Blacks and Whites' Carnival (Spanish: Carnaval de Negros y Blancos) is a Carnival, including a parade, in southern Colombia established in 1546. Although originating in the city of Pasto, it has been adopted by other municipalities in Nariño and southwestern Colombia. It is celebrated every year from 2 to 7 January and attracts many Colombian and foreign tourists.
On 30 September 2009, UNESCO named this Carnival among the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
History
Origins
The Blacks and Whites Carnival originated from a fusion of multiple cultures and expressions: the Andes, the Amazon, and the Pacific culture. It was first celebrated in the 16th century, in 1546. The date of the carnival sets it apart from other similar festivals, as it has a distinctly indigenous origin. The Blacks and Whites Carnival coincides with the celebration of the Moon (Quilla), which is reminiscent of the rituals performed by the Pastos and the Quillacingas; agrarian cultures who honored the moon with dances as well as praying to the sun to protect their crops at harvest time.
These celebrations, with the fusion and influence from Spanish culture, gave rise to Hispanic religious syncretism, whose expressions eventually would become the Pasto carnival. In the 19th century, the authorities prohibited such festivities to avoid indigenous uprisings. However, the festivities reappeared in 1834; from indigenous people with their children, to mestizos with masquerades, and local people's celebrations. These were all duly framed in the religious calendar, particularly the festivities of the Virgen de las Mercedes, (Virgin of Mercy, 24 September) and the Immaculate Conception of Mary (8 December).
In those times, on the eve of Three Kings' Day, the game of negritos (little blacks) was also held festively and spontaneously, mainly between whites and mestizos, due to the low presence of the black population in Pasto. This festival contrasted by the extroversion of a community characterized by a peaceful and taciturn life, which found in those days an opportunity to break the established.
Its origin was a "holiday" for blacks, originating in Gran Cauca, the region to which Pasto belonged. In 1607 there was a slave rebellion in Remedios, Antioquia that caused panic among the colonial authorities. This event was remembered by the large black population of Popayán who demanded a day of rest in which they could be truly free. To preserve social peace, the Spanish Crown granted 5 January for this purpose.
This news was proclaimed in Popayán and thus 5 January was declared a day off for people of color.The black population of the capital of Cauca took to the streets to dance to the rhythm of African music and began to paint the famous white walls of that town black. Later this custom spread to the south, gaining an unusual strength in the cold city of Pasto, where the historian José María Cordobés Moure says, there are already vestiges that it was played around 1854. This is how the genesis of the game of Negros is configured. and Blancos de Pasto, and in this way his first decades would pass.
The Blancos game, an important part of the carnival, was born at the dawn of Three Kings' Day (6 January) in 1912, founded on the need to express imagination, play, friendship and share the joy that on those dates revives life. In a fine and exclusive brothel in the city, The House of the Robby Ladies, located on Calle Real (current Carrera 25), the daring of the group of tailors from the famous tailoring shop owned by Don Ángel Zarama, among whom Ángel María López and Máximo Erazo were there, he takes them to take the French compact of one of the most sought-after ladies and proceeds to spread the powder with women's perfume among all those present with the cry of ¡Vivan los Blanquitos!, as a response to the already traditional game of Negros. It didn't take long for the master cutter's companions to become victims first and then participants in the game. Then, everyone would have to go out into the street to repeat the joke with the unsuspecting parishioners who were leaving the Three Kings' Mass in the church of San Juan Bautista, repeating Long live the Blacks and long live the Whites! The custody of the Galeras will be inserted forever and vigorously into the essence of the Pastusos.
Establishment
It wasn't until the mid-1920s that the actual celebration acquired its corpus, which merge other instances, dates and places, giving it a more urban and inclusive style. On 6 January 1926, senior students from the high schools and the University of Nariño decided to participate actively in the party, choosing as his queen to Romelia Martinez, and go out through the streets dressed in carnival costumes and dancing to the regional music. That was the first real Parade, not for the traditional Epiphany,` but Whites' Day.
By 4 January 1929, a cavalcade of over a hundred riders preparing to cheer up the Blacks (5) and Whites' (6) game, for it had been concentrated near the Boyaca Battalion. At three p.m. when the riders were ready for the parade, a whole family arrived, there was the father, the mother, two girls, two boys, and three young men who rode tired nags and who were followed by laborers who herded the mules charged with trunks, and trying the pigs and sheep did not disband. That people were loaded with lugging cages with parrots and monkeys, not to mention the "mica"(pot). The father was an Antioqueño settler traveling with all his family, who after spending many years in the east (Putumayo Department), had decided to leave the jungle to return to "civilized" earth.
Alfredo Torres and Carlos Martínez Arellano Madroñero, parade organizers, ordered, two of the ride to open countryside and no shorts or lazy included the tired travelers among the cavalcade. Those who came from the east were joyful by this unexpected encounter and ignoring why so animated "bumper" were placed at the center of the parade, and surrounded by the riders in the process of promoting the carnival. The head of the family greeted the crowds who witnessed the passage of the ride.
Then, the historic shout echoed through the city: "Viva la Famila Castañeda" (Hurray to Castañeda Family) That was the invention of Torres Arellano, worthy of his talent, and passed into posterity as a new and original sign of joy. The settler and his people paraded happy and excited, through the streets of the city. The unexpected passengers received the cheers of thousands of Pastusos along roads, squares and avenues of the capital of Nariño.Benavides Rivera, Naphtali, "Kar A. Melo points (Old Pasto Stamps)" (in Spanish), Pasto, Tipografia Javier, 1983, p. 25. At the end of the parade, members of the Castañeda Family asked their new friends to accompany them to the Hotel Paris where they would stay. The hotel was located in the Calle Real (Royal Street), where now stands the "Zuchín" building at 25th Carrera between 17th and 18th Streets.
Other versions said the Castañeda family characterized in the comparsas on 4 January is also a cartoon of Bucheli Ayerbe family, one of whose members Don Julian Bucheli Ayerbe, became the first governor of Nariño, at the break of the 20th century.
Until the advent of Carnavalito (Children's Carnival), the parade of the Castañeda family would become the opening of the Carnival. The decades of the 1930s and 1940s watched a structured Carnival, and before the advent of the first heavy industries, acquired presence and prominence in folk art, particularly the creative expression of the artisans represented in monumental paper sculptures, just like mobile motorized scenarios built on trucks, the famous floats.
Maturity
In the 1950s, the figures of the main floats acquired movement, and thanks to the work of the master artisan Alfonso Zambrano began a new era of splendor. During this time, the Mayor of Pasto (sometimes with the participation of the Government of Nariño) began to take control of the organization of the festivities, especially the appropriation of resources to fund the awards for best floats, which were extended soon to the comparsas and murgas.
In the late 1960s, the search and recruitment of national and international commercial orchestras was started, the most famous were Venezuelan Los Melódicos, Billo's Caracas Boys and Ecuadorian Medardo and his Players. In those years, Luis Quenguan was the first cameraman, who made a record in film (black and white) of 8 mm, Super 8 and 16 mm of the Carnivals. In 1966, thanks to Don Mario Fernando Rodriguez, arises in the Bolivar neighborhood, the Carnavalito, or Children's Carnival, this autonomous party will take at least a decade in joining the official program.
Renovation
With the arrival of the Pan-American Highway in the 1970s and the greater inclusion of Pasto in the Colombian economy, the Carnival was renewed with the presence of new trends in materials handling, new rhythms and a growing stream cultural advocated by the rediscovery of the Quillacingas roots following with the activism in the Great Parade or Whites' Day. Was at that time that the floats were filled with figures and references to various social demands of the Pastusos. Anyway, in those years, the first color footage of the parade on 6 January was taken, again in charge of Master Luis Quenguan.
For the 1980s, the multiplicity of cultural trends around the Carnival and the yuppie style highlights the need for creating a strong Corporation to assume the planning, organizing and executing of this event. It was planned that the institution had involvement of both the City of Pasto, as industrial and commercial sector, artisans and of course, the academics from the region.
In this decade, the populations near Pasto began to assemble their own carnivals, some ephemeral as Greens' Carnival in the city of Ipiales (now Carnival of the Frontier) and other more durable as the Reds's Carnival in the city of Buesaco. The predominant note is that throughout the southwestern region of Colombia, became widespread festivities that coincided with the end-of-year celebrations that took borrowed elements of the now popular Blacks and Whites' Carnival.
This reality has two attempts to establish of an institution to ensure the preservation of the feasts of Pasto, but efforts of the mid-1980s, and the start of the 1990s, were not fruitful because the various sectors involved didn't agree, it will be the Mayor of Pasto, which still managed the festival through a special Undersecretary's Office called the Carnival Office, this office began to concern about the loss of identity of Blacks and Whites' Carnival, mainly with the massive introduction of the Ecuadorian canned foam. Was at this time of upheaval, which massifies the use of the now traditional expression: "¡Viva Pasto, Carajo!" (Hurray Pasto, Carajo!)
21st century
Finally, in November 2001, by Law No 706, the Blacks and Whites' Carnival was declared "Cultural Heritage of the Nation" by the Colombian Congress and with such declaration, took priority the construction of the Plaza of Carnival and Culture, signaling the Senda del Carnaval (Carnival Path) and the creation of the Corpocarnaval (Carnival Corporation) as an entity of private law, associative, with mixed participation, for non-profit and common good, providing adequate and proper conduct of Carnival, which rescues as: "a transverse cultural playful expression in the urban context". Therefore, one of its first tasks was the creation of the Museo del Carnaval (Carnival Museum).