Carnaval de Veracruz

The weekend of February 20 or so, I went with my new host family (which will be covered in due time in their own entry) to the Carnaval of Veracruz. Carnaval should be familiar to some of you as the famous event in Rio de Janeiro, or if not that, then realize that it is along the same lines as Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

This trip, I stayed with three sisters of my new host dad, one of whom is married with two little daughters. They are all extremely kind women, and all of them look like each other very much. They also cook well. I shared a bed here with Memo, my new host brother, and the bed was also very comfortable and cozy.

Carnaval itself is nearly a week long, and consists of a lot of drinking. There are concerts scheduled nearly every night, and a lot of cheap beer. The main event, however, and the only thing I actually saw, was the parade. I had actually expected something completely different, but it turns out the event has been rather corrupted over time, or perhaps I am simply an idealist. I had expected a giant street party, something like what a Reclaim The Streets event actually is. However, things are not so; the parade route, which is the main street that runs along the beach, is lined with bleachers. Coming at the head of the parade were a large group of riot police, who got in numerous fights with drunks as they cleared the street and moved everyone with tickets back into the bleachers. When the parade itself arrived, it was accompanied by Military Police (or perhaps they were just sailors? They were dressed like sailors) on both sides, armed with big plastic tubes.

The parade was not exactly what an American would imagine as a parade, but was not drastically different either. There were several types of entries, which repeated themselves over and over in random series for nearly 4 hours.

1. Official Government Floats - decorated with big constucted things and fog machines and people (typically children) dancing to salsa music.

2. Salsa schools - A minivan or truck carrying a sound system comes first, followed by a group of uniformed salsa dancers.

3. Batucada - What I gather is the traditional Brazilian Carnaval thing, a group of students (almost entirely boys) and some older men marching (in the loosest sense of the term) with different size drums. The rhythms are very fast and aggressive and loud. Imagine a normal marching band drumline, but the size of the entire band.

4. Normal Marching Bands - Mediocre for US standards, at best. They seemed to be making little effort to keep time or stay on the right foot. But I suppose that shouldn't really matter?

5. Sponsored Floats - There were only a few of these, and they came at the end. I am not sure what the relationship exactly is between Sol beer and Carnaval, but the general appearance is that Sol sets the theme and such for the event, and its float came last as a sort of crowning piece. The point of the float is to showcase women dancing in skimpy costumes (something fairly common throughout the whole event), and supposedly they are the most attractive of the event as well. The other sponsored floats are from Coca-Cola, with big soda bottles and figures and characters made of foam or something and covered in flashing lights.

After the event was over, things began to deteriorate; little parties sprang up along the length of the Malecon (the beach street) and everywhere stank of beer, which was flowing freely in the streets.