Culturally contesting “bad taste”: How Peru’s Chicha culture subverts Western aesthetic norms

SPEAKER: Adriana Churampi Ramírez, Leiden University

DISCUSSANT: Monique Roelofs, University of Amsterdam

DATE: 17 October 2025

ACTIVITY: CEDLA LECTURE

The Peruvian term huachafo refers to someone who ostentatiously displays a social status they lack, a display often dismissed as being in “bad taste”. It acts as a way to police social mobility and reinforce class-based aesthetic boundaries, marking certain styles as lacking beauty or refinement. This lecture examines the huachafo phenomenon through chicha culture, long associated with provincial migrant communities. Frequently devalued as huachafa for its supposed gaudiness or vulgarity, chicha nevertheless reclaims ancestral aesthetics and subverts Western norms that displaced pre-Columbian cultural expressions. Using examples from graphic design, literature, and architecture, the lecture explores how chicha aesthetics reshape Peru’s cultural landscape and serve as a form of popular protest, creating alternative channels for visibility and political expression.