The motto of Barranquilla’s Carnival, or Carnaval in Spanish, is ¡Quien lo vive, es quien lo goza! (literally, “Anyone who lives it, is who enjoys it”). Over the past month, life in Barranquilla has been turned upside down as people live and enjoy the start of the Carnival season. Since the Lectura del bando on 16th January, when an edict is read out to residents ordering them to have fun, there have been precarnavalero parades at least once a week culminating on Saturday with the start of four days of cumbia, vallenato and salsa with crowds soaking each other with water, dusting each other with maize flour and spraying each other with foam. Everything you’d expect from what is widely regarded as South America’s second largest carnival after Rio and Colombia’s largest festival—and in a country with a reputation for rumba (partying).
As Barranquilla’s most famous daughter, Shakira once said ¡Mira, que en Barranquilla se baila así!
An advantage of being a volunteer in a city with such an enormous and inclusive event is that you can really take part: through friends and the organization I’m working with here, I’ve been able to take part in a comparsa, a group that dances in a parade and have been given an insight into the storytelling traditions of Barranquilla’s Carnival and Colombia’s Caribbean coast. The folclor of Carnival has become one of the most fascinating and rewarding parts of carnival: the musical and story-telling traditions of the Caribbean coast permeate the festival and have their own cast of characters. Here are a couple of examples:
* In the comparsa I took part in, we were all dressed as monocuco, a masked, veiled and hooded character based on stories from colonial times of rich gentlemen disguising themselves so they could pursue women from lower classes.
* This year’s symbol of Carnival is the coyongo dance, where the participants wear enormous cones with bird’s beaks and their dance symbolizes birds being chased by a hunter: the people saw their own exploitation at the hands of the Spanish mirrored in the dance of the bird and hunter.
The part of Carnival that I’ve most enjoyed though is the letanías, groups of minstrels dressed as university professors with scripted or improvised rhymes that subvert and criticize everything in Barranquilla from political figures to individuals who just happen to be watching. The tradition began as a way for barranquilleros to let off steam. I love it for its inventiveness and because they speak a brutal and honest truth; barranquilleros regard the letanías as the true personification of the spirit of Carnival—four days when normal rules are turned on their head.
Rob Packer is currently working as a Kiva Fellow with the Fundación Mario Santo Domingo in Barranquilla, Colombia. For more on his experiences, check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.
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I had no problem with the water or the maize flour. What I really tried to avoid was the foam.
One thing I find weird is that Carnival is only celebrated in certain towns: Barranquilla and its department are the only places in Colombia with a pre-Lenten Carnival (Pasto has one in January).
Sounds awesome. I mostly live in fear of getting pegged by water balloons. I wouldn’t expect anything less from Colombia. I have to get up there one of these days.