**1. Introduction**

Cultural identity is complex and can be defined in different ways, and in the current interaction context of globalization and technological development, where social interaction and sociocultural manifestations are in increasing evolution and are exposed in virtual environments, any social group can harbor multiple cultural identities [1]. Generally, a community's cultural identity is characterized by its beliefs, customs, values, and symbolic traditions of everyday life [2–6]. In this sense, traditions, due to their significant potential, are very important in sociocultural, economic, and political expressions in a territory [7]. Crouch [8] regarded nonrepresentative geography as the set of symbols, images, or metaphors that a group communicates as a part of its daily practices. For UNESCO [9], cultural identity is a concept derived from material and spiritual elements, inherited within a social group that represents a strong authenticity [10] and facilitates the understanding of a culture and increases the community's value. Therefore, cultural identity is a determining characteristic of a region; it encompasses its own specific features and contrasts different peoples' customs [11], alongside identifying the expressions that are the results of social interactions between different communities [12]. Hence, cultural manifestations will always constantly interact [13], change, and evolve.

This study was based on identifying and analyzing the evolution of some of the original elements that characterized the cultural identity of the Lajas people; in particular,

**Citation:** Ruiz Palacios, M.A.; Villalobos, L.G.; Oliveira, C.P.T.d.; Pérez González, E.M. Cultural Identity: A Case Study in The Celebration of the San Antonio De Padua (Lajas, Perú). *Heritage* **2023**, *6*, 351–364. https://doi.org/10.3390/ heritage6010018

Academic Editors: Lucia Della Spina, Paola Pellegrini, Antonia Russo, Maria Rosa Valluzzi and Angela Viglianisi

Received: 26 October 2022 Revised: 12 December 2022 Accepted: 22 December 2022 Published: 30 December 2022

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

cultural change will be determined by studying the San Antonio de Padua religious festival over the past 15 years.

In general, festive celebrations express important symbolic elements that are part of people's daily lives, and these elements aid in determining a social structure and the values that identify it [14]. In fact, studies on festive celebrations [15–17] reveal the cultural wealth of communities. Thus, by researching the transculturation process, we can identify the ways in which a given culture has transformed or the cultural elements that have survive [18]. This process involves reflecting on social behaviors and catalysts for cultural change from different perspectives such as social, economic, environmental, and technological. Festive celebrations in general, and religious ones in particular, are an expression of cultural identity and, according to Ramírez [18], are linked to preserving memories and those breaks that invent possible futures. In this sense, processes such as globalization, which include widely diverse components, including the demystification of many celebrations [19], compels us, as researchers, to identify their cultural originality [20,21].

In that sense, in Peru, in the communities of Saccacca-Paru Paru, Misminay, and Amaru in Cusco and Raqchi in Puno, the local inhabitants exhibit their ancestral practices through religious festivals and artistic expressions that distinguish them from each other in the rural space. These communities are the product. After interacting with tourists, they modify their heritage with the modernity that they bring [22], so that, after mutual learning experiences, they build their own personal identity, all of which are an expression that reflects the identity of the people, their way of learning, behavior, and self-identity that are constantly changing [23]. Likewise, the Festival of the Virgen de la Candelaria is the most important identifying reference of the inhabitants of Puno-Peru [24], along with Lake Titicaca, the offering to Pachamama, Alasitas, and Zampoñas [25]. The veneration of the Virgen de la Candelaria is widely spread across other cities' borders, such as Lima, Arequipa, and Tacna, where the residents of these cities live and teach their devotion in their communities [26].

This devotion to the Saints in Peru, in patron or religious festivities, fulfills several functions within the community: the first is the integration function of individuals, migrants, and locals, who live together for a common reason: to bring out the festivity; the second is to achieve prestige within the group, by assigning important roles to prominent figures within the town (residents recognized by the community or by economic solvency) and who organize and pay for part of the activities of the festival; and third, to achieve a "popular sacrament" where the people preserve a genuine sense of the festive [27].

The religious identity of a particular people is manifested through the established forms of organization and ethical norms about the divine. In addition, it influences a person's meaning of life, and their way of understanding and explaining their reality is characterized by the expressions of feelings, attitudes, and moods and by a set of symbolic elements, beliefs, and rites that build a spiritual value, especially at a time of religious celebration as is the case of the present study. [16,27,28]. A religious manifestation is part of a group and individual self-perception (constructed authenticity) found in a religious festival, in a specific space and time; it also adds value to the overall experience, and the participants identify with particular local expressions [29–31].

Lajas is a town located in the province of Chota, department of Cajamarca, in Peru's northern highlands. With agriculture and livestock being its traditional occupations, Lajas is surrounded by mountains, and the Chotano and Lajeño Rivers intersect in its territory, thereby providing water to about 11,093 inhabitants [32]. The Churucancha cultural site, the thermal and medicinal baths of Chancay, and its natural landscape are some of the town's main attractions.

The San Antonio de Padua Patron Saint Festival in Lajas-Cajamarca was first celebrated in the 19th century when the town was founded in 1856. María Rivasplata, one of the community's founders, gave up her land in exchange for a festival for San Antonio de Padua. The celebrations lasted for three days in July [33]. Currently, the festival

lasts for six days since, in 2003, the local priest, Fernando Idrogo, decided to extend the celebration's duration.

The Lajas Festival consisted of three days of prayer to San Pedro. But, in 2003, more days and activities were included, sponsored mainly by representatives of the Catholic Church and a group of the faithful. In recent years, the festival has grown, and the local government, as well as other political agents, began to participate in the organization of less religious activities. The festival did not have a butler to manage this type of performance, this figure being more present in other types of minor festivities and in other districts of the area.

Since its inception, the San Antonio de Padua festival has been adapting to social changes, and new traditions are being developed that the population assumes as its own. Every year, this festival has been experiencing an increase in the number of attendees, primarily from the province of Chota and mostly from the nearby towns.

Therefore, the main objective of the study was to analyze the festival's evolution since 2003 when the celebrations of this festival were extended to six days; it is an exploratory and descriptive study of the past 15 years. Research was specifically conducted on the evolution of intangible cultural manifestations of certain customs related to religious practices, music, and gastronomy, and the social participation and perception of the celebration's development were analyzed. These aspects allowed us to expand the degree of knowledge about the cultural identity of Lajas through the San Antonio de Padua festival, thus facilitating more complete research on its evolution, impacts, and future effects.

### *Theoretical Framework*

Currently, cultural manifestations are a determining factor in the social and economic development of many communities; therefore, managing these cultural assets is a fundamental part of understanding and preserving them. Management actions facilitate awareness of preserving a town's customs and can generate a balance between the value of local expressions and visitors' identity [12,34–36].

The conservation of a community's cultural and heritage expressions depends on numerous factors. One of the factors is the ways in which a community deals with the cultural changes produced by new experiences in different social spaces such as tourism [37]. In fact, culture and heritage are currently a form of sustainable local development, namely, social, economic, cultural, and environmental [38–41]. These relationships have evolved, and currently, several tourist destinations include this type of resource in their offerings through a diverse array of tourist products. Popular secular or religious festivals are also part of this offering and have become increasingly important as a resource due to the vast and different activities that are accessible to different segments of the population [42].

Religious celebrations are a part of the cultural tourism products offered, and therefore, according to García [43], they have a value-in-use, thereby generating opportunities for social exchanges and revitalizing the economy under the umbrella of a series of symbolic values that exist; these scenarios promote changes such as acculturation or transculturation.

Music and dance, as a cultural manifestation, express sensorial and jointly, a collective feeling that motivates an emotional psychophysiological reaction, which leads to living an experience of connection between the participants [6]. Its roots occur in specific cultural or social ecosystems [44,45], creating from this, socio-musical identities. In this sense, music founds a collective identity expressed in an image, in a dance, in speech, in an attitude towards things, this being a form of socialization, of self-definition that generates a sense of belonging [46]. Peruvian folk music expresses in its lyrics a symbol of social connection and its melody, harmony, and rhythm are a vehicle for the expression of identity. Thus, in the district of Lajas the Huayno, the norteña marinera and cumbia sanjuanera are known and valued.

Gastronomy, within a community, is an element of social construction that, associated with a particular context of the communities, reflects a trace of its identity through the form of cultivation, the selection of products, the typical dishes, and the forms to serve and consume [47]. Naturally, typical gastronomy not only encompasses the typical dishes and drinks of a locality, but it is also a tangible representation of its eating customs, traditions, techniques, and lifestyles of the people [48].

Cultural identity in relation to citizen participation shows a dialogue and interaction without social classes, where social resilience in the face of changes allows reorganization and maintenance of its structure and group identity [49]. Likewise, it helps to the decentralization of power in local authorities and connects the needs of the population with the public administration, since it allows knowing the local reality through the opinion of the population, which helps to make better decisions regarding public policies [50]. To achieve this, the population needs to empower itself through citizen science that promotes open and democratic knowledge within the reach of the population, who participate in part of the exercise of power, debates, and local management plans [51]. Likewise, citizen participation in festivities, cultural, musical, sports, and other activities may have economic benefits and is a great opportunity to promote tourism-related business [52].

In this sense, as a Latin American benchmark of intercultural analysis, Ortiz [53] proposed the theory of transculturation as a way of explaining the complex phenomena and transmutations experienced by the Cuban and Spanish cultures and other European arrivals. Ortiz [53] analyzed the changes in the economic, institutional, ethical, religious, linguistic, and psychological aspects of life in Cuba and described transculturation as the result of different phases of the transitional process from one culture to another, thus consequently giving rise to the creation of new cultural phenomena. Transculturation, as a concept, does not imply that a certain culture is inclined toward another, but instead, it implies the transfer between two active cultures that mutually contribute, thereby supporting and cooperating toward a new reality of civilization (Malinowski as cited in Ortiz [53–55].

García, as cited in Côté [56], called "hybridization" the sociocultural process in which separate social structures combine to create new structures that bear no resemblance to the former one because they are also hybrids.

Croucher and Kramer [57] propose the theory of cultural fusion, where human beings, when adapting to a new environment and coming from a different one, maintain a dynamic of interaction that allows them to decide what to take from a new culture, what to change, what to maintain, so from this intercultural decision process, a cultural fusion is born, where each society is the consequence of a set of subcultures open to change and in constant social adaptation. Let us also consider communication, technology, and the systemic migration [58], among other factors that contribute to social interaction. This theory maintains three conditions: socialization with the new culture, dependence on the dominant culture/environment, and the existence of communication between both cultures. Previously, Le Bon [59] in his mass psychology theory mentioned that when an individual is related to a different social group, he adopts some characteristics of the new group and of the environment he has entered. [60].

Likewise, it is worth noting the cultural theory and the model of power relations of Favre, Swedlow, and Verweij [61] who establish that power is based on culture, formed from social action, and where the sociocultural structure is reflected in public bodies and is commonly accepted by society itself.

All these approaches that try to explain the phenomenon of cultural exchange are the result of a complex network of relationships between different actors who are involved in one of the scenarios generated by celebrating a religious holiday such as residents, tourists, and public administrators, as in our case study. The relationship is multidimensional, and the results of their study analysis are uncertain because they depend on the interests of each group. Fuller [62] confronted this problem by focusing on defining the characteristics of the receiving community and then analyzing elements such as actors and their roles, the standardization of cultural heritage, and culture or conflicts in the community.
