COMENSALITY IN THE FUNERAL CONTEXT SOUTH OF THE ECUADORIAN ANDES

Abstract

The influence of Christianity, scientific advances in the field of medicine and modernity have profoundly affected the way Andean societies face death. However, even in their current forms, mortuary practices articulate complex interrelationships between participants. Food and drink sharing is the main focus. Eating and drinking are actions inherent to the human being, they have a special and vital value at the physiological level and also on a social level because it has the ability to generate extensive symbolic and affective connotations (Contreras, 1993). The second level is of interest to this work. It analyses the impact and functions of dinerity in the funeral context of rural centres. The reflections set out here derive from the experiences of ethnographic work carried out between the years 2016-2018 in the rural parishes Baños and Sinincay, located south of the Andes of Ecuador (Cuenca-Azuay). These understandings are based on a series of experiences (of observations, conversations, inferences and interpretations) that give account of the way of living and imagining, of making and of meaning the funeral world.