing on the performance of the event itself, this becomes a lens to look not only at theproduction of transnational relations between Peruvians in New York and institutions inPeru, but also at the ways in which Peruvian migrants articulate relationships withinstitutions of modernity in New York City while engaging in the cultural construction andcontestation over the parameters of citizenship and of national cultural politics in the UnitedStates.

Early scholarly work on ethnic parades in the US emphasized that such public eventsfunctioned as a staged presentation of an ethnic minority vis-à-vis a larger community. Theperformed or staged identities were seen as important moments of displaying symbolic unityacross internal political and social differences of a given community – even when theminority groups in question were not always in control of their own representation (Kasinitzand Freidenberg-Herbstein 1987; Schneider 1990). Recent studies have emphasized how thedifferent stakes at work in the staging of such events are influenced not only by the culturalpolitics and the nationalist vs. transnational strategies of different immigrant groups andactivists but also by transnational neo-liberal policies and politics (both government andcorporate), which ties local community struggles to larger economic and transnationalprocesses (Dávila 2004). Only recently, works on religious processions and devotionalpractices in contexts of migration and diasporic communities has started to appear (Gálvez2003, 2004).

4 Joseph Roach understands performance as coterminous with kinds of memory and history. He drawsattention to how expressive movements or events can work as mnemonic reserves what he calls “thekinesthetic imagination” (1996:26) and thus work as “acts of transfer” (Taylor 2003) through which memoryand history are reproduced, but also possibly transformed or collapsed.

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Focusing on large public event always presents the danger of taking attention away from less“visible” quotidian localized struggles, which are equally tied into global forces. That iscertainly not my intention here. I see the procession and the devotional practices related toit as part of a dense web of economic, political, and socio-cultural transnational relationsconnecting Peruvians in New York to their places of origin and vice versa. Devotionalpractices manifested in the participation of public religious processions are part of a largerepertoire of transnational practices through which migrants maintain connections withfamily, friends, compadres and cultural and political institutions in the homeland and alsothrough which they lead their struggles of insertion in U.S. society. While highly privileged inthis paper, I do pretend to argue that public performances in urban spaces are the only sitesfor the “production of locality”, as anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has termed it, however, Ifind that they are very significant sites which lend themselves well as an analytical lens toexamine how urban spaces and social geographies are produced and contested.5

MEDIATING DIASPORIC SUBJECTIVITY: THE POWER OF MIRACLES

Although the hermanos laugh and brag about how the procession offers them theopportunity to close down Fifth Avenue for half an hour, the procession is not only aboutpublic ways of creating, inhabiting, and staging meaningful social and cultural worlds. Acentral motive for participating in the event is the fulfillment of individual promises made toEl Señor de los Milagros in exchange for favors or for God’s mercy in difficult situations.

Very early in my research, stories of miracles started to appear in the migration narratives Icollected. A little note on the concept of miracles can be useful here. The first formalChristian definition of miracle, miraculum, is generally credited to St Augustine (354-430 AC).Anthropologist Michael Sallnow gives an excellent description of the historical developmentand regulation of the concept within the realm of the Catholic Church, which is worthquoting at length here:

“Agustine’s initial definition cast the net wide: “I call a miracle anything which appears arduous or unusual,beyond the expectation or ability of the one who marvels at it”. Here the miracle is located in the subjectiveperception alone: it is a vehicle of personal revelation. Some years later, he offered a more exact andobjective specification: “We give the name ‘nature’ to the usual and known course of nature; and whateverGod does contrary to this, we call ‘prodigies’ or ‘miracles’. The Augustinian notion of miracle has beenelaborated, but not much altered by Christian theologians since. St Thomas Aquinas, writing in the thirteenthcentury, defined a miracle in Augustinian terms as “an occurrence beyond the order of all created nature”.He argued, though, that miracles were not necessarily prodigious; any effect, however, insignificant, wasmiraculous if it surpassed the powers of nature. It might do this in one of three ways: substantially – that is,by producing a material effect, such as making the sun turn back; subjectively – consisting in the subject

5 Most of the Peruvians who participate in the procession do not live in the area around 5th Avenue and 51st

where the procession takes place. Most of them live in Flushing and areas around Roosevelt Avenue in Queens.In this sense the case of Peruvian migrants in New York City reflect Saskia Sassen’s argument about the micro-geographies of global cities. Sassen argues that the main sites of production in global cities are financial goodsand services and that these cities are in need of a large immigrant workforce in order to reproduce themselvesas global cities (Sassen 1991:5).

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rather than the substance, such as raising the dead to life; or qualitatively – producing a natural effect in anunnatural manner, such as curing a long-standing illness” (Sallnow 1987:53).

During the counter-reformation, the concept of miracle was further formalized by theCatholic Church who had a series of anxieties with regards to authentication – still an issueuntil this day. The miracles that I am interested in here are obviously not those, which havebeen officially approved as miraculous and transcendent by the Catholic Church, but ratherthose occurrences, which are popularly perceived to be miraculous. According to Peruviananthropologist José Luis González Martinez, religious practices as miracles and favors oftenoccur in high-stress situations where a person experience fundamental aspects of his or herexistence threatened (1988:362). Others have shown how the violence and crudity ofcontemporary urban life – at least in a number of Latin American cities – have served asfertile ground for fostering a series of religious and devotional practices including thefetishization of religious objects (Reguillo 2003). It is common to start believing in the powerof saints after experiencing unusual occurrences, especially when someone calls to theirattention that their fortune or misfortune might be the work of a saint. Peruvian migrants inthe United States, devoted to Señor de los Milagros, will more often than not ascribe bothmaterial or spiritual favors and misfortunes as ‘doings’ of the sacred image. In other words,an eventual recovery from an illness, success in finding a job, legalization of immigrationstatus, quick processing of green card applications, etc. are often interpreted and explainedas miraculous intervention by El Señor. From this perspective, the participation in theprocession honoring el Señor de los Milagros in October is often motivated by and indeedvery linked to questions of health, employment or lack of employment, and other issuescentral to the everyday lives of Peruvian migrants in the US.

Antonio is one of many Peruvians who have a miracle to report. He came to the UnitedStates for the first time on a tourist visa in 1986, which he overstayed for a few years beforereturning to Peru in 1988. At that time Peru was in the midst of a social, economic andpolitical crisis due to the armed conflict between Sendero Luminoso and the Peruvian State.Antonio stayed for another two years in Peru and then he decided that there was no futurefor him in Lima. He migrated with his wife and her family to the US over Mexico. The triptook more than 6 months and they were passed on from coyote to coyote paying severalthousand dollars for the trip. When Antonio finally arrived to the U.S. for the second timehe arrived as mojado. It was extremely difficult for him to find work and to construct alivelihood. He narrates:

“Despúes de mucho tiempo, yo buscaba tener mis papeles. Ya estaba muchos años en los Estados Unidos yno podía conseguirlos y era una trava, una amenaza hacia uno, con tantos problemas legales que uno vive.Siempre viví pediendo favores... “mira necesito esto, ayudame porque no tengo papeles, o quiero cobrar uncheque, pero no tengo una cuenta”... Inicialmente un abogado que me estaba llevando el caso cometió unerror, no mandó las copias que tenía que presentar cuando immigración te los pide. Entonces eldepartamento de labor cuando no tiene un documento a tiempo te da el caso simplesmente por terminado,te lo cierran, es así, es vertical la ley allí. Entonces me llega una carta diciendo que mi caso fue terminado yno supe que hacer. Hablé con el abogado y él me ofreció nuevamente seguir el caso, pero ya yo estabaincredulo. Ya no confiaba en esa persona. En ese momento tu te hundes en la depressión, en ladesesperación, porque ya pensando que todo está a medio solucionar, que ya estás más cerca a romper esacadena, de pronto te dicen no, vuelves a la linea. Y es una linea de años, todavía para ver si te aprueban o si

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sale otra nueva ley que te cambie todo. Entonces uno a veces siente desesperación.... Uno de esos días comodicen que te dan la sorpresa así de la nada, esa vez me recuerdo, yo le había hecho una promesa al señor delos milagros de que si él me ayudaba a conseguir mis papeles por mi trabajo, yo le iba a hacer un anda. Unanda como la de Lima...Para esto yo le pedia ayuda de los hermanos de la hermandad aquí que me consiganfotos, que tomen las medidas ya que ellos pueden ir a Lima [e.g., those who had documents already] y estarallí frente a la imagen y a la anda del Señor de los Milagros en Lima. Entre dos hermanos me ayudaron. Unome proporcionó los videos de cómo es que está la estructura, el otro me trajó fotos y medidas, y así poco apoco empezé a construir el anda. Todavia no había tenido los papeles de trabajo pero dije: “Señor yo te lovoy a hacer”. Y bueno decidí hacer el anda. Le pedí permiso al dueño de la compania. Me quedé trabajandohoras durante la noche. Me recuerdo que para este entonces trabajabamos hasta un cuarto para las siete,había que hacer ‘overtime’ dos o tres horas más, ya yo estaba cansado, cinco o seis de la tarde mi cuerpo yano daba más, pero tenía la promesa de hacerle al Señor de los Milagros el anda. El tiempo pasaba y lapresión seguía. Compré la madera, empezé a desarrollar el diseño y una de esas noches que ya tal vez elcansancio, no sé, pero la cosa no me salía como yo pensaba. Se me hacía todo dificil, los trazos, meequivocaba y todo, entonces le digo: “Señor por favor, mira, tu fuiste carpintero como yo, yo no te voy aengañar, yo te estoy haciendo un buen trabajo, pero dame una manito, no te voy a fallar”. Dicho y hecho.Todo empezó como una rompecabeza a armarse, una pieza sobre el otro y así salió. Terminé el anda y todo,pasaron los meses, salió la processión. Me emocionó mucho ver que yo pude hacer algo así para el Señor.Entonces ya yo me sentí satisfecho en ese momento, aun que no tenía mis papeles, pero me llenó el corazónsaber que pude hacer algo para el señor de los milagros. Como tantas veces hay momentos de frustración enla vida de uno y cambio de leyes de inmigración, problemas acá en el trabajo hacían que mi estabilidadpeligraba un poco, entonces desesperado de no poder conseguir nada, un día le reclamé, le dije: “Señor mira,yo ya te hice el trabajo, por favor ayudame! Yo te prometí hacerlo y no falté a mi promesa, no te olvides demi”. Entonces, eso me recuerdo fue un día lunes, el día viernes de esa misma semana, me llega una carta deldepartamento de labor diciendo que mi applicación fue aprobada y que dependía de seis meses más paraque me den una cita para inmigración. No hizo falta los seis meses, me llegó la cita y presenté todo. Cuandofue a inmigración, después de presentar todo eso, te envían una carta diciendo que ya se ha recibido todo yque te dan 180 dias más para responderte sobre tu greencard. De junio a julio pasó un mes y pico, me llegóel greencard. Entonces yo no puedo dar otra explicación más que el señor me escuchó. Es un testimonio vivode que dios está con nosotros y si tu obras de fé, de corazón, se lo pide con todo tu amor y tu sentimiento,te va escuchar. Y eso fue la respuesta de él. Puede pasar muchas cosas, pero yo siempre voy a estar allí conel Señor de los Milagros, siempre voy a ayudar a mi hermandad, de lejos de cerca de donde sea, siempre voya hacer un espacio para ayudarlos, para estar con él por que él me ayudó. Eso es lo que puedo decir”.6

RELIGIOUS SPECTACLE AND TRANSNATIONAL POLITICS

It has often been claimed that there is nothing more emblematic of ‘Peruvian identity’ inPeruvian migrant communities outside Peru than the organization of processions honoring ElSeñor de los Milagros (Altamirano 1998; Paerregaard 2001; Ruíz 1999). The firstbrotherhood devoted to el Señor de los Milagros in NYC emerged in 1970 in the Church ofSan Benito on 53rd St. in Manhattan. According to one of the founding members, JuliaFernandez, this confraternity was divided into two independent organizations in 1972. Oneremained in the Church of San Benito while the other moved to the neighboring parish

6 Antonio became a member of the Hermandad in the United States. Although his parents took him to theprocession in Lima as a child, he has never carried the icon in the streets of Lima (Interview, November 2002).

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Iglesia del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús.7 During the year the members of the Directiva gatherto raise funds for the procession in October and to take care of all practicalities of the eventin advance. Besides the usual cargos of a voluntary organization (president, secretary,treasurer, etc.), a religious confraternity like the Hermandad del Señor de los Milagroscomprise of the following additional sections or groups related to the organization of theprocession: Hermanos cargadores grouped in Cuadrillas (the original Hermandad in Lima has20 cuadrillas with over 200 hermanos in each); the Saumadoras, who are the women carryingthe incense during the procession and the Cantadoras who are women singing and praisingthe Lord during the procession. Finally, each brotherhood has a Mayordomo (main sponsorand chief), a vice-mayordomo, a patron de andas, a capataz general and subcapatazes, andmixtureros who are in charge of different tasks before, during, and after the procession.

In Lima, being member of one of the cuadrillas of the original brotherhood - the Hermandadde Cargadores y Sahumadoras, founded in Lima in 1878 in the Igleasia de las Nazarenas(Rostworowski 1992:180-1) - is seen as a sign of respectability and good citizenship throughthe practice of Catholic values. 8 This Hermandad is primarily integrated by members oftraditional families of the political and economic elite and being a member is generallyinterpreted as a sign of an elevated social position in the dominant social order. None of themembers of the Hermandad in New York had ever been members of the Hermandad deCargadores y Saumadores in Lima. Only some had been members of local brotherhoods inprovincial cities of the coast. Throughout its institutional history, the Hermandad del Señorde los Milagros de Nueva York, Inc. has maintained links with Cuadrilla 17 in the Hermandadin Lima. This contact was originally initiated by the current Mayordomo of the Hermandad inNew York whose brother-in-law is part of Cuadrilla 17. Now, every year, a delegation ofhermanos travel from New York City to Lima to participate in the procession on October28. Here, they are received as members of the Brotherhood of New York, which gives themaccess to a social and institutional space in the home country that they had never imaginedpossible while in Peru. In this sense, Peruvian migrants in New York City use theirHermandad and the entitlements that this institution provides them with vis-a-vis the homesociety as a way to assert social and cultural capital in Peru. James Clifford has argued thatdiasporic and transnational communities may ‘wax and wane in diasporism’, depending onchanging possibilities and obstacles both in host countries and transnationally (1995:249).The yearly participation of US-based Peruvian migrants in the procession in Lima may beseen as an example of how Peruvians while lacking political enfranchisement and recognitionof social claims in the US assert transnational participation in the public sphere of their homecountry through a US-based confraternity. However, no transnational links are unmediatedand the participation in the procession in Lima requires that participants can leave and enterthe US freely and return when the festivities in Lima are over. This hinders undocumentedPeruvians from participating in the event in Lima. Only those who are documented in the US

7 I have mainly worked with the Brotherhood in the Sagrado Corazón Church, who organize the largestprocession and celebrate their mass in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.8 The Hermandad de Cargadores y Sahumadoras in Lima was approved by the ecclesiastic authorities in 1911 andfinally in 1920, this institution obtained formal legal status (Rostworowski 1992:181).

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and who enjoy the benefits of permanent residency or citizenship and thus freedom ofmobility can travel to the annual processions in Lima.

Not only Peruvian migrants themselves use the confraternity to make claims to socialparticipation and social mobility back in Peru. The Peruvian government who in recent yearshas been deeply concerned with effectively maintaining political and economic relationshipswith its diasporic citizens has cast their eyes on the Hermandad in New York as a centralsite for producing alliances and forms of solidarity between migrant communities abroad andthe Peruvian national government back home. Already in the mid-1990s the Fujimorigovernment donated a Placa de Oro to the Hermandad honoring them for their efforts towork for the progress and well being of the Peruvian nation. This has later been followed upby President Alejandro Toledo who chose the Peruvian community in New York City as oneof the pilot project sites for the implementation of new consular policies through which thegovernment attempts to include the Peruvian communities abroad in a new nationalimaginary – el quinto suyo – obviously motivated by the possibility of securing the flow ofremittances and votes (Berg and Tamagno 2004). Every year the Hermandad in New Yorkinvite the Peruvian Consul, Vice-consul and other diplomats and government officials toparticipate in the procession. The members of the Hermandad see this as an honor that theyare extending to the government officials of their home country. When interviewingworkers at the Peruvian Consulate in New York, several of them talked to me about theirparticipation in the Procession as a duty in which they engaged to maintain good relationshipwith the Hermandad and thus with ‘la comunidad peruana’ in New York.

RELIGIOSITY ON DISPLAY: CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP?

Since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the Catholic Church in theU.S. became a venue for mobilizations based on a pan-Latino ethnicity. Priests trained inPonce (PR) came to serve in the more than one hundred and thirty parishes throughout theNew York City diocese. It can be argued that whether bound to specific nationalities andethnicities or not, religion has been a crucial variable in the social organization and politicalmobilizations of Latin American Catholic immigrants in New York City for at least the past25 years (Gálvez 2004). The Hermandad del Señor de los Milagros is such a case in point. Inspite of their (often) undocumented status and their general disadvantaged position withinthe global political economy in New York City (see also Julca 2001), Peruvian migrants usethe brotherhood not only to gain access to basic social services through the Churchnormally reserved for citizens and provided by the state, but also to articulate relationshipswith regulating urban regimes of the city of New York (for example city authorities) –institutions for whom this particular community would otherwise have been invisible.Furthermore, for the members of the Hermandad, the yearly procession and all the meetingsand socializing with fellow Peruvian Catholics that leads to it is in a sense a process ofemplacement in which the city (or certain places in the city) becomes meaningful and maybeeven ‘home’. But does these devotional practices and the social contexts in which they areembedded represent any kind of enfranchisement for Peruvian migrants to the U.S?

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The debate on cultural citizenship engages some of the processes and problems facingtransnational and immigrant communities in New York City (or anywhere in the US). AiwhaOng defines cultural citizenship as “the cultural practices and beliefs produced out ofnegotiating the often ambivalent and contested relations with the state and its hegemonicforms that establish the criteria of belonging within a national population and territory”(1996:738). Ong is critical of the notion of ‘cultural citizenship’ in the form of apparentcultural recognition and language democracy. She argues that while these dimensions ofcultural citizenship are easily endorsed by state institutions who then free themselves fromfurther obligations to ‘real’ social and political enfranchisement of minorities, they work as acontainment of immigrant communities preventing them from advancing towards fullcitizenship in spite of cultural difference from mainstream Anglo American society(1996:737-38; 1999).9 Renato Rosaldo (1994, 1997) and William Flores and Rina Benmayor(1997) take a different stand. Both Rosaldo and Flores and Benmayor have argued thatalthough it may not ultimately alter the juridical or social status of minority citizens, theclaim for cultural citizenship is an assertion of rights which can contribute to theconstruction of empowering cultural spaces in society at large from where, at some laterstage, political and social rights can be claimed (Rosaldo 1997, Rosaldo and Flores 1997;Flores 1997; Flores and Benmayor 1997).

Although the members of the Hermandad do not articulate themselves in terms of thecultural citizenship debate, the yearly procession in New York is part of a larger set ofregularized cultural and religious celebrations in the New York, which mark the city as aculturally diverse city. As a ritualized public event, the procession contributes to puttingPeruvians on the map of New York City both inside and outside of their own community. AsDavid, the coordinator of the procession and a constant interlocutor during this research,stated in an interview: “Queremos que la institución cresca y que todos los peruanos y los demásLatinos sepan que hay un señor...[...]...Y además nos da gusto cerrar la Quinta Avenida aun que seapor media hora (laughs)”. In the interviews I did about the organizational aspects of theprocession and the strategies used for negotiating with municipal and state officials, thehermanos would often emphasize how they accommodated to the rules of the city and howeverything they did was “legal”. Permits from police and city officials were always solicited inadvance of the event and all the letters were proudly kept. David explained to me: “Siemprenos gusta trabajar con el reloj. Queremos que todo salga bien para que nadie nos diga nada”. Inthe context of the politics of space in immigrant New York, the procession is also aboutmaintaining a public image of Peruvians as hardworking, docile and assimilated immigrants.Following Robert Bellah’s argument of the importance of religion in American civic life(1970), the procession provides a legitimate public space from where Peruvian migrants -many lacking legal status in the US - can articulate a sense of belonging and at times claimsocial rights.

9 It has been critiqued that the recognition of Latinos in the US has been mainly in their capacity as “ethnicconsumers” and not through the recognition of this constituency’s demands for full citizenship in spite ofcultural difference from mainstream Anglo American society (Dávila 2001, 2004).

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CONCLUDING REMARKS

Participation in the yearly procession is crucial for many Peruvians in order to fulfill individualpromises made to El Señor de los Milagros. Often these promises, as the case of Antonioabove, are made with the hope that they one day – through miracles instituted by El Señorde los Milagros - will materialize in the improvement of legal status, employment, health, orother issues central to the everyday lives of thousands if not millions of migrant workers inthe U.S.

Through my description and brief analysis of some of the central issues at stake in theproduction and circulation of the procession honoring el Señor de los Milagros in New YorkCity, I have aimed to show how the significance of this public event extends beyond themoment of ‘collective effervescence’ of the procession itself. The procession can be used asan analytical lens to look at a larger set of questions concerning the complex social field ofaction, which links Peruvian migrants in New York City to their places of origin. Asillustrated in my analysis of the event, Peruvian migrants in New York City do not only thinkabout the event in terms of representing or displaying some kind of ‘Peruvian essence’.Rather, they bring other categories and considerations to bear on this event whichultimately works to make sense of their migration experience – both in New York City andback home.

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