/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-COLOMBIA: Carnivals to Exorcise Tragedies

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

María Isabel García

BOGOTA, Jan 20 2003 (IPS) - Millions of Colombians this month are exorcising the often violent drama of their daily lives in more than a hundred local festivals, the most notable being the carnivals of the ‘Diablo’ (Devil) and of the ‘Blancos y Negros’ (Whites and Blacks).

Fairs, carnivals and other types of merrymaking are taking place throughout Colombia, complete with an abundance of music, theatrical productions, typical foods and copious consumption of liquor.

The ‘Carnaval del Diablo’ is headquartered in Riosucio, a town in the central department of Caldas, where various literary, dance and music events are performed by colourfully dressed troupes.

The festival involves all of the artisans and craftworkers from the town and from nearby villages, musician and composer Mauricio Lozano, a yearly participant in the event, told IPS.

The Carnaval del Diablo, celebrated since 1912, has only been cancelled twice in its long history, both times during the so-called Era of Violence, the civil war in the mid-20th century that pitted Liberals against Conservatives and claimed some 300,000 lives.

This festival in honour of Lucifer, Luzbel, Satan, Beelzebub or ‘Don Satán’ – or any other colloquial name for the devil – is so popular that there is a tacit truce for the duration of the event between the leftist guerrillas and the right-wing paramilitaries that are fighting for control of the area.

Tradition says that "guerrillos" and "paras" are found in these bands of singers, who draw together the people of Riosucio and visitors from across the country and abroad in one of the festivals that best reflects the opposing forces of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the indigenous and Afro-Colombian cultures.

The clowns, poets, actors, and announcers are the "priests" of the celebration, which has been planned since July, when invitations begin for the so-called Junta, with a ceremonious decree creating "the Republic of the Carnival", explains chronicler Julian Bueno.

As a preamble to the party itself, a call is issued in December convoking "the great clowns of the past", a title achieved only after many years of proving one’s artistic and mystic abilities in rhyming tales. The convocation urges that the event be a haven for peace and happiness.

One of the carnival’s rituals is to fill a gourd with ‘chica’, a traditional indigenous alcoholic beverage made from maize. At the end of the carnival, the gourd is buried, representing the town’s collective renouncement of liquor’s magic spell.

The bullfight, one of the most important parts of the celebration, harkens to the Spanish-Portuguese origins of the carnival.

But it is the arrival of the devil himself that marks the peak of the festival, with people filling the streets in a multitudinous parade.

The carnival’s devil is the spirit of tradition in which the people weigh their aspirations and dreams of a better future. He is not seen here as the Christian symbol of evil, "but rather as a popular expression of cleverness, art, happiness, laughter, and above all, peaceful coexistence," explained Bueno.

When the festival reaches its end, the revellers burn a small effigy of the Diablo filled with fireworks. However, a monumental-sized statue of the devil, which stands in the atrium of the church for the duration of the carnival, does not die, but rather is hidden, symbolising that he has ended his reign until the next carnival.

The Carnaval de Blancos y Negros, meanwhile, takes place in Pasto, capital of the southern department of Nariño, near the Ecuador border.

The carnival there serves to unite families, strengthen the social fabric, with social criticism being made through the costumes, according to cultural experts.

The parade led by the "Castañeda Family" is a retelling of the principal political events in Colombia. Charged with humour and satire, the parade floats recreate episodes that marked the country during the preceding year.

The rain of flour on the "day of the whites" and of bituminous powder on the "day of the blacks" evokes the abolition of slavery here in the mid-19th century and demonstrates with frankness the Colombian ‘mestizaje’ (mixing of races).

Although it is a source of cultural richness, many Colombians refuse to accept and value the country’s racial diversity.

Poet and essayist William Ospina claims, "The Colombian people are the most ‘mestizo’ of the continent."

Although no ethnic group is a majority, the dominance of the Europeans during the colonial era led all other groups to be socially excluded, he explained.

The project to involve all peoples in the mythology of the nation "was thwarted" a half-century ago by the beginning of the internal armed conflict, said Ospina.

"We are now paying the consequences of failing to integrate the diverse communities as a tale, a legend, as a culture," he said.

But Colombians are gradually recovering and discovering their roots, and the complexities of diversity are emerging in the traditional festivals like those of Riosucio and Pasto, says instructor and musician Teresa Santos.

"Merrymaking and violence are merged in the expressions of Colombian culture. Pain is expressed through happiness ‘in quotation marks’," she explained.

The parade floats in the Carnaval de Blancos y Negros often portray massacres. "The people are in costume, which is a way to avoid presenting the full face of pain," Santos told IPS.