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ABSTRACT
Roadside memorials devoted to vehicle-related deaths are increasingly common across the globe. Scholars have generally emphasised their commemorative status—as sites where a private memory is publicly displayed—underestimating, however, their religious dimension. This article is based on research which involved the content analysis of photographs taken during multiple visits to the 94 roadside memorials existing in 2015 on Route 78, a major Chilean highway connecting Santiago (Chile’s capital city) and San Antonio (one of the country’s main sea ports). We argue that Chilean roadside memorials are not solely commemorative sites but primarily animitas that have a core (popular) religious component: they are privileged locations where salvific grace is dispensed, acting as mediators between the living and the divinity and connecting the sacred and profane worlds. Furthermore, we suggest that the tragic nature of the deaths they commemorate confers on them a miraculous efficacy which may transform the sites into shrines and the victims into folk saints.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Chile is a predominantly Catholic country. According to the National Census of 2012, 67.4% of the Chilean population consider themselves to be Catholics (INE Citation2018). However, when using the term ‘religion’ or ‘religious’ in the article, we do not exclusively refer to Catholicism, but to popular religion in a broader sense, which has, at its base, both Catholicism and indigenous beliefs (for more information, see e.g. Parker Citation1987; Morandé Citation2010).
2. There are other variants of this belief, stating, for instance, that the water bottles placed in Difunta Correa’s shrines were originally baby feeding bottles which were meant to cherish this woman’s virtues as a good mother. For more information about Difunta Correa’s story and her miraculous and protective character, see Graziano Citation2007.
3. Finao is a Chilean expression referring to a deceased person.
4. The transition from praying for to praying to described here may also be found in some cemeteries in Chile. Examples are the Tumba del Indio Desconocido (‘Tomb of the Unknown Indian’) in the city of Punta Arenas (see Vargas Rojas Citation2016), Emile Dubois’s tomb in the city of Valparaíso (see Plath Citation2012; Bahamondes González Citation2016), and Emilio Instroza’s tomb in the city of Temuco (see Bahamondes González Citation2016).
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Isidora Urrutia Steinert
Isidora Urrutia Steinert is a PhD candidate in the Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies in the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bristol, UK. Until 2015 she was a lecturer and research assistant in the Sociology Institute of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. Her main research interests are cultural sociology, Latin American identities, Latin American popular religion, material culture studies, and sociological theory.
Eduardo Valenzuela Carvallo
Eduardo Valenzuela Carvallo is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Professor in the Sociology Institute at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. He is also Main Researcher at the Centre for Intercultural and Indigenous Research. His main research interests are comparative sociology, cultural sociology, sociology of religion and the family, and sociological theory.
CORRESPONDENCE: Isidora Urrutia Steinert, Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UP, UK.