Herranza was a weekend-long festival that took place at the end of February/beginning of March. It involved parades, religious ceremonies, parties and lots of feasting and drinking. On Friday, we had a parade in the afternoon from the town hall to a tall hill on the outskirts, where we partook in a ceremony. After that, we all went back into town at dusk to party. The rest of the weekend involved similar activities. One thing I was not expecting was people throwing water balloons, which is common tradtion in other parts of Peru for Carnaval. I thought it would be too cold in Junín for anyone to seriously consider doing that, but I was unfortunately mistaken.
I learned about the traditions of Herranza, which was equivalent to Carnaval in my town of Junín. Carnaval is a Christian celebration over the course of a few days where people indulge themselves before Lent, which is a period of fasting and abstinence before the Easter celebration. Carnaval usually involves lots of parties and parades, drinking and feasting, and general rowdiness before Lent. In my community in the Andes, the traditions of Carnaval are blended with traditional Andean traditions, in a process called sincretismo, which involves the blending of Christian traditions with pagan ones.
