Movement, body and government. A political view on the dances in the late-colonial Spanish- American period (Buenos Aires, eighteenth century)

Abstract

In colonial Buenos Aires, festivities were key areas for the deployment of a set of social and political factors. In this work we will analyze the development of two forms, prototypical and antagonistic, of festive dance. We will reflect on the ways in which it was intended to manage the recreation of the population, as well as the assessments used in each instance. We will review the purposes from which the ruling elites of the city sought to intervene or even appropriate various festive forms and popular expressions of Buenos Aires society in the late colonial period. Take over the carnival outburst, the crowd and their effusions. Divide between a fit and reprehensible behavior model and practice the example. However, Bourbon cultural policies were severely contested, either by ecclesiastical power or by the very social logics that permeated society in its tastes, practices, desires and needs. Thus, the pretension to model the leisure experience was restricted by its own crossroads, politics, society and the experience of the Late Latin American colonial period.