Carnavale y Corso de Corsos

Me and my friend Lebo getting totally soaked. That´s my brother in the back, him wetting us was unplanned (by me anyways):

How to begin to explain Carnaval: it’s supposed to be like Mardi Gras, except here they throw globos (water balloons). And they throw buckets of water, use supersoakers, and the water isn’t too clean. Sometimes the balloons are frozen, filled with ink (con tinta), or mud. Sometimes there’s shaving cream or soap, so much so that there is now a type of spray foam marketed specifically for Carnaval (comes in a can like silly string). And it lasts from a few weeks before Ash Wednesday, escalates the week of, and still goes on until the weekend after (update: I hear there’s actually going to be some water all month). Thus, even though I’m writing this on the second day of Lent and all the mischief should be gone, I still have to worry about getting soaked (mojado…a word I’ll never forget) when I go outside. Of course the gringos, especially the gringitas (white girls) are a huge target. There will sometimes be huge trucks full of people with buckets, guns and globos, and we can hear them from afar shouting “gringos! Gringos!” It’s ok when you’re in the mood for it and you’re playing with little kids or people you know, but it gets really annoying when the offending party is above the age of 16 and you don’t know them. That feels more mean-spirited. You have to watch out constantly, someone could be hiding behind a wall or gate, or you could get a bucket from a balcony above. Like guerilla warfare, but with water (usually). If only real war were with water and not bullets, and whoever got more wet would lose. I’ve gotten used to the occasional splashes and small water fights in the villages…but I was not ready for Corso de Corsos (read below).

There’s a lot of ancient Quechua tradition mixed into this, like what we eat on the actual Martes (Tuesday) de Carnaval. We had chuño, which is freeze-dried potatoes, recooked (did not like very much), regular potatoes, rice, and a spicy chickpea sauce on top. We put some of that in a pot and buried it for pachamama (mother earth from the Quechua tradition) with some alcohol sprinkled on top. And in the evening we ate corn on the cob (HUGE kernels, it’s called choclo in the cob form, maiz if it’s the ground up flour form), sweet plantains, a bbq-ed squash (not sure if that was traditional or because my family likes vegetables) and bbq chicken (actually pretty big all the time here). I tried to explain about pancake suppers and eating doughnuts. I said it was a holiday about fatty foods (since you can’t eat them during Lent), my host mom thought that was hilarious. You’re supposed to Ch’allar (offer to pachamama) by pouring out your drink to the ground a little bit, and also burn something called a K’oa which I didn’t get to see first hand. I have two more Carnavales to get through, maybe next year I’ll see the K’oa. There are also cohettillos (firecrackers), music, lots of drinking (my family didn’t though, but in general the parties are wild…lots of Ch’alla followed by lots of drinking), and traditional dances as in the corso de corsos. The department of Oruro has the most famous Carnaval, that’s where the huge parade with dancers from all over occurs, but the Corso de Corsos (a similar parade) is a big deal here in Cochabamba.

Unfortunately, the water at Corso de corsos is a lot worse than the water wars in the smaller areas. We tried to get close to the parade yesterday and it was a disaster! Imagine a park full of vendors (mainly of globos and plastic ponchos), and people armed with water balloons, water guns and that shaving cream/foam stuff (espuma). Everyone is just constantly throwing water balloons randomly, so nobody is really dry. However, when a group of us walked in the park, everyone immediately started soaking us, coming up to us with the foam and spraying us in the ears, hair, face. We literally had groups of people following us launching balloons at close distance—it really hurts! I guess it’s “in good fun” but it doesn’t feel that way on the receiving end, when you KNOW you’re being especially targeted for a very specific reason. I felt embarrassed and humiliated! If the situation were reversed, I’d like to think that my friends and I wouldn’t sit in Central Park humiliating people who weren’t from the U.S. We didn’t get to see the parade on the first two tries, so we went walking and to a restaurant for a lot of the afternoon. We found other groups of trainees, everyone had had the same experience!

Then we decided to try again once more far away from that park, and still got balloons (close range, very painful), but it was less constant and we were able to see some of the dances. It was really fun, sad that we only got to see them for a little while before we had to get the bus back to our communities. Some of the dances are pretty simple, just look like (but are probably more complicated than) stepping to one side, and then another—there the costumes are more interesting. There’s one type that requires the girls to wear tiny little skirts, kind of like tutus, and mainly focus on swishing them side to side. They wear glittery headdresses and/or put glittery ribbons and giant pompoms in their braids (traditional women wear long braided hair with small decorations at the bottom, sometimes made from teasing and modifying their own hair I think…so this is an exaggeration of that). The guys are especially fun to watch because they have to wear really gaudy costumes. Sometimes they’re big structural costumes to represent animals, sometimes they look like really out of proportion mariachi/cowboy suits or something…always lots of sequins, and sparkly boots with bells. I loved that you’re really respected as a man if you can do these traditional dances with the intense costumes. They really get into it! The dances from the altiplano were totally different to the ones from the lower regions (like Cochabamba and Santa Cruz). The dress was much more conservative and the costumes weren’t all sequined and sparkling. One that I remember had hats with llamas embroidered on them, and of course there were lots of bowler hats. Sometimes the dancers had little props in their hands, noisemakers or something that was integrated into the dance. The bands were also great, playing songs corresponding to the dancers that were near them I think. The most different thing about this parade was that between groups of dancers or musicians, anyone could just hang out in the street and have water fights. There were also people always walking along the sides of the parade selling food. All in all, I’m glad I got to see the dancing in person for even a little while, but I don’t know if I’ll be going to any Carnaval celebrations in the cities next year…considering Cochabamba is apparently the most tame of all of them! Someone at the parade told us that in Santa Cruz all the water is con tinta, and I hear Oruro is just more wild than anything (plus it’s colder up there)! I’m sure I’ll look on this and laugh soon enough, but I’m glad that the worst (best?) of Carnaval is over for the year.

The next several weeks we are going to be super busy with the many different assignments we have to complete for Peace Corps, and I’m a bit worried about getting it all done, especially since a lot of it means talking to strangers to ask them about their lives in the community. However, I’m pretty happy to finally have a schedule and a purpose. I’ll keep you all updated.