The Virgin, The Princess, and The Goddess: A Field Report and Analysis of Pagan and Christian Symbolism in a Roman Catholic Religious Celebration of Northern Chile

Abstract

This article represents an early attempt to organize a communications study of a Roman Catholic religious celebration situated in the Andes Mountains of northern Chile. Although the rites and symbols of traditional religious festivals are more likely to draw the attention of anthropologists and ethnomusicologists than communication scholars, I believe such environments are fascinating and fertile sites for media ecologists to explore. The first part of this article integrates the work of several ethnographers who have studied the feast with my own observations made during a field visit there in July 2001. The second part of the article proceeds with a media ecological analysis by placing the feast within an historical context that highlights the symbolic differences between oral and literate forms of religious experience. The article concludes that the existing clash of pagan and Christian symbolism within the feast can at least partially be explained by the contrast between oral and literate forms of symbolism.