I grew up thinking fireworks were to be handled by trained professionals. In San Francisco, fireworks for New Year’s or July 4th are set off from boats in the bay. I used to think that fireworks really should only be set off over water, or else everything underneath it would somehow go up in flames. This past summer when I saw a fireworks show on July 4th on a football field in Petaluma, about an hour north of San Francisco, there was no body of water directly near us, and I was pleasantly surprised that there were no problems. But still, it was a show organized by a group of people who seemed to have some expertise or experience with pyrotechnics. It was part of larger celebration of American summer, complete with a cover bad that played song like ‘Proud to be an American,’ before the fireworks were finally lit.
My experiences with fireworks in Peru on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve were quite different - somewhat frightening, but also more exciting, and perhaps more fun.
At midnight in Cusco to welcome Christmas, people of all ages gathered in the Plaza de Armas to be technicians and spectators. Firecrackers and fireworks of different colors, sounds and size whirred around the square. Kids helped tourists who didn’t know what they were doing. Occasionally a rogue explosive would fly more horizontally than vertically. This one dog didn’t get it and when it saw the sparks from fireworks that had been lit but hadn’t gone off yet, it ran towards it. It did that a lot of times, and still seemed eager for more. I walked away from the square at about 12:30 unscathed and happy.
For New Year’s, I was at home on the balcony of my host family’s 5th floor apartment. In every direction we looked, there were fireworks, even a few that were lit right at the base of our building. The next building over had a huge stash of red fireworks and just behind the park around the corner, someone really loved green fireworks. The celebrations kept going until after 1. The saturation of explosives in the sky and the DIY-ness of the festivities were a great way to start the year. This guy’s video captures Lima’s fireworks really well.
DIY fireworks can be looked at two ways. Sure, they are a disaster waiting to happen. But as long as you keep your eyes open, there was something quite generous about the whole thing. The vast majority of the time, no one seemed to get hurt, and people were all spending some money on something both that they personally got a thrill out of, while also providing a show for their neighbors across the city. Everyone put on a show for everyone. Not a bad mindset to have while working on other things, too.