"Navegar mar adentro”: Las peregrinaciones lacustres del Nahuel Huapi: la Misión jesuita y la Virgen de los Poyas y Puelches

Abstract

The Mission of the Nahuel Huapi (1670/1674 and 1703/1717) was an extension of the missionary Jesuit project, based in the island of Chiloe. The missionaries put the mission under the patronage of the Virgin Mary. A local historical building and the Bariloches Church,rescue the Nahuel Huapi mission through a narrative betwen the mission and the Marian invocation from the supposed discovery in the Church of Santa María de Achao in 2003. We present in this paper the nautical pilgrimage of the Virgin of Nahuel Huapi or the Poyas and Puelches in the Nahuel Huapi Lake. This Virgin is a symbolic artifact that makes the pilgrimage in the Bariloche tourist of the Lake and invites a heterogeneous community of faithful, where we found national, regional and local, identities that add a distinctive element: the tourist. This identity construction also part the interaction of several devotional spaces comprising territories from the pilgrimage: the Lake, the mountains and The Lake cities of Chile and Argentina