El tinku como expresión política: Contribuciones hacia una ciudadanía activista en Santiago de Chile

Abstract

The tinku, as an Andean dance, has been performed in urban contexts and in political demonstrations in Santiago. This has allowed the consolidation of a diversity of dancing groups that consider the tinku a means to express citizenship. In this context, the main objective of this research is to characterize and analyze the way in which urban space is taken over and its meaning revised by this type of bodily action. The main theoretical axes are the notions of activist citizenship and the political use of identity. This research was conducted from an ethnographic perspective, based on group interviews to dancers from a diversity of groups and on the self-observation carried out by one of the authors, in his capacity as member of an Andean dance collective in Santiago. In a way, the tinku may be characterized as an expression of esthetic resistance and a new way of living in and politicizing the city.