Carnival will never die. The little girl walking down Serdán Avenue, adorned in shimmering clothes and colorful feathers, confirms this, proving that percussion marked her first steps, when she learned to walk and dance at the same time, letting the music move her as it moves thousands under the cool sunset breeze, guitars and accordions, bass and drums, lights, color, sounds, the vibrant sounds of a popular celebration in the port.
In Guaymas, the town is celebrating. Along the main avenue, they begin to gather early, arriving by the thousands, with their portable chairs, coolers, masks, and headdresses of feathers, plastic, and lights; with their desire to be a community and to build community.
Carnival is a testament to the joy of the people, who fill the sidewalks of the main avenue and rummage in their pockets for the coins or bills they’ll exchange for a beer, some pico de gallo, some prepared corn on the cob, a utilitarian souvenir that will grow old stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet. Or perhaps it’s the experience that money can’t buy: being there to participate in the ritual that, year after year, involves everyone.
Carnival shatters myths. Nobody wants to miss out, and everyone wants to be a part of it. The dance troupes began rehearsing last November. To take to the streets and break free from routine, they started organizing well in advance. Teachers, parents, instructors, designers, musicians, and singers. They are a community.
The smallest group, perhaps fifty children, required another sixty or more people who don’t appear in the parade, but who dedicated hours, days, weeks, months, preparing the group or the floats, pouring a little bit of their lives into every brushstroke, every design, for those two hours of giving their all on stage, which this time, as always, is the main avenue where the town is celebrating.
Beauty is rewarded with applause, but so is the effort to give one’s best. Carnival is a celebration of the flesh, but also of the soul. The myth crumbles because there are no age limits or perfect bodies; the kindergartener walks the streets, reaping applause and returning smiles, just as the elderly woman, without inhibition, slips into her skimpy clothing to mingle with the children who endlessly recreate the ritual of the festival.
I don’t have the exact number of dance troupes, floats, or musical groups that enlivened Saturday afternoon in Guaymas, but I’ll stick with what the organizer of one of the smaller troupes told me: “We’ve been working since November of last year, and for every participant in the parade, there are three or four more planning, rehearsing, instructing, and even scolding each other to get to that day when the party takes over the streets and plazas to experience Carnival, the sublime final act of an entire community being, precisely, a community.”
On the dais, of course, is the port’s top official, Dr. Karla Córdova González, who is in her fifth year in office and has relaunched Guaymas’s main cultural and entertainment event with completely free activities and top-tier artists who also receive their due.
Performing on the port’s Malecón Turístico, with the sea as a backdrop and the sunset transforming from orange and reddish hues to a star-studded black, is no small feat.
Everyone who was at the parade later went to the boardwalk. Banda Triguera performed on Thursday, Grupo Laberinto on Friday, and Tropicalísimo Apache on Saturday.
They also brought, from Chile, and despite his European tour schedule, the world’s most famous mime, Karcocha, who, in the deepest tradition of popular theater, was a huge hit in the streets and on the stages.
I won’t even mention the party with Laberinto because they drew thousands, but I will tell you about Tropicalísimo Apache because that was the ultimate experience, like a real party on a goat, like a chihuil/ay pero dale dale baila mi cumbia…
If you, dear reader, are bogged down in the daily grind of a life filled with bad news, manufactured polarization, and backstabbing political fights, you’d do well to plan a trip to Guaymas, because tomorrow, Tuesday, the carnival ends with Gloria Trevi’s spectacular finale, which will surely fill the boardwalk to capacity once again.
See you there.
Source: dossierpolitico
