Growing up, I was taught that the way we spoke in Ayacucho, the way we dressed, the way we celebrated, were things to outgrow — backwards, del campo, embarrassments to leave behind for European standards. Carnavales de Ayacucho is the answer my hometown gives back to that lie every February. When I return for Carnaval and watch our streets fill with music and color and the kind of laughter that rises up into the Andean light, I remember what those voices were trying to make me forget: that we are beauty, we are resilience, we are ancestral joy. I made these photographs from that place — pride for my roots, love for the people who never stopped celebrating them. They are a small act of visual decolonization, and a reminder that Peru is not something to aspire toward from a distance. It is, and always has been, living, breathing art.