Dionysus Meets Calypso

The calypso-throbbing car ride was a prelude to the imminent madness as I traveled from Cumaná to Güiria – the hometown of my friend Chichi. In this large town, I planned to celebrate my first Carnaval. Not far from the island of Trinidad, Güiria lies to the east of Cumaná and boasts a prominent Afro-Caribbean culture. Every year, Güiria’s celebration includes three days of parades through its streets, and groups compete with themed floats and costumes to win cash prizes. This year, Chichi’s family chose the theme Reino Maya (“Mayan Kingdom”). Upon their invitation, I decided to partake in the family’s efforts and merrymaking and was ready to help with the preparations upon arrival in Güiria. I was in the car with Chichi’s cousin, Kathi, for Chichi had gone to his town a few days earlier to prepare for the festivities. As the music thumped from the car’s oversized speakers, Kathi warned me: “Carnaval will be pure calypso.”

I arrived at Chichi’s house to witness a mess of cardboard, foam, glue, colored paper, sequins, and glitter, representing the whole gamut of arts and crafts supplies. It was Friday evening, and precious little time remained. We had less than forty-eight hours to re-construct the Mayan kingdom. Sunday was to mark the beginning of the parades, serving as a short, introductory stroll around the town. The parades were to become progressively longer and more elaborate on Monday and Tuesday. As I arrived, most of the people at Chichi’s house had finished their costume making for the day, so the evening strictly involved introductions as I met family members and friends.

The next day’s work party was light-hearted yet focused. After early morning coffee, Saturday went by as a frenzy of supply shopping and costume making. We took unusually short breaks to eat between long intervals of work. Surprisingly, this operation was well managed and determined in order to maximize productivity; Venezuelans do not mess around when it comes to their celebrations. After calling it quits for the day, we had a quick dinner and then went to the central plaza to dance to Trinidadian calypso bands until 3:30 in the morning. Everyone considered this a well rounded day for the Carnaval season.

On Sunday morning, we continued to prepare for the first parade.

The majority of the twenty-five young women in our group had their costumes ready and began dusting their bodies with glitter by 3:00, yet most of the men had not finished their costumes. Those who were ready joined the parade as part of the gradual warm-up to welcome Carnaval. In this spirit, I attempted to get some pointers on calypso from the dancers in the group, braving many chuckles and befuddled stares. Nonetheless, the tutorial felt beneficial; I slowly felt more comfortable gyrating to the music.

After the introductory procession finished, late night dancing in the plaza followed again until 2:30 am.

The dozen or so men finished their costumes by the Monday afternoon, ready to complement the female dancers. We arrived at the starting-point of the parade on time around 4:00, and the parade began a short while after Chichi and his parents directed us into our formation. Lubricated with Venezuelan-made Cacique rum, our mini-Mayan kingdom shimmied, trotted, gyrated and boogied through the whole town, following a truck decked out with six large speakers that blasted the same three Calypso songs over and over again. Despite the constant dancing, the body pays no attention to fatigue under these conditions. The revelry ended five hours later, and my exhaustion hit me hard. We came home to change out of our costumes, and, though Chichi and his friends went back to the plaza to continue, I plopped my pseudo, Mayan-clad body onto my bed. I became a corpse that was not about to move anytime soon.

That evening’s solid nine hours of sleep helped me recover, and we all needed sufficient energy for the final parade. The festival’s judges were to evaluate the different groups, so this day counted the most as far as the competition was concerned. Yet so much work remained because we had not finished our group’s most elaborate costumes. Moreover, the glitter, sequins, and shiny paper had begun to fall off my costume’s cardboard skeleton, requiring ample treatment with the hot glue gun. The fervent day progressed from governable madness to frenetic insanity as dozens of people ran around the house shouting for help, fishing for stray supplies, and dousing costumes with the final reserves of glitter. Yet by mid-afternoon, the fiasco had barely begun.

The following is an abridged chronology of the final day’s nine-hour debacle:
3:00 – Parade groups must arrive at parade origin; Reino Mayan is still at its headquarters (a.k.a. Chichi’s house).
3:30 – Half of the Reino Maya is ready while the other half completes “finishing touches.”
4:30 – Individuals of the Reino Maya who are ready – approximately 70% of the group – depart and find a spot in the parade near the center of town.
4:45 – Chichi´s parents decide that we must wait for the rest of the group, so we leave the parade.
5:30 – The rest of the group arrives, including our group’s drag queen (see adjacent photograph), and we find a new spot in the parade.
6:30 – The Reino Maya passes by the judges, eking out smiles despite our collective exhaustion. Loop number one around the town is completed near the plaza.
7:30 – Our group gets mid-way through loop number two. Despite the continual calypso music, my hips cease to gyrate.
8:30 – Completing loop number two, we arrive at the plaza, and I am near the point of physical collapse.
8:45 – The judges announce the top five groups. The Reino Maya goes unmentioned.
9:15 – Defeated, we disrobe our regalia and kvetch. My feet are numb.
10:00 – Chichi and his friends decide that they want to continue the rumba (“party”), which brings us back to the hoards of calypso dancers in the plaza.
12:00 – Carnaval officially ends, prompting the calypso music to stop. Finally.



Having experienced four and a half days of preparation and celebration, and I can now comprehend a few of Carnival’s major attributes with greater clarity. Attribute number 1: the inescapability of glitter. We used glitter abundantly to decorate our costumes because dullness has no place in Carnaval. Yet the omnipresence of glitter was absurd. Despite bathing twice a day since arriving at Chichi’s house, glitter adhered to my hair and skin. I found it in my bed. I found it on the bathroom floor. All of my clothes were speckled with glitter. Attribute number 2: the mesmerizing and sensual singularity of calypso. Calypso music and the accompanying dance support the Venezuelan saying, “Carnaval is carnal.” See the video clip below to better understand this phenomenon (click here). Attribute number 3: progressive exhaustion. Besides a lack of sleep, my body experienced soreness from the pelvis down: hips, thighs, hamstring and feet. Upon moving my body in ways I had never attempted, I utilized new muscles that began to ache. Most of this fatigue undoubtedly resulted from the three, four or five hour periods of straight dancing during the afternoon parade and the nighttime concerts in the plaza. It appeared as though the town of Güiria tried to kill me with so much dancing, and I thought to myself by the end, “At least I’ll be lightly dusted in glitter if I die.” Yet out of all parties that I have ever attended, this was the most fun, absorbing, and Dionysian of them all. It would be a shame to never spend another Carnaval in Güiria ever again.