Reciprocal Place‐Making and Urban Indigeneity in the Rituals of Atun Puncha: The Carnival of Forgiveness in Bogotá

This article examines how reciprocal ritual helps displaced urban Indigenous communities create presence and belonging in Bogotá. Drawing on fourteen years of longitudinal ethnographic research (2011–2025), it traces the transformation of the Carnival of Forgiveness, known among the Inga as Atun Puncha (“the great day”) or Kalusturinda, from a segmented procession in Bogotá’s La Candelaria into a ceremonial circuit that moves through Colombia's civic, religious, and political center for 5 h. Organized by the Cabildo Inga de Bogotá, the celebration adapts divichidu , the Inga practice of reciprocal exchange through food, music, flowers, and presence at the heart of the Putumayo carnivals, to an urban setting, where those obligations are directed not only toward houses and elders but also toward administrative offices, monuments, and the Cathedral. I describe this process as reciprocal place‐making: the repeated enactment of obligations to people, institutions, and living places through which Indigenous urban space gradually takes shape. In Bogotá, these practices help produce Indigenous territorial presence that legal recognition alone cannot secure.