Carnaval 2018

Postales del Paraíso

 Carnaval!

I stepped out the front door and was immediately swept up in the tumultuous roar and excitement of the crowds, then someone grabbed my arm and started to dance me backward down the cobblestone streets and as I’m spun around POOF! I’m hit in the face with a handful of flour! The bright blue sky is swirling with balloons and crepe paper streamers, the sun is blazing, and glittered beads, plastic necklaces, candy kisses and reams of confetti are raining down from every rooftop.

The entire town echoes with Mariachi bands, and firecrackers, and the street rumbles and vibrates with garishly decorated tractors and trucks lurching down the narrow roads and alleyways filled with palm fronds and beauty queens, pink haired revelers and guests of honor. The smiles and laughter are absolutely infectious. 

Mardi Gras, or Carnival (Carnaval in Spanish) is the last big blast before Lent ushers in the more somber 40 days before Easter. Schools are out, business are closed, and everyone in the village is crammed onto the narrow sidewalks craning their necks to be the first to see what ever is coming next. The school kids come running around the corner first, racing at full tilt ahead of the parade, chased by an enormous charging paper mache bull and an army of lanzadores harinas. Everyone is wearing a mask and the lanzadores harinas (flour throwers) come in all guises, and disguises, but a woven sack slung from their shoulder is ample warning. They’ll engage you, and charm you, and sweetly smile as they slyly reach into their sack and before you realize what’s going on POOF! You’re covered from head to toe in flour.

Las Zayacas are everywhere. Traditionally women dressed as old men, and men dressed as women with enormous balloons stuffed under their dresses to “enhance” their butts and bosoms all of them wearing outrageous wigs and masks. They zigzag back and forth across the streets dodging the parade floats, marching bands and costumed dancers as they try to sneak up on the kids, whose challenge of course is to get close enough to a Zayacas to pop one of the their balloons. But the crowd is fickle and alternates between protecting and betraying the giggling kids, but whether a balloon is popped or a kid is instantly transformed into a Pillsbury doughboy, the encounter is always celebrated with a spontaneous roar of approval from the crowd.

There are beauty pageants and chili contests, dance-a-thons and carnival rides, there are art shows and food stalls, milagro vendors and games of chance. There are marching bands and antique cars, circus clowns and animal rides and everything is going on at once, seemingly on top of each other.

Carnival here is not as expensive or as naked as it is in Venice or Rio. Its enormous charm lies in the fact that it’s a family affair (at least the daytime parade is, the evening event is another story). Everything is made by hand, people labor for months, even all year, making the costumes, the masks, and the elaborate headdresses. Moms help dad’s decorate their pickup trucks with enormous crepe paper roses, dads help their kids make fanciful paper mache masks and wondrous carts to pull through the streets, and the kids make every attempt to dress up their dogs and cats like superheroes and fanciful dragons.

The caballeros and horses are always at the end of the parade (for obvious reasons), but what a finale! Enormous sombreros with dingle balls swaying from the brim, silver spurs and embroidered jackets, tasseled leggings and intricately embellished buckles, filigreed bows and studded leather; and that’s just the horses!

But the best part of the whole parade is when the last ballooned and crepe papered float rounds the final corner and the crowd turns to depart; the first of the crowd to arrive are, as always, the last to leave. As the front line of spectators lining the streets turn, almost in unison, it is both startling and hilarious. Perfectly normal from behind they instantly transform into a ghostly apparition of shock and awe. Caked with flour from head to toe so thick they are barely recognizable as people, this is a chorus line of walking ghosts, Pillsbury doughboys, and marshmallow men! It’s at once startling and hysterical!

Lent, which begins tomorrow on Ash Wednesday, must be a very difficult time for some here. The Christmas celebrations began sometime last October and finally came to an end on the Feast of the Three Kings in mid January. The Carnival season begins on that same day, also referred to as Twelfth Night or the Feast of the Epiphany, with the grand finale of Fat Tuesday celebrated today. So its been pretty much non-stop party time around here for the past five months or so. It will seem ghostly quiet here for the next 40 days, until the Easter festivities crank everything back up into high gear. I can’t wait!