Carnaval

In November I posted about the celebration of “All Saints’ Day” in Tiquipaya. That was a pretty absurd thing to translate into English. Todos Santos was special because the Catholic holiday got all wrapped up in the traditional Andean worldview and the Bolivian (and human) spirit. We didn’t really experience “All Saints’ Day,” but a special cultural event with no real equivalent in the United States.
So I won’t make that mistake again. This post is about the festivities surrounding Carnaval, which started the first weekend of February and is just wrapping up now. Carnaval has its Catholic roots in Ash Wednesday, but much more memorable and meaningful are the elements of human expression and playfulness that have become part of the tradition.

For the entire duration of Carnaval, it would be ill-advised to leave your house without a water balloon. You have to protect yourself, of course. Tiquipaya becomes one big, never-ending, hardcore water war on the streets. Water balloons, guns, buckets; melees between moving cars; ambushes of innocent pedestrians (white people make especially fun targets). All of this after weeks of news saying that water fights would be illegal and that the police were cracking down. Haha, not a chance. One time a man standing just feet away from two police officers hit me with a powerful jet from a massive, orange and green water gun. I looked over at the police officers, and they were laughing. So I reached into my pocket, pivoted, and quickly threw a balloon. No, I didn’t hit an officer. (But if I did, there’s no way I would have been arrested.) The whole experience was incredibly fun; I wish I could get it going back home. You’ll have to forgive the lack of pictures for good reason.

Apart from the water fights, Carnaval is defined by two main features: blowout parades and the ch’alla (Quechua for “offering”). The entrada (entrance parade) into Tiquipaya kicked off Carnaval on Sunday. Manny played some sort of woodwind instrument and Asia danced in one of the groups. Matt and I went to spectate and ended up getting roped into dancing too. We ended up on a microphone in front of a few hundred people (including my homestay family) being asked questions about where we were from and how we liked Cochabamba. My Spanish suddenly got pretty bad when I was put on the spot. Anyway, here’s a cute picture of Manny and Asia.

  
The next Sunday was the Corso de Corsos, the big parade in Cochabamba. Full of extravagant costumes, folklore dances and marching band music. Alcohol was prohibited there, but that got enforced about as well as the “no water fighting” rule. Speaking of the water fights, they were at their peak that day, and we got a lot of “¡dale al choco!” (throw it at the light-skin!) followed by a stream of water or a spray of white foam (espuma) to the face. Here’s a short clip of one of the performances followed by a classic picture of an espuma-ed Peter.

  
  
Now onto the ch’alla, the distinctly Andean feature of Carnaval. Much like the idea of “Fat Tuesday,” the tradition here is to appreciate the abundance of nutrients that Mother Earth grants us. The antiquity of the ritual (and the fact that it’s not called “Fat Tuesday”) makes it feel much more profound, and probably rightfully so. The ch’alla looks like this:

  
Composed of radiant flowers and aromatic herbs, the ch’alla is burned over hot coals as an offering to the Mother Earth. Then come the requisite ear-shattering fireworks that seem to make the ch’alla official. Every house, business, and school carries out the ritual. In the program house, we carried the burning ch’alla to all four corners of the house as a blessing, and in the homestay, Dennis sprayed the whole house with champagne- a much more fun and messy means to the same end. Afterwards we decorated the car (picture below) and drove around getting water thrown at us and spraying foam out the windows at our attackers. 

  
Carnaval was a wonderful experience of a Catholic holiday overlaid with ancient Andean tradition and a general jubilance of human spirit. Words can’t do it justice- or at least mine can’t.

The next post will come sooner, as there is a major election (actually a referendum) this Sunday. If you google “Bolivia referendum New York Times” you’ll get an article with a decent summary of the facts, but I don’t agree with the main premise, or even the article’s title.

Anyway, now I’m off to synagogue. I guess that’ll go in the next post, too.

Abrazos,

Jacob