Trips to Colombia

TRIPS TO COLOMBIA: CARNIVAL DE BARRANQUILLA

In 2003, the Carnival of Barranquilla was declared Oral and Immaterial Patrimony of the Humanity.

The Carnival is the result of the confluence of the cultures Spanish, African and indigenous. To that the later migrations of cultures like the Arab are added to him (Syria and Lebanese), the Asian (Chinese), Hebrew and the European (Germans, French, English and Italian).

All came together in Barranquilla and was enriching the cultural expressions, the dance, music and the food, reunited in a Carnival that always, happens what happens, takes the city the first weeks of the year. They are four holidays, that finish with the burial of Joselito, previous Tuesday to Wednesday of Ash.

The Carnival, tradition of western origin that evokes old rites of atonement to Greek and Roman Gods previous to the Christianity, arrived at the new world with the European.

Their establishment, its social and symbolic meaning and the transformations that have experimented in the diverse rural and urban communities of Latin America have turned into subject of sociopolitical, anthropological and esthetic studies.

In Colombia, the urban Carnival of Barranquilla is the one that until the moment has provoked greater attention. However, historical documents indicate that in century XVIII already carnival and days of meat not only in the city of Cartagena and the town of Mompox existed called festivals, but in populations as Magangué and other places along the Magdalena river in the section of Caribbean plain.