Tacna Day 2.0

This past Saturday was the 81st anniversary of Tacna´s reincorporation into Peru. Down here, each city gets together a big celebration for its day, and Tacna´s is especially intense considering its patriotism and civic pride. In both my years here, it has been a really enjoyable time to share with the people of this wonderful city.

This year, the festivities included a parade filled with dances and floats (my housemate Cara danced the traditional Saylla - she had almost roped me into doing it too, but it is an intense dance, so I stayed away from this one), an actuacion at school that had everything from kindergarden kids dressed as stuck-up, early 1900s folk to a procession with a big Peruvian flag to a marching contest (that my fourth year students were very upset to lose) to a sharing of traditional picante (made with cow´s stomach - not very appetizing, but the dish´s flavor is good), a Daddy Yankee concert (that I attended. Quite simply, it was a lot of fun, even though I am not a big reggaeton fan and they had separate entrances for males and females that meant I had to wait on line by myself for a long time), a parade down the main street with a humongous Peruvian flag (held only by women, since they were the ones during the years under Chile´s rule who celebrated in secret), and some more picante.

Then, as a community, we took a trip down to the beach for a four day retreat on social justice. It was a great chance to relax a bit, talk about issues of justice that we see (particularly the treatment of women in Peruvian society - though we did get into the different cultural and societal contexts that affect our views of such issues too, and how we have and use privilege as white, relatively wealthy Americans) and enjoy each other´s company.

Anyway, I´ve added some photos of the fun to give you all a little more of an idea of all the fun over the last week.

Cara is dancing in the back right of the group. This picture was also right before they grabbed me from the sidelines and pulled me out on the street to dance with them.

Though this kindergardener is a little odd in class (she will randomly scream nonsense), she was absolutely adorable dressed up for the actuacion. I had fun imagining that all the drama of the reincorporation into Peru really went down amongst 5 year olds dressed like this.

My tutoria of fourth years starting their march (very militaristic) for the contest.

The big Peruvian flag going down the main drag. It literally takes up the entire width of the street.

This is one of the ¨alfombras¨ that they make out of flowers and different materials on the morning of the parade. No one can walk over them until the flag passes down.

The Peruvian commandos who later paraded. Can you spot the camo one?

The community on retreat. Relaxed and renewed.