Carnavaaaaaaaaaal!

Whew!  We survived it!  Each year for the four days prior to the beginning of Lent, there is a celebration that lights up the entire city of Barranquilla.  To be truthful, the music and preparations begin here at 12:01am on January 1st, but these past four days move things to a whole different level and do seem to live up to the reputation that Barranquilla’s Carnaval is the second largest in the world – second only to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Here Carnaval is a festival of music and dancing with various parades as the main events each day.  To be honest, Richard and I never made it to the largest, most traditional parades that happened on the Via 40.  We have seen pictures of the street lined with stands (actually half the street was simply taken over by stands, cutting four-ish lanes of traffic down to two and making my neighbor’s commute an exercise in frustration), but watching from there is quite expensive at about $160,000 COP ($80 USD, or about half our rent).  I assume that the larger floats and best organized dancers pass through the parades there, but I don’t have any pictures of them to show you.

We did have a taste of this grander experience a week or so ago when we went to the largest pre-Carnaval parade, the Guacherna, which ran down 44th Street.  There the seats were only $5 USD a piece, but the queen danced through, and the costumes were – to sum it up in a word – fabulous.  We do have some pictures from that evening here, but you can also see others if you go to Linda’s blog (a current accompanier) who wrote an excellent reflection about the fun and frustration one feels while watching the parades.

This past Sunday we did go to an official Carnaval parade, though it was a smaller, neighborhood parade on 21st Street.  There will still throngs of people in attendance with dancers and folks in costumes, but there was a decidedly less formal air.  No seats to rent.  No crowd control barriers lining the streets.  No big floats with famous people on them.  It was, as folks euphemistically say here, “más popular” — more “of the people” — a poor man’s version of the bigger, brighter parade going on further away.

I would imagine that the general gist of both parades was the same, but ours was more homespun.  Perhaps it is sort of like the Dixie Classic Fair instead of the World’s Fair – you can have a great time at both, but you are definitely talking different leagues.  For example, any music at our parade that was not live was likely to come from one or two speakers strapped to a wheelbarrow rather than a larger than life float.  The trucks that rolled through were small delivery trucks advertising meat or milk, and the “prizes” thrown out at the crowd were foodstuffs like pasta and syrup.

But if there was a parade that was grander on the other side of town, there was not one that was more enjoyed.  People dance and clapped, sprayed shaving cream and flung corn meal, wore costumes, sang, and cheered.  The political commentary still shown through with figures dressed up as FARC leader “Tiro Fijo”, Hugo Chavez, Uncle Sam, and Osama bin Ladin.  The violence people here take for granted was mocked with variations on images of death ranging from the grim reaper to beheaded corpses walking down the street.  And always there was dancing – cumbia, mapalé, garabato, and more.

Some churches here preach that Carnaval is heathenistic and immoral, not unlike denunciations you are likely to hear about Mardi Gras or other large festival gatherings.  The Presbyterian Church here certainly recognizes that people can make bad decisions in highly festive atmospheres, but they do not denounce participation on the face of it.  Instead they see Carnaval as one more way to celebrate the good life God has given us — music, dancing, eating, and all.  They know that our God is a God of joy and laughter who can delight in our joy as well as stand with us in our pain, and after all, the pain of Colombians just has to be balanced out with overabundant joy somewhere, doesn’t it?

What I can say for sure is that Carnaval is certainly quite a show, so go ahead and mark it on your calendar for next year and plan to come catch a glimpse of what celebrating can really look like.