Carnaval in Colombia

I spent Carnaval in Barranquilla this weekend, the second biggest such celebration among the hundreds of cities around the world that celebrate the Catholic tradition. What started as a mild return to normal life after 40 days of fasting has turned into a week (or longer) of wild debauchery full of dancing, drinking, and just having fun for its own sake.

Before this weekend I had intended to write a post describing coastal Colombians (costeños) as champion "sitters." At any time of day, throughout the city, people of all ages sit out in front of their houses, chatting and joking and just basically hanging out. This goes on for hours and hours at a time and largely defines daily life.

Now you may be wondering how someone can be a champion at something as easy as sitting. Trust me, it's not as easy as it seems. The first 15-30 minutes are doable, after an hour you start getting really antsy, and after about 90 minutes I guarantee most of you would be having a nervous breakdown and scratching your eyes out.

I said I was going to write about their sitting abilities until this weekend, when I realized that all this sitting around all year long is simply them resting for Carnaval, when they all go absolutely balls-to-the-walls insane and party for three days straight.

I arrived in Barranquilla on Saturday morning after a 2 hour bus ride from Cartagena, where I live. My roommate Carlos, who had taken a bus the night before, met me at the bus station, and we went straight to his house and then to the main event.

The first (and biggest) event of the weekend was a big parade called the Battle of the Flowers, which involved hundreds of masked Hispanic ninjas running around the streets throwing flower-shaped ninja-stars at each other. No just kidding. It was actually a series of floats, mostly covered in beautiful women who threw flowers at the crowd. There were also musicians playing their hits, actors waving, and reality-show stars winking mockingly at the spectators with a look that said "Ha! I got here using absolutely zero talent!"

We got there late so we didn't get a seat in the stands, but instead had to stand behind an ambulance, several first-aid tents, some motorcycles, and a bunch of people that disregarded all this and proceeded to jump the barricades keeping people back.

Actually, just being part of this crowd was quite an experience, (almost) interesting enough for me to forget the searing heat, people crammed up against me, and inability to see anything in the parade that passed near us.

During Carnaval and the few weeks before, there's a tradition of throwing corn flour and foam at people in a joyous celebration of the suspension of society's most basic rules of propriety. The flour is sold in little boxes by street vendors, and the foam is sold in silly string-like dispensers. Basically during Carnaval you are not allowed to get mad at people for throwing these things at you, regardless of the quantity, velocity, or point of impact of the projectile. If you do get mad you're basically a loser.

So I walk into this crowd, followed by the marching band playing the Gringo Song that typically follows me everywhere I go, and suddenly I realize that everyone is looking at me like a bunch of half-starved wolves checking out a fat little piggie that just strolled into their den. Needless to say, over the next few hours I was assaulted by corn flour down the shirt, in the face, in the eye thus destroying my contact lens and rendering me blind for half an hour, foam in the face and eye, foam in the hair, and probably a number of other substances I really don't want to know about. I took all this with a gracious smile and a laugh, only my fear of the Hispanic ninjas keeping me from tearing through the crowd Chuck Norris-style.

There were a number of other things I found quite endearing. First of all, everyone in the crowd acted like they were old friends; talking, laughing, taking pictures with each other, holding each other's babies, exchanging chewing gum, etc. They also acted with amazing cooperation when it came to confounding the authorities at every available opportunity.

I was actually amazed at how crafty the Barranquilleros were at getting around/subverting the orders of crowd control personnel. When we first got to the street where the parade was taking place, there was a big police barricade blocking the side street that we had used to get to it. There were a couple dozen soldiers and some important looking military officers barking orders into their walkie-talkies. In the U.S. this would be enough to control vast crowds of law-abiding citizens.

Not in Colombia.

First the crowd (with us at the front) simply tried to push their way through by force. When we realized that the barricades were like welded together or something, the real mischeviousness began. We managed to get Carlos's mom through since she's small and looks really nonthreatening in her visor and fannypack. Little did they know that it was basically over for them at that point.

She got past the soldiers and proceeded to harangue the coronel in charge so ferociously that he eventually gave in and let me and Carlos through. Looking back at the crowd as we walked away, we saw that the other members of the crowd were using our entrance as a pretext for calling bloody murder, accusing the soldiers of playing favorites and all but calling for a people's revolution right there on the spot. Mission complete.

A bit later we were crammed up against the barricade in front of an empty area they had cordoned off, but that wasn't being used for anything. Then they tried to move an ambulance in, that was going to completely block our view. People protested loudly and refused to move, telling the health workers to turn around and take it back. No one wanted to lose their place close to the barricade so they pushed to the sides, crushing people who then had to be taken away in the ambulance. Mission complete.

Once the parade started, it became clear that the crowd had been merely humoring those who were supposedly "keeping order." A barricade blocking a section of grass right alongside the parade route was infiltrated in about two seconds before the police or military could react. In the area in front of our group that had been cordoned off for medical personnel, there was a Lord of the Flies-style invasion as all the parents simultaneously sent their kids under the barricades, creating a confusion that allowed they themselves to go under and over, as crowd control officials went berserk yelling and trying to actually reason with people. It was quite funny.

That night we went to a concert of some of the biggest names in Colombian music. It took place on a soccer field converted into a concert venue, and held probably about 5,000 people. Essentially the entire concert, which took place from about 8pm until 8am, consisted entirely of the following steps repeated in continuous loops:

1. Several shots of rum
2. Dancing
3. Talking
4. Sleeping
5. Repeat

As a result my memory of the night is like a badly edited dream sequence from an old Mexican novela. Seemingly endless dancing to frantic accordian riffs, taking pictures with people I had never met, drifting in and out of sleep on my uncomfortable plastic chair, my trusty sombrero propped over my face, my only protection from the elements.

The last act of the night, as the sun rose over the horizon, was Silvestre Dangond, basically a living legend in Colombian music whose biggest hits include "I Like, I Like, I Like" and "Drinking Rum." He got up on the stage and suddenly it was as if everyone hadn't been up all night. He danced and jumped all over the stage, singing his greatest hits and more or less making everyone go crazy. At one point between songs he mentioned that George Bush with all his money could never buy what we were experiencing that night (and morning). Although I'm sure it's not only GW that can't buy it, I have to say that I understood exactly what he was talking about.

The next day we saw another parade called the Grand Parade of Tradition, followed by another the next day called the Grand Parade of Fantasies.

At the traditional parade we saw a seemingly endless procession of floats and dancing troupes representing the countless forms of music and dance native to Colombia. Cumbia, invented by the coastal slave communities who could only perform short steps because they were dancing in the sand at the beach, Bambuco, Vallenato, Porro, Pasillo, Salsa, Merengue, Reggaeton, and the list goes on....

The parade of fantasies was basically a linear Halloween party, with people dancing every style of dance from around the world, impersonating every politican, celebrity, and singer, and generally being total goofballs and loving it.

A few of them stuck out especially.

Mr. T was there, and of course Uncle Sam, Hugo Chavez, Castro, and Barack Obama. They actually had an entire float dedicated to Obama, a mobile presidential podium complete with a fake microphone, an arch in back announcing the new president, and of course a fake Michelle, Sasha and Malia waiving happily from beside their fake father.

And of course there were the obligatory flamboyant transvestites in enormous dresses and headresses, the U.S.-style jazz dancers in suspenders, and Brazilian-style samba dancers, a tribute to their equally raucous neighbors. The neat thing about Carnaval is that even though you know everything that's going to happen, it's still the absolutely funnest thing in the world. It's like your favorite movie: knowing the end doesn't ruin the interim.

The most fun I had during the weekend, however, was not anything directly Carnaval-related. It was Carlos' grandmother's birthday on Sunday night.

We got to the house about 7:30pm, and the party had already been going on for awhile. After the usual interrogation by members of the family as to where I came from, what I was doing here, and whether or not I had a girlfriend/would like to meet their niece who's really pretty and single, we proceeded to the dancing.

We danced cumbia, we danced samba, we danced merengue, we danced salsa (oh god did we dance salsa). My dance partners ranged in age from about 12 to 80, and everything in between. I was once again singled out by the flour and foam artillery, except this time they politely asked me to cover my eyes before lunging a handful of the stuff into my face, having been warned by Carlos that I wore contacts. Of course everything was lubricated (and dance moves enhanced) by the neverending stream of rum shots.

All in all the weekend was everything I had expected it to be and more. I had heard so much about Carnaval my whole life, but had never been able to experience its full glory. Family, friends, music, dancing, food and rum: the ingredients for a good Carnaval are, coincidentally, the same ingredients for a good life.