Carnival in Quito: Foam, Brass Bands, and the Continent-Wide Party

Carnival in South America is not a Brazilian invention. It is a continent-wide Catholic tradition, the final celebration before Lent, adapted and inflected differently in every country and city through which the tradition runs, but sharing the underlying logic of the European pre-Lenten festival that arrived with the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and mixed with indigenous and African traditions to produce something that is now simultaneously very local and very widespread. Brazil’s version, with its sambódromo and its scale and its global media coverage, has become the default image, but the carnivals of Bolivia, Colombia, Uruguay, and Ecuador are older than the Brazilian version in some respects and as distinctive in character.

Quito’s carnival involves foam. Aerosol cans of white foam, sold from street carts and improvised stalls throughout the old city centre, are deployed against anyone moving through public space, regardless of age, relationship, or stated preference. Cars slow at intersections and their occupants foam pedestrians. Pedestrians foam each other, foam the cars, foam people emerging from doorways. The police, present in the plaza mayor in considerable numbers to monitor the crowd, are not foamed. This boundary is universally observed and appears to require no enforcement, which is either a reflection of good social instinct or the fact that the police are carrying weapons and the aerosol cans are not.

The Plaza Grande at the heart of Quito’s colonial centre is where the main celebration concentrates, bounded by the Presidential Palace, the Metropolitan Cathedral, and the Archbishop’s Palace, which together make it one of the more historically loaded public squares in South America, the colonial administrative apparatus arranged around a civic space that is now filled with Ecuadorians spraying each other with foam while a brass band plays. The band was military, the uniforms immaculate, the playing technically accomplished and entirely unconcerned by the foam fight happening around them. A group of street performers were working the edge of the crowd. Children and grandparents were treating the foam cans with equal enthusiasm. The afternoon light was excellent.

The foam is, in this context, both the point and the medium. Carnival across South America has historically been a moment of social inversion, when the hierarchies and constraints of ordinary life are suspended and behaviour that would otherwise be impermissible becomes permissible. The tradition of water fights and foam fights in Ecuador’s carnival specifically derives from water festivals that predate the Spanish arrival, indigenous celebrations of the agricultural calendar that the colonial church layered with Catholic significance without quite eliminating their original character. What you end up with, in the main plaza of a colonial capital, is a Franciscan cathedral facing a crowd of people using aerosol foam to temporarily dissolve the social order, which is about as good a description of how cultural traditions actually work as I can offer.

There is a video on the channel of an ambush from multiple directions. Noy’s response was more dignified than mine. The foam washes out of hair with standard shampoo but takes slightly longer from cotton than the marketing suggests. The afternoon cost nothing, produced no hangover, and remains one of the more genuinely joyful public experiences of the entire trip. Carnival done right is an argument for cities that still know how to use their public spaces for something other than commuting.

dave@launchcx.com

A British ginger seeing the world one questionable decision at a time. Based wherever the wifi works.

Carnival in Quito: Foam, Brass Bands, and the Continent-Wide Party

“Aerosol cans of white foam, sold from street carts and improvised stalls throughout the old city centre, are deployed against anyone moving through public space, regardless of age, relationship, or stated preference.”

The foam washes out of hair with standard shampoo but
takes slightly longer from cotton than the marketing suggests.

Quito, Ecuador

Carnival in Quito: Foam, Brass Bands, and the Continent-Wide Party

“Aerosol cans of white foam, sold from street carts and improvised stalls throughout the old city centre, are deployed against anyone moving through public space, regardless of age, relationship, or stated preference.”

The foam washes out of hair with standard shampoo but takes slightly longer from cotton than the marketing suggests.

Quito, Ecuador

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The foam washes out of hair with standard shampoo but
takes slightly longer from cotton than the marketing suggests.