Throwing out Carnavales

I came late to the party. I wasn’t sure what to expect but the hosts, Bartolome and Silvia, told me it would get going in the afternoon, so I spent the morning cleaning and paying other owed visits. The sun was hot and high when I finally arrived, and my belly was purposefully empty in anticipation of a possible meal invitation. I took a seat between Cecilio and an out of town guest from Tucuman, on a wooden plank held up by a few precariously placed bricks. Chimeno by birth, the fellow who lives in Tucuman was visibly uncomfortable; after twenty years in the city, he says, he finds country celebrations a hard adjustment. Cecilio, on the other hand, was in his element: draped in a red and white poncho, a goat hide drum in hand, an endless, and puro-induced smile illuminating his leathery face. In front of us I also notice a man, either dead or drunk, passed out at the base of the Guyava tree that gives us all shade. He is missing one shoe, his shirt is half-way up his belly, but thankfully his pants are belted tightly around his thin waist. The Tucuman focused his attention on me, as a white-skinned compatriot in what he sees as backwards country madness. He asks me how many days Ive been here. I tell him about three-hundred. As he begins a lecture on never forgetting the people of the countryside, a tiny, aged hand rescues me, drawing me into the dancing in the center of the party.

The dancing here in Chimeo is distinct from the elaborate costumes and steps I saw two weeks ago in Oruro. Here it is a species of glorified ring-around-the-rosie, as we shuffle together to the left, break, and to the right. Behind, or maybe in front of us, half a dozen men beat drums while Bartolome sounds out sweet, discordant notes on his wooden flute. Our steps mimic the music, step shuffle shuffle, step shuffle shuffle. After a while, the music falls apart and we, the dancers, take our seats. I move to the corner by Dona Juana, and some younger fellows begin to pass around a pitcher of cold red wine and cola. We go around, inviting each other to two ounce sips at a time, swallowing it down and then picking the next victim to be invited.

The sun is still high and I can feel the wine robbing my brain of oxygen, when from the corn stalks bursts the cuchi. Dripping in mud and leaves, this naked beast calls “cuchi cuchi!,” smearing the revelers with his filth. The look on his face falls somewhere between ecstasy and confusion as he makes his way around dance arena, giggling, smearing, tripping, drinking, and smearing. I am laughing wildly. One moment later, the cuchi disappears back into the corn, on his last step tripping and nearly losing his underwear. The party focus quickly turns back to the music and dancing; no one seems to be all that affected. I am still laughing wildly.

Through the rest of the afternoon we sit, some of us chatting and sharing chicha, some of us fighting off sleep in this last stretch of a fortnight-long party. As the heat wears off and the sun heads for the tree line, the cuchi returns. This time, however, he has multiplied, trailed by three meter-tall, mud sodden cuchicitos. Cuchi evading chaos erupts as the beast and its babes hunt down the last of the clean shirts and the newly bathed. Curtains are torn, windows are entered, and laughter abounds. The cuchis dissolve into the corn stalks as quickly as they came, but their place is taken by the bull, the tiger, and the devil. The tiger and bull have the faces of beasts but the bodies of men, leathern, lean and strong, the kind that is only earned by years in the fields. The beasts writhe on the floor, engaged in a battle of bellows, while the devil makes his way about the crowd, making dancers of the spectators with his spiky, cellulose-encrusted whip. The circle grows and grows, turning faster as the battle escalates at its center. The bull and the tiger each defeat and throw out a ghost of carnaval in his white cloth mask, slinging the slim bodies of the losers over their shoulders. The bodies are left among the corn, their pale faces with long slender noses and horns protruding from the russet leaves. Finally the beasts engage in their final fray, writhing and bellowing until the bull emerges the victor of their slow-motion battle.

The tiger is left beside the ghosts as the dancing shifts to a procession. The devil takes up the cross of yellow carnaval flowers and beams from the center of the dancing, and two older women hoist the man asleep at its base. The party joins hands and heads into the street, lead by this devil and the body of the drunk. Fingers grab for a piece of the yellow flowers adorning the cross and we weave and twirl our way down the road. Heads peak out of doorways, and anyone who wasn’t earlier part of the party joins in. Over the rise, down again, and around the corner, a kilometer later we arrive at our destination. The body of carnaval is thrown into the bushes, followed by the flowers, followed by hugs for some, kisses for those who are now a few more sheets to the wind. I am one of the last to go, and I can see that beneath the flowers the drunk retains his toothless, cloth smile.

We make our way in silence, back to town, to the house, to the bed. Carnaval, the time of plenty and rain and drink, is over. Soon winter will work its brutal way up from Argentina. The trees will once again go brown, the bees will huddle in a thousand-buzz mass inside their hives, and the tap will run dry. For today though, we are drunk, we are merry, and life is good.