Abstract

ZALDUMBIDE RUEDA, Leonardo. The dispute of memory and Land in the Cemetery of La Magdalena de Quito. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2017, vol.40, n.1, pp.213-229. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v40n1.61959.

This article is the result of a series of meetings with the villagers in the parish of La Magdalena, located to south of the city of Quito, capital of Ecuador, which were conducted in order to understand the dynamics of the administration of the communal cemetery, based on documents kept by the community in the cemeterial archives and on memories held by the population. The contact with the community arose in the fieldwork phase of a larger study aimed to structurally analyze cemeteries in the canton of Quito. The case of the Cemetery of La Magdalena was noteworthy because of its form of com munity administration, unique in the city, that shed light on the alternative processes of secularization and social administration of the space arising from the fights and disputes regarding this site.

The aim is to show, with an analysis of the stories around the graveyard, several community processes through which the population has built memories, ritual practices and meanings with the funerary structure as backdrop. The study seeks to understand how, in the twentieth century, the cemetery administration passed from the church to the community; a reading of this process evidences social negotiating mechanisms related to the physical administration by the community, which have been saved in the community memories concerning the process of "recovery of its churchyard". This study also evi dences the complex symbolic processes with which the community re-signified its own funerary practices and meanings of everyday life as part of a strategy that has enabled it to create mechanisms for negotiation in its urban surroundings, in which the idea of plan ning as a meaning of the city seems to take over.

Keywords : cemetery; community; disputes; liberalism; secularism..

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