International Carnaval

History of Carnaval

There are local stories and documents describing masquerades and feasts from the time of the earliest settlers in the first third of the 19th century.

Some historians suggest that these tumultuous affairs, originally of indigenous extraction with hints of Spanish influence, took place upon the arrival of the first seagoing vessel to anchor in Mazatlan -- in the year 1823 -- after the Spanish parliament authorized the opening of its port to international commerce.

>From that time, each year the Carnaval hymn known as “The Papaquis” (some historians say this is ferived from the Aztec word Papaqui: to feel happy at somebody else’s misfortune, or Papaquiliztli: jubilation or joy caused by somebody else’s misfortune).

Origins
   
  With some variations and few facts about its prehispanic origins, Carnaval’s existence was first noted in the 19th century. An invaluable testimonial was printed in the local newspaper La Lechuza, the first account of a carnaval in the city.

On the eve of the French invasion in 1864, Ignacio Ramirez, a local seer, made reference to carnaval in a letter he wrote to Guillermo Prieto: “. . . and famous is the lavishness with which the fiestas of carnaval are celebrated, even more brilliant than those of Merida, and which only Guaymas can occasionally match . . . “

In the last decades of the 19th century, Carnaval had become a fiesta more grotesque than gracious; the women hurled perfumed flour and cascarones (hollow eggshells) filled with glitter; the men threw flour, ashes and dyes. At the same time the dockworkers and the market workers formed sides and engaged in rowdy, rock-throwing street battles.

In the last decade of that century, the major civic festivity was the Fiestas of May, organized by the troops to celebrate the triumph of General Ignacio Zaragoza over the French at Puebla. That celebration was a true carnaval born as an expression of joy over the triumph of the national army.

But it was in 1898 when a committee of civic leaders headed by Dr. Martiniano Carvajal organized a procession of carriages and bicycles “to eradicate the immoral flour and replace it with the pure and more restrained confetti.”

Legitimized and institutionalized by the powers-that-be, carnaval entered a modernized and milder state. The town accepted the change from flour to confetti and a more refined form of official carnaval disorder.
   
  It is curious but not strange to note the international makeup of Mazatlan society at that time. The first committees of citizens to organize carnaval, working alongside the locals, were an Irishman, a German, a Spaniard and an Italian.

And from those beginnings the carnavals came to pass, the Plazuela Machado was its beating heart, and the pulse of Mazatlan’s people can be taken with a stethoscope of carnavals to this day.

Progress

Between the years 1887 and 1889, public works were undertaken to provide sufficient water for the population. In 1890, don Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico, was informed of the culmination of these works, and the event was celebrated with drum rolls during the May Fiestas commemorating not only Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza’s victory at Puebla over the most powerful army in the world, but also the victorious defense of the Port of Mazatlan against the same French invaders. This was the most remote antecedent of Carnaval Mazatlan as it has come to be celebrated.

Carnaval and progress have moved on hand in hand. In1864 Ignacio Ramirez, the seer, predicted: “Mazatlan will be magnificent when it is able to provide its citizens with water, when it constructs (an infrastructure) to counteract the movements of the oceanic currents, and when it builds dikes and bridges, when its military installations are completed, when the five or six colonias (neighborhoods) stop competing and unify into a city . . . when smuggling gives way to commerce . . . “

In fact, by the end of the 19th century, Mazatlan was a city with all the legal attributes and also a port. Unlike many other cities in Mexico, it had electric power, piped water and urban public transportation. A few years later, in 1908, it had the Sudpacific railroad.

In its more than 100 years of history, little has changed in the spontaneous celebrations of Carnaval Mazatlan except its themes. It has seen its Romans and its Turks, its vampires of the silent screen and its blissful butterflies -- all lending to carnaval the pagan touches of an authentic festival of the carnal senses.

Now the revelry also has a cultural face, celebrating the joy of life and at the same time the love and passion for the arts: music, dance, literature, poetry and painting.