By José Francisco Porta Oñate, ESAN University
When I was a little kid, I remember celebrating the famous “Carnavales” tradition in February. This celebration is celebrated very differently in different regions of Peru, so I´m going to describe how it was celebrated in Lima, my city. There was always a huge celebration in my neighborhood because we all knew each other and played all day. In fact, we usually used to play with whole families as teams. It was a “family war!” We used the big houses we lived in as “bunkers” for our battles, and the “weapons” we used were classic water balloons, water guns and buckets and handles. We would try to get the other families wet while avoiding getting wet, ourselves.
The Carnavales celebrations had the objective of getting people wet with water and paint, even if we didn’t know them! So it was a water war, everyone versus everyone else.
However, because people got carried away, Carnavales sometimes created some problems and generated petty crime. Criminals from the lower-income suburbs around Lima loved Carnavales, also, because they could bother people and take the opportunity to rob them. Likewise, people on the streets also bothered passengers on the buses and sometimes caused some accidents like breaking the bus windows.
When I was small, this type of “Carnavales” was a common celebration in Lima, but a few years ago, the City Government created a law against it, so I will not be able to watch my own future children take part in this custom.
