Yesterday the kids and I were driving around with our friends, and we noticed people near a college throwing water balloons at each other. Then we saw that people were dropping water balloons from rooftops and balconies in the city centre, prompting us to roll our windows up. Much to our confusion, we then saw a group of boys walking down the street carrying buckets of water - but not in any particular hurry.
Today, we saw people throwing water balloons and buckets of water on each other all over the place - including out of moving vehicles at other motorists and cyclists - and people spraying each other with silly string or a shaving-foam-like "party snow".
As it turns out, this is all part of Carnival. All over Peru, and Bolivia, and possibly other places, it's traditional to throw stuff on other people during Carnival. It is ridiculously hot and dry and sunny during the days, and I think most people would be happy to get drenched with water, anyway. Apparently it's a holdover from a Galician (northern Spain, directly north of Portugal) tradition of ritualized aggression in which people throw ash, water, flour, dirt, and ants on each other during the beginning of Carnival, called the entroido, and Carnival "cops" run around in grimacing masks, whipping people as a reminder that it is time to cut loose and play. In Laza, Spain, some locals claim that this is a parody of evil tax collectors of bygone days who wore menacing masks to intimidate the locals. Because, you know, whipping them was insufficient.
Wikipedia has a different explanation for the throwing phenomenon. In the Galician region of Allariz, the legend goes that in the Middle Ages, local Jews tried to ruin the procession of the Corpus Christi when it crossed their street/neighbourhood, insulting people and "provoking" the clergy. Apparently, a particularly zealous local man appeared riding a bull and threw sacks of live ants and ashes on the offending Jews. In Laza, people also dress up as bulls and run around in the streets causing general mayhem. The interreligious skirmish has been largely forgotten, apparently, and only the light-hearted pelting people with dirt and live ants remains.
Apparently something similar happens in Portugal. The Portuguese call this the entrudo, and it was brought to Brazil but there it is mostly confined to the throwing of streamers and confetti during parades. I don't remember much being thrown during Carnival in Brazil, and I don't remember getting wet or covered in silly string, but a lot of it is pretty hazy in my memory . . .
Here it's only water and shaving foam, but apparently in some parts of Bolivia it has escalated to water pistols filled with ink and, in some areas where there is gang activity, real pistols filled with bullets. BOLIVIA, not here. Although, if we went to Ayacucho during Samana Santa (Holy Week, just before Easter), and caught the procession of Our Lady of Sorrows (Dolores, which can mean "pains" in addition to "sorrows"), we might encounter some locals intent on inflicting some dolores of their own with slingshots and pebbles.
Ah, hijinks.
Seriously, though, how did a phenomenon so apparently widespread and so (to my North American Protestant sensibilities) out-of-left-field catch us so completely by surprise? There is no mention of it in any guidebooks or tourist literature I've seen, and nobody who has lived here mentioned it to us. I had to ask the cabby about it and then Google such popular search terms as "Peru water balloon carnival".
Fang
Another Peruvian custom that I'm not surprised to have missed before having the cabby (hitherto referred to as The Source of All Popular Culture Knowledge) explain it to me is this: the first person to see a new tooth in a baby's mouth has to buy the baby a present. In Alec's case, he got a couple of sips of my Inca Kola, the better with which to rot that new tooth. In other news, Alec has a new tooth. This makes three. After sprouting the classic two middle bottom teeth first, he decided to buck convention and pop out an upper canine next. The upper left, to be precise.
It looks like a little vampire fang.
Or a puppy fang, since he is decidedly puppyish in behaviour these days, especially since he's crawling expertly now. His favorite destinations are the toilet, the garbage can, any visible wires or cords, and the electrical outlets. Oh, and the stairs. They are building baby gates for us at our new house, and we will have a baby Safe Room (read: Jail), where there will be toys and nothing dangerous.
He will loathe it.
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2 comments:
Oh! They have that in the south of France too - Carnaval, I mean...in the village where we lived there was a parade, for which kids (and maybe adults too? I can't remember) got dressed up. Having missed out on Hallowe'en since the French don't celebrate it, my sister and I were pretty pleased to find out about that part of the tradition. We weren't so pleased about all the local boys running around blowing noisemakers and throwing things....mostly raw eggs and flour - in that order, the better for the flour to stick to the target, don't you know.
Funny, I had forgotten all about that little tidbit of my year in France until just now.
Wow, I have no idea how I could have had no idea about this aspect of Carnival.
It does explain something that I was going to blog about. Every now and again, I see a sign in Spanish where I understand every single word but not the overall meaning. One such case is the signs around the international club that say, "it is forbidden to throw carnivals in the club buildings or grounds; anyone caught throwing carnivals will be made to leave."
I guess they mean carnival-related projectiles. It makes a lot more sense now.
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