Veloreando es que ha sido. Los velorios como práctica cultural y religiosa de las Comunidades Afropacíficas de Barbacoas en Cali

Abstract

The importance that the Afro-Pacific community gives to the practice of velorios (wake) for the saints is most significant. This practice, in which the values of a reconstructed religiosity are mixed, together with the very processes of adaptation and transformation of its devotees to marginalized and racialized urban context, become the element that has enabled the community reconfiguration of said groups in different spaces of settlement. Therefore, they come to be spaces of collective memory built from a common understanding that recreates spirituality expressing its usefulness and daily strength. The goal of this paper is to show the importance of the velorios made to the patron saints on the east of the city, specifically, in some neighborhoods of the Aguablanca District, through songs, lullabies, and praise. These have positioned themselves as a storytelling tradition of the permanence and historical belonging of Afro-descendant communities in their diasporic condition, of long and short journeys making possible a way of being and doing in Cali. Moreover, to underline the importance of velorios, involves making a descriptive analysis of the forms and meanings of this practice in the community reconfiguration.