Abstract
In Colombia, historical and political conditions of the many forms assumed by armed violence, the ritualization of mortuary actions and the social representations of the conflicts underlying these actions have given rise to analyses increasingly sensitive to local and regional contexts. This text is based on the ethnography of popular devotional practices dedicated to certain dead, which have occurred intensely and continuously in Colombian urban graveyards for the last fifty years. These rituals are not promoted by any institution nor by any special minister. Held by individuals or families, they transform certain types of recent dead, anonymous or famous, into sanctified figures endowed with agency against misfortune. The analysis argues that these activities ritualize the experience of terror and mourning and at the same time configures a popular counter-memory of violence through informal ritualization.
Keywords
Sanctified dead; Ritualization; Armed violence; Urban graveyards; Colombia