Affective Funeral Rituals in the Face of the AIDS Crisis in Buenos Aires during the 80’s

Abstract

During the 1980s, in Buenos Aires, cases of a deadly disease began to multiply. Silent and unknown, the AIDS virus was catalogued as “the pink plague” and qualified by the Church as “a just divine punishment”, while the stigma fell on the sick. This qualitative research investigates the impact of HIV/AIDS on the Buenos Aires underground and the ways in which artists collectively dealt with the virus and with young death, in the absence of a cure. These approaches allow us to account for the singular character of the celebratory wakes that took place in the face of the AIDS crisis within the Buenos Aires artistic community. In this way, through the case of the actor Batato Barea, we will investigate the meanings attributed to these funeral rituals by his friends and relatives. In addition, we will analyze the characteristic imprint of these rituals that sought to preserve the integrity of the soul and to vindicate different ways of living. Both features are distinctive with respect to other collective ways of facing death in the funerals of the activist group ACT-UP, carried out in the United States and Europe.