The Carnaval in Merida
No, none of these photos were taken or are from Merida's Carnaval... they are from Isla Madeiros...click on any one to visit their site....
Each year in February, Carnaval comes to town and while it's a lot more fun and heartfelt in say Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Tenerife in Spain or even Veracruz in Mexico itself, Merida has it's moments. I say that it's more heartfelt and fun in those other places because the people themselves, not only organizations, clubs and institutions, all get into the Carnaval spirit, dressing up and spending the entire 3 or 4 days in the streets partying and generally having a good time. Merida, on the other hand, makes a real effort to have a Carnaval atmosphere along the Paseo de Montejo and in the clubs throughout the city, but the general populace is simply too apathetic to get into the spirit. No-one dresses up if they're not in some parade or baile, and many don't even participate by going out to watch the parade. Generally the middle to lower socioeconomic classes attend the public functions and therefore the upper middle and upper classes frown upon participating, since the ambience is just a little too brown for them...Parade watching is just that - parade watching. People drinking beer and basically waiting for bottled water, candy and Boots cigarrettes to be thrown at them. There isn't much participation, except this year when the cans of spray foam were used by agressive and probably jobless teenagers who made it their duty to spray anyone nearby with colored foam. Obviously, this got a lot of people upset, especially those who had painstakingly made elaborate costumes for the parade and were promptly sprayed, thereby ruining their efforts. There was even the case of 2 tourists, driving along with their windows open near the Paseo, who were sprayed by the little hoodlums and got pretty upset about it, jumping out of their car to run after the kids and collar them, making the policeman who had arrived on the scene confiscate their bottles of spray foam. That's about as 'wild' as it gets during the Merida Carnaval, with the exception of the absolutely 'wild' piles of garbage strewn along the Paseo and the year the upper class finally got involved and yuppy kids from the fashionable Colonia Campestre got into a rotten egg and rock fight and pelted all kinds of cars and eventually the police. That was quickly quashed however and now each year a show of police force is dispatched to the area to prevent such an embarassing event from recurring. After all, these were rich kids, you can't just belt them over the head with your baston and cart them away to the tanque like you normally would under such circumstances.
The most fun to be had during Carnaval in Merida can be enjoyed right in your home, however. Opening the local paper each day, color photographs of large women in tights and costumes can be viewed at your leisure as they pose for the Sociales camera. A note on newspapers: it is very important to pick the right paper, since one publishes these local events in splashy color, while the other, less conservative to say the least and somewhat more Inquirer-ish, publishes topless photos of gorgeous tanga-clad mulattas, also in splashy color, of the revelry in the streets of Rio in order to boost their sales.
This could have been a photo from the local paper, except for the chest hair of course...
Back to Merida... These ladies participate each year in the various dances and coronations of Carnaval queens and kings in the different social and private clubs, schools and other institutions around the city. There is one baile or dance, that is the mother of all bailes and is held in the hallowed halls of Meridas' Club Campestre, and it's purpose it reportedly to raise funds for charity and is attended by anyone who is anyone and then only if they are female. Stray men (as opposed to musicians, cleanup crew etc.) are not allowed on the premises since it would be embarassing for some of the ladies to be seen in their miniscule outfits and they would be somewhat inhibited about flouncing around on a stage in such outfits in front of men! The fact that the newspaper publishes flesh-revealing photographs for the entire world to see a few days later has nothing to do with anything, apparently.Imagine the scene as a kind of let-your-hair-down day-long ladies night without the male strippers. The elaborate costumes (and there are several costume changes per 'show' for the principals) each cost a small fortune to make - the equivalent of maintaining a family of 8 in rural Yucatan for a month or three - but they do provide some much-needed work for local seamstresses and sequin and button vendors throughout Merida. The funds raised from entry fees and sale of refrescos are donated to charity, an amount that is probably vastly inferior to that spent on the costumes alone, which makes one wonder about the sincerity of the charitable ladies participating. Getting back to the newspaper, each day you can gain new insight into the concept of pena ajena while admiring wildly fantastic costumes and over-the-top makeup stretched over real-woman bodies (none of those wimpy Kate Moss stick girls here, that's for sure). It's pure entertainment at it's finest, and the newspapers always sell out during this time.
All in all, and in spite of the newspaper entertainment and the best efforts of a few people and the municipality, which has decreed that the sale of spray foam be prohibited from now on during Carnaval, Merida's Carnaval is pretty lame. Which rhymes with tame, which is also a pretty good description of the event.
If you would like to read more about the ladies, and other social commentary, and perhaps enjoy a photo or two casually thrown in, and you can read Sarcastic Spanish, you really must visit the discreet but venomously humourous page written
by a good friend of mine who is a real live Merida resident and actual
reader of NotTheNews from time to time:
