And Emotion Becomes Memory—Emotional Energies, Collective Memory, and Religious Celebrations Among Afro-Pacific Migrants in Cali, Colombia

The patron saint celebrations of the colonias of Afro-Colombian migrants from the South Pacific region in Cali (Colombia) provide a significant context for understanding the perseverance of paisanaje (a shared experience of origin) bonds and ritual vitality in migration contexts. Organized consistently since the 1960s, these celebrations bring together dispersed communities year after year, activating and reshaping memories, emotions, and collective identities. Building on this celebratory perseverance, this article explores the factors that produce and sustain the emotional and social commitments that transcend the celebration itself. Drawing on the theory of interaction rituals, the concepts of collective effervescence, and embodied memory, this study proposes interpreting these celebrations as spaces where emotion, memory, and social time intertwine. This is based on the understanding that the ritual experience enacts the community through a shared repetition that brings the past to life and projects the expectation of reunion. For this analysis, this study draws on research conducted between 2015 and 2018 and a reflective re-examination of this material in 2026, which included participant observation at 10 celebrations and semi-structured interviews with members of 7 hometown communities or colonias. The results show that longing—the tension between the joy of reunion and the melancholy for what is absent—acts as a constitutive emotional state and the primary amplifier of the ritual’s emotional energy, adding precision to Collins’s model of how energy accumulates and enables the continuity of communal bonds.