Buenos Aires: Carnaval Meets Chinese New Year's

New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro get all the press, but Argentina too enjoys Carnaval in the weeks before Lent. The biggest celebrations take place in the Mesopotamian cities of Gualeguaychú and Corrientes, but over the past decade or so it’s taken off in Buenos Aires. In fact, as I walked downtown on Monday, the pounding drums that I originally assumed to be part of a political demonstration - I was only a few blocks from the Congreso Nacional and the booming “bombos” are part of every protest - turned out to be murgas (community dance troupes) from the city’s southern and western barrios.

Unlike the spectacle of Rio or the chaos of New Orleans, Carnaval celebrations in Buenos Aires tend to be relatively small, neighborhood-oriented events, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t lively. With leaping dancers directed by whistle-blowing leaders, the advancing parades resemble African-American “stepping” in some ways. In fact, some of the participants are clearly Afro-Argentine, even though that population is less conspicuous than it was in the 19th century - “forgotten, but not gone” in the words of historian George Reid Andrews.

The murgas often bear colorful names - my favorite is Los Mocosos de Liniers (“The Snots of Liniers”) and their costumes are equally colorful even if Carnaval is not so flamboyant as in Brazil, Argentina’s Mesopotamian provinces, or Uruguay for that matter. Uruguay still maintains a fairly large Afro-Uruguayan population, generally estimated at about five percent, and their influence is far more conspicuous in Montevideo and other coastal cities and towns.

Carnaval is not the only celebration in Buenos Aires at this season. Last weekend, tens of thousands of Porteños crowded the barrio of Belgrano, where Chinese New Year’s parades now take place. Last year, in fact, the ambassador of the People’s Republic sponsored construction of a portal to the barrio’s Chinatown, which is most obvious on both sides of Arribeños street.

Buenos Aires Explodes

Many years ago, as I was growing up in Tacoma, Washington, I lived barely a block from the Fort Lewis army base. In fact, I lived near the little used portion known as North Fort Lewis where, on occasion, GIs went on training exercises. As kids, my friends and I used to explore the woods there and, often finding foxholes, we would pretend we were soldiers. Often we would find items, such as ammunition boxes, that we would take home as souvenirs. Once I found an M-80 firecracker, used by the U.S. Army to simulate battlefield explosions, but illegal for civilians since 1966.

The M-80 is a cylindrical firecracker about 1.5 inches long and just over half an inch wide, with its fuse coming out the side rather than the end. Most of the fuse on mine had already burned but, when I brought it home, I decided to set it off in the back yard (my parents were not home). At least I was not so foolish as to light it while it was in my hand--even more clueless adolescents have lost fingers or hands from M-80s--but when it went off I was barely a few feet away; the explosion was powerful and the noise was deafening. In was so loud, in fact, I was surprised the police or fire department didn't come; since then, I've been very wary of fireworks.

In Buenos Aires, my wife and I own an apartment in a sedate middle class neighborhood near the botanical gardens and the zoo. Last night, though, was New Year's Eve and, at midnight, explosions far stronger than anything I recall from my own M-80 went on for at least an hour; in corridors between tall apartment buildings, the effect mimics a war zone. In reality, Argentina's unregulated fireworks market probably brings explosives far more powerful than the M-80 into the hands of adolescents (and others) with impaired judgment (not necessarily caused by consumption of alcohol or other mind-altering substances).

Having seen firecrackers tossed from ninth-floor apartment balconies into the street, I no longer leave home on New Year's Eve when I am in BA--it's just not safe, in my opinion. On Christmas, some 75 people, most of them under age 15, were admitted to Greater Buenos Aires hospitals with fireworks injuries. The photograph that accompanies this blog entry, of a poster that appeared on city streets at year's end, at least shows that the Justice, Security and Human Rights Ministry recognizes the problem--it implores people not to purchase fireworks, and to report illegal fireworks, even if no one appears interested in impeding their manufacture and sale.

An update as of early afternoon: according to the daily newspaper La Nación, 82 persons have sought treatment in city hospitals today for injuries relating to fireworks--and uncorking champagne bottles. More than half sought burn treatments, while others had bruises and eye injuries, but none of either was apparently considered serious. Thus the city proper seems to have gotten off lightly, though there's no word from Greater Buenos Aires, the provincial suburbs beyond the capital's boundary.