Festa Junina

It’s time for Festa Junina. Every year around the feast days of Saint Anthony, John the Baptist and Saint Peter schools, churches, clubs and neighborhoods host festivals that celebrate rural life. It’s a bit like harvest festivals in the US.

It’s everything country. The (younger/teens) guys dress up in plaid shirts with patches and straw hats. The gals wear red checkered skirts, put their hair in pig tails, add freckles and rosy cheeks, and some blacken out a tooth or two. It’s a well-meaning and fun spoof on country living.

The food [It’s all about the food!] is basically every way you can cook up some corn: on the cob, in a paste (savory or sweet) wrapped in husk and steamed, into a pudding, into a cake, in a sweetened lumpy soup – delicious traditional dishes served only this time of year. Everyone has their favorite, with memories of how they loved it when they were little.

No outdoor festival is complete without sweets. On this occasion there was a chocolate booth including caramel apples, a sugary coconut booth and a sweet crepes-on-a-stick booth. Diabetes? Who has diabetes? Not at a Festa Junina party!

We went during the daytime, so the crowd was just trickling in. The party went until after 2 a.m. The stage usually features country music bands and a quadrilha caller (square dance). Late in the evening there is typically a mock shotgun wedding, in true country style.

There will be a festival, somewhere in our city, every weekend throughout June and into July. We will be there!