«Here bolis are sold»: Sociological tensions regarding the cultural management of the Rafael Núñez House Museum in Cartagena de Indias

Abstract

In Cartagena de Indias, the «boli» is a popular soft drink, packed in a plastic bag and consumed frozen. One of the most desirable includes as an ingredient the popular soft drink Kola Román, mixed with milk; it's a drink created in 1885 by the family of Soledad Román, wife of Rafael Núñez. In February 2019, an advertising poster announcing the sale of kola pens with milk, hung on a window, on the facade of the Rafael Núñez House Museum in Cartagena de Indias, was forcibly taken from its place by a neighbor of the El Cabrero neighborhood. For the creation of the poster, there was a creative and intellectual exercise that sought to put history and culture in dialogue under the premise of the «sociological turn», which as of June 2018 determines the character of the educational and cultural activities in the House Museum, and that collects postulates of the sociology of culture developed by Pierre Bourdieu. The research seeks to illustrate the operation of the sociological turn by studying how the temporary exhibition «Here bolis are sold» to identify tensions in users regarding the status that the Rafael Núñez House Museum deserves.