Hispanic & Latinx Heritage

Carnaval, Fasnacht, Entroido, Carnival--the annual pre-Lenten festival most people in the United States know as Mardi Gras is celebrated in cities and rural villages throughout Europe and the Americas. With more than 300 dazzling photographs, this book offers an international look at Carnival in New Orleans and Basile, Louisiana; Laza, Spain; rural Bulgaria; Venice, Italy; Basel, Switzerland; Tlaxcala, Mexico; Oruro, Bolivia; Recife and Olinda, Brazil; Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Carnival takes similar shapes everywhere European Catholics carried their religion and its festivals. People disguise or adorn themselves in costumes and masks to parade through the streets, eating, drinking, and making music before the Lenten fast begins on Ash Wednesday. But as this book shows, indigenous customs with even deeper roots--and, in many places, customs that accompanied enslaved Africans in their diaspora--became integrated into the festival to give it distinctive local flavors. In the four rural sites (Laza, southeastern Bulgaria, Basile, and Tlaxcala) many festival rituals are meant to promote the fertility of crops, livestock, and people. In the urban Carnivals of Oruro, Recife and Olinda, Port of Spain, Port-au-Prince, and New Orleans, Carnival groups compete through ingenious masquerades and spectacular performances. Venice's Carnival--a late-twentieth-century revival--is modeled on elite urban celebrations of the Renaissance, and Basel's--one of very few Carnivals to survive among European Protestants after the Reformation--involves large, organized troupes who wear masquerades portraying themes of social and political satire. In Haiti, Mardi Gras celebrations are deeply politicized and have even played a role in overturning governments.The contributors to this book take readers on a colorful journey through Carnival in these eleven far-flung places, outlining the history of Carnival in each area and its present form. The major masquerades are introduced--from Venice's classic Harlequin and Pierrot to Bulgaria's "Kouker" and Port of Spain's "Midnight Robber"--along with the kinds of groups who participate, such as Recife and Olinda's African "nations" and Tlaxcala's charro dancers. The sequence of Carnival events in each location is described, from excited preparation to last-gasp revelry, with tastes of festival food and drink and the rhythm of music along the way. Whatever deeper religious or civic significance Carnival may hold for its participants, it is always a time of play, conviviality, and fantasy--a time when alternatives to the status quo can be imagined and people can feel unleashed from everyday restraints. This book is a joyous celebration of this many-faceted festival and a tribute to those who have kept their Carnival traditions alive.

Of all the holidays celebrated across the modern world, Carnival might be the most boisterous, and possibly the most fun. In the Christian religion, from Eastern Europe to the Americas, Carnival offers revelers an opportunity to celebrate the pleasures of life. Carnival is known for its exuberance, color, creativity, and culture. In many countries people celebrate the holiday with lavish parades, jubilant dancing, and nonstop music. Parade participants create elaborate floats and march through the streets in glittering, colorful costumes. Musical groups face off in marathon competitions, and young men and women dress their best in the hope of being named the Carnival king and queen. This book examines the history and pre-Christian roots of the holiday, and details different customs unique to particular areas, including Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America. Each title in this series contains color photos and illustrations throughout, and back matter including: an index and further resource lists for books and online resources. Key Icons appear throughout the books in this series in an effort to encourage library readers to build knowledge, gain awareness, explore possibilities and expand their viewpoints through our content rich non-fiction books. Key Icons in this series are as follows: Words to Understand are shown at the front of each chapter with definitions. These words are set in boldfaced type in that chapter, so that readers are able to reference back to the definitions-building their vocabulary and enhancing their reading comprehension. Sidebars are highlighted graphics with content rich material within that allows readers to build knowledge and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational Video features throughout have QR codes linked to online videos that provide supplemental interviews, documentaries, and historical clips. Text-Dependent Questions are placed at the end of each chapter. They challenge the reader's comprehension of the chapter they have just read, while sending the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there. Research Projects are provided at the end of each chapter as well and provide readers with suggestions for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. And a Series Glossary of Key Terms is included in the back matter containing terminology used throughout the series. Words found here broaden the reader's knowledge and understanding of terms used in this field.

With a riotous mix of saints and devils, street theater and dancing, and music and fireworks, Christian festivals are some of the most lively and colorful spectacles that occur in Spain and its former European and American possessions. That these folk celebrations, with roots reaching back to medieval times, remain vibrant in the high-tech culture of the twenty-first century strongly suggests that they also provide an indispensable vehicle for expressing hopes, fears, and desires that people can articulate in no other way. In this book, Max Harris explores and develops principles for understanding the folk theology underlying patronal saints' day festivals, feasts of Corpus Christi, and Carnivals through a series of vivid, first-hand accounts of these festivities throughout Spain and in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad, Bolivia, and Belgium. Paying close attention to the signs encoded in folk performances, he finds in these festivals a folk theology of social justice that--however obscured by official rhetoric, by distracting theories of archaic origin, or by the performers' own need to mask their resistance to authority--is often in articulate and complex dialogue with the power structures that surround it. This discovery sheds important new light on the meanings of religious festivals celebrated from Belgium to Peru and on the sophisticated theatrical performances they embody.