Carnaval—Business and Pleasure

 Carnaval began in Tlaxcala on 02-21-09 with the formal coronation of royalty.  See the following video for Queen’s speech — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lZXdiEghz0    

Carnaval has continued for several weeks because of similar festivals in neighborhoods and outlying communities. Of course, such festivals are not all play.  Surely many local people rely upon such festivals for income as they turn even wheelbarrows into mobile stores. 

 

Get Your Candy Before Parade Begins

Such entrepreneurship is actually an everyday occurrence in Mexico.  Entire businesses are run out of five gallon plastic buckets, wheel barrows, three wheel bicycles, and mobile carts with propane cooking grills and propane lighting.   Every location is a possible business site, from unused doorways to almost any street corner. In addition, specific streets are regularly turned into one day markets for food, clothing, and/or supplies on specific days of every week, encouraged by the local city officials as evidenced by bathroom access, electrical supply, and re-routing of traffic.  The young man in the preceding photo had a wide variety of candy to sell to the crowd waiting for the parade to begin. See following photo. 

Candy or INDIVIDUAL Cigarettes Anyone

 


The parade itself lasted about two hours and consisted of a wide range of groups like traditional floats, marching bands, royalty from local and neighboring communities, dance groups, fancy cars, beauty queens, clowns, and groups of children representing schools. At times, one was reminded of “Mardi Gras” in New Orleans, USA. Sometimes themes from other countries seemed featured . . .  

Egypt

 

Seemingly Arabian

Gender boundaries often were “blurred” apparently largely for entertainment purposes only as seen by the “men” in the next photo – 

 

Colorful Men In Woman´s Form

 The above individuals formed special dance groups (all males performers in woman’s clothing) that performed in various community festivals in the following weeks, usually near the end of the evening.
Regardless of the content of the parade itself, one was impressed by the politeness of the crowds, the complexity and probable expense of the parade floats, and the family participation by parade participants and audience fans. Unlike some celebrations in USA, there was also a noticeable absence of drinking and the behavior associated with excess. We were also amazed at how quickly the parade route was cleaned up by city workers working on Saturday and Sunday.
For a brief glimpse of the parade, etc., please take a look at the following video posted on YouTube.