Today we are all Chinatown : identity struggle and strategic uses of culture in Buenos Aires' s Chinatown

BADARO, MAXIMO; DENARDI, LUCIANA E.; SARTORI, MARÍA FLORENCIA; DELMONTE, ROMINA; FLORENCIA INCAURGARAT; ALEJANDRA CONCONI

China in Argentina: Ethnographies of a Global Expansion

Palgrave Macmillan, an imprint of SpringerNature

Lugar: New York; Año: 2022;

This chapter analyzes the way in which global processes derived from the rise and prevalence of China in the world are evidenced in Buenos Aires, at the level of the identifications of migrants, the uses and appropriations of urban spaces, and the ritual meanings and symbols. I will describe different situations of encounter where diverse actors and institutions have Chinatown as a stage. On the one hand, the tensions between Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants and non-oriental inhabitants of the neighborhood in relation to the urban setting and requalification and the installation of the Arch. On the other hand, I present the ruptures generated in relation to the celebration of the Chinese New Year when the Chinese diasporic bureaucracy irrupted as the main actor. In these encounters are imbricated various processes related to the cultural identifications, religions and practices that are highly dynamic and strategic.The methodology used for the realization of this chapter is qualitative. Intensive ethnographic fieldwork was carried out mainly between 2012 and 2015. Since then, I have maintained contact with informants and collected data from interviews and informal talks that allow me to trace a continuity to the present.What can be observed in these encounters in Chinatown is that identification, policy management, the commodification of identity, the spectacularization and essentialization of culture and the use of resources are strategic: The actors adapt and accompany processes that change and are modified with the evolution of social power relations.