Carnival And Contradictions

By Adriaan van Ginkel

Many people abroad have asked me about carnival in Venezuela. Is it like Rio? Simple answer: NO. Carnival in Venezuela is essentially a children’s celebration. Starting Thursday, you see tiny little princesses and superheroes walking about, clutching their mothers’ hands on their way to dress-up parties where they can join other princesses, fairies with magic wands and even more superheroes for some great fun. 

True, there are grown-ups who put on crazy wigs and dive into the carnival craze, with or without the trademark beer bottle in their hands. But most adults see the big weekend (Saturday all through the following Tuesday) as a perfect chance to relax with the family and in-laws, go to the beaches with tens of thousands also seeking peace and quiet, clutter the roads, clubs and BBQ places and in most cases indulge in birra and parrilla, or barbequed meat (I would name it road kill nowadays) washed away with as much ice cold beer as possible. Together with boom boxes mounted on the back of cars stamping out ear-shattering reggeaton, salsa, bachata or that lovely (?) vallenato music from the beloved sister republic of Colombia, plus the screaming of drunken housewives and male pencil pushers from dusk till dawn, the above might give you a general idea of how Venezuelans celebrate their carnival. 

Now, isn’t that unfair of me! Of course, Venezuela does have true carnival

sanctuaries. The most famous one takes place in El Callao in the east of the country (right), where the carnival is celebrated very much like on Trinidad. Hot calypso music, big parades where they shake’ em all, front and hind at the same time, all dressed up, merry and of course filled up with booze. Here and there, all through the rest of the country, you see and hear specks of carnavalesque merry-making with music, drums and cheering on the main squares – and what would that scene mean without the hordes of passed-out drunks on the streets? If anything, fiesta among Venezuelans nowadays equals an ode to the beer bottle (rum and whiskey are too expensive these days) and in some cases, a premature funeral to the much-plagued liver.

That is, if a bullet from some hoodlum doesn’t get you first. The final numbers haven’t yet been published, but I can tell you straight away that as in all previous years, this carnival season will bring a bumper harvest of corpses. Total frustration, beer in excessive quantities, moonshine liquor that in the best case would drive you blind, passions about that second cousin having cheated on you with money or supposedly touching your wife, not your mistress – throw all those ingredients into a pot and add to it some loaded guns and other weaponry plus bad aiming and Latino bravado, and you have the “perfect ending” to a carnival party in the barrio or slum. A weekly corpse average sums up between thirty and forty in the capital Caracas alone. Let’s see what the news will bring tomorrow. It will undoubtedly surpass that weekly average.

What gave me the giggles some days ago – and this might serve you as an indicator of how Venezuela is faring these dark days – is that right on the onset

of carnival, on Saturday, president Maduro interrupted all prime-time programs on TV and radio, soaps and movies to launch yet another one of his interminable broadcasts or cadenas. I saw some parts of it by chance, had really no idea what he was talking about, and switched back to the satellite TV channel I was watching. Now, what did give me the giggles? The day after, I decided to ask anyone I knew about that cadena. What did Maduro say? Invariably, nobody knew. I looked it up in Twitter, the chatterbox of Venezuela. No information! I started laughing, and told myself: undoubtedly, many Venezuelans will have seen that presidential moustache crawling up and down and sideways on their screens for those ninety minutes on prime time, on a Saturday for Pete’s sake! And nobody knows what the whole interruption was about?

Mind you, he was talking and talking about a failed coup staged against him, an assassination plot, and plans cooked up by president Obama himself to knock over his government. There was even talk about some planned invasion of the country from abroad… and nobody cared! Virtually no one in the country is really interested in Mr. Maduro’s stories. I’m not saying that he was making up the story, although it sounded all very carnavalesque to me when I read about it a day later. I am just stating that nobody cares anymore about this topic. And that is serious and disturbing, I really think so. If a nation thinks in such an indifferent way about its government, then what could come next? 

Last week I mentioned the “Marginal Currency System” or SIMADI. The government stated that this exchange system, in which you can freely exchange dollars and bolivars at the market’s rate, would become operative right after carnival. But as it goes every time, things in Venezuela go the other

way. SIMADI’s exchange rate was published by the government just before the carnival weekend, without warning. And suspiciously close to the black market dollar rate, which raised more than an eyebrow. And to make the surprise complete, it started crawling upwards a day later. Which indicates that before the official launching date, there was already trading in dollars with SIMADI. By whom? What is the rest of us mortals to expect after tomorrow? Through a friend of mine I learned that a foreigner, using his credit card, withdrew bolivars from an ATM in Caracas a couple of days ago, at the SIMADI’s exchange rate.

It all sounds like the cake is being eaten on the way from the kitchen to the dining room. And some economists even suspect that SIMADI is nothing more than the government’s branch of the black market currency trade. For now, I don’t hold any opinion about that, because it will become apparent only after tomorrow what SIMADI is really about. But let me tell you this: if there weren’t so many crude and deadly contradictions, Venezuela would be a year-round carnival full of beauty queens and less gorgeous fat-bellied drunks, framed by breathtaking tropical nature. 

But unfortunately, the cake on the table is the cake we are supposed to eat. Half-eaten, if there is no other option. Yummy. 

   

Have a great week and till next Wednesday!

© Adriaan van Ginkel 2015