“Carnaval.” What does this mean to you? Probably depraved debauchery in Rio. I’ve heard stories. Craziness, purely. Supposedly, the other Carnaval that big this side of the Mississippi is right here in the DR. “Really?” You say. “Indeed,” I reply. In Spanish. So they say anyway. Sometimes Dominicans are taken with exaggeration, like when they told me the day I got here that the highway is physically impossible to walk to from my house. It is, in fact, a fifteen minute walk; difficult in the sun, but certainly not out of the realm of the possible.
Anyway, every city and town has its own little Carnaval here in this country. Usually it’s a tame little parade, kind of like Memorial Day back at home, but the marching bands have guiros instead of flutes (or any woodwinds, for that matter) and the costumes are made of paper mache and they have crazy masks instead of tall, geeky hats. Well, one city doesn’t do just a parade. This city is La Vega. Similar to Las Vegas, only in the singular. La Vega apparently means plain. Alluvial plain, even. If there are any alluvials in Las Vegas, let me know, because last time I was there I don’t remember much, but I don’t think I saw any of those, unless they were on that cool roller coaster on the fake Empire State Building. La Vega is a large-ish agricultural town, not far from where I live, actually, with a shockingly ugly church lording over a nondescript city center park. Since we are mandated to culturally enlighten ourselves, (one of Peace Corp’s three main goals) we went down to La Vega for Carnaval a few weeks ago. (This was during Lent. Isn’t it supposed to be before? See how much I know of pagan ritual.) We managed to get ourselves a few drinks before entering the Carnaval area, where a surprisingly sophisticated rule of No Glass Allowed was in place. Inside was a pretty nice party. In La Vega, too, is a sort of parade, but they do away with all the niceties and small children. Every few minutes a band of similarly dressed guys (I assume – hard to tell through costume) walk down the street, costumes ablaze in an array of color, with masks of horns, six-inch teeth and huge eyes. All the costumes were kind of the same, just differing in color scheme and theme. My favorite theme, obviously, was the pirates.
The best part of Carnaval was not the costumes, however, nor the terrified-looking and completely out of place evangelical Christian teenagers from Ohio, nor the roving bands of cross-dressers. The best part was that each guy in costume wielded a kind of whip device, a rope tied to a nylon football-shaped sac filled with air or sand. Apparently, there used to be pig bladders at the end. Welcome to 21st century Carnaval, however. When the costume guys hit you with these things, they hurt. You get within five feet of any of them, and they hit you on the ass. Hard. One would be hard-pressed to find a battered-women’s shelter with more bruises than found at this place. I guess Carnaval is a location for us to (relatively) safely get out our sadomasochist tendencies. My neighbors told me after I got back that people use the costume get-up to get back at enemies, and kill people while in costume (and mask) so they can do so unseen by their victim. A bit hyperbolic to be sure, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it has happened. So it came to be that Peace Corps Volunteers, innocently happening upon cultural activities, returned home unable to walk straight.
When I got back, my host family asked if it was worth it after I showed the bruises running across my butt and legs. I answered that I would most definitely be going back next year.
If I uploaded the picture right, it is me getting hit by one of those things at the time the picture is being taken.
