Festival and Massacre
Festivals are privileged spaces to help us understand the meaning of community. They are a special way of presenting historical narratives, bringing…
Category: Resistance, Community and Politics
The Fiestas de San Pacho
The Fiestas de San Pacho (St. Francis of Assisi) in Quibdó, El Chocó, Colombia, are sixteen days of barrio-based parades and religious observations (and, in fact, less well-known activities…
Colombian Devils
The devils from Europe and Africa arrived in Colombia and as soon as they encountered the indigenous devils, they happily got together to amuse themselves. They take advantage of any…
Pleasure is Power
I was a little late to the parade called La Invasión (the invasion)—the largest street parade in the conga tradition of Santiago, Cuba. Then I heard this simple…
The Fiesta Must Go On
For more than 150 years, gold mining has been the life-blood of Segovia, a town in central Colombia that sits atop a labyrinth of underground tunnels where…
