The New Forest School: Rituals of Resistance and Re-memberment in Life on the Margin (Bogotá, Colombia)

By way of exploring how pillars of transnationalism, faith, and history are harnessed by Cuban and Venezuelan migrants as a means to purposeful ends in potentially hostile urban environments, this study proceeds to investigate the religious phenomena that occur at the intersections of devotion and diaspora, belief and history, and gender and generation within the divergent migrant enclaves of Bogotá. Specifically, this research asks: If and how is religion operationalized among Bogotá’s migrant undercaste and how is it tied to resistance and hope? More precisely, how have aspects of two uniquely syncretic and diasporic religions, Santería and Maria Lionza, been deployed and subsequently altered (or extended) by migrant devotees in Bogotá and for what purpose(s)? Within various contexts, “Rituals of Resistance” and “Re-memberment” (as referred to herein are defined respectively as transcendental reformations/survival mechanisms and as processes of reclaiming (or reframing) historical, subconscious influences/modes of feeling that have been lost and/or transplanted due to dynamics of diaspora. From a diverse set of ethical encounters which utilize the kinetic ethnographic tool of Street Phenomenology “Go Alongs,” a myriad of ontological conceptualizations, via these individuals’ transitory experiences of what the sacred is and where it can be found, come to light.