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This page is adapted from Section III (pages 13-14) of the paper, From Myth to Reality: Performing the Devil and Pachamama in the Carnival of Humahuaca, by Matthew John Brewer for the Univsersity of Chicago MAPSS Thesis. Read the full text here.

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III. The Encounter of Don Carnal and Doña Cuaresma

Acercándose viene un tiempo de Dios santo:
Fuime para mi tierra por folgar algúnd quanto;
Dende á ocho días era Quaresm’: al tanto
Puso por todo el mundo miedo é grand’ espanto.
Estando en mi casa con don Jueves Lardero,
Troxo á mí dos cartas un lygero trotero.

Upon me ‘twas a time of holy God approaching:
I went to my ranch to have a little something-something;
Given that in eight days ‘twas Lent: that thing
Gave all the frightened world a great scaring.
Being in my house with sir Thursday Blubber,
The swift postman brought me two letters.

Carnaval is a euphemistic encounter between Don Carnal and Doña Cuaresma which happens every year, all over the world. His abnormal, burlesque, errant moods of inversion and irony clash with her lively reality of the banal, mundane quotidian existence. In most cases, carnival is a short encounter that lasts only a few days, piquing on Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras), and finishing on Ash Wednesday. In Humahuaca, Argentina, however, this celebration lasts eight days and nights, and finishes the following Sunday. Carnaval participants join a comparsa, a dancing mob, and gather on the outskirts of town to take part in the desentierro, a rite “to unearth carnival”. Afterwards, the Great Carnival is celebrated, and a week later the Small Carnival takes place. Carnaval ends with the enteirro ("to bury carnival") by burning an effigy of the devil, a pujllay, that represents all things carnaval.

Carnival is in opposition to Lent; thus, the characters introduced at the beginning of this section embody this existence. In the Catholic tradition, Lent is the period of personal penance and fasting, and, traditionally, one was required to remain celibate and to give up meat for the entire forty days of its duration. Therefore, the connotations of three different Spanish words, Carnal, Carnestolendas, and Carnestoltes, epitomize the behavior of Don Carnal with three different pre-Lent periods. First, the Carnal period in which one should not eat meat; second, the Carnestolendas period in which one should leave the meat; and third, the Carnestoltes period in which one has left the meat. From these three concepts, emerge different images of deprivation and longing, as well as the connotations of sexual desire and inhibition. “Don Carnal, associated with the things contaminated with sin and contrary to good customs and manners, could appear [in public] a week before the forty days needed to be ready [for Easter] began, and the celebrations necessary to suffer the pains of the Nazarene."

Framing carnival in this light, several salient themes dominate, and serves to make the Carnval of Humahuaca unique. First, within the Catholic Church, the pre-Lent carnal festival creates an arena of negotiation, and reflects pagan (Andean and Catholic) beliefs and customs. Second, the euphemistic encounter stages the unbridled desenfreno (unleashing and release) against everyday life. Third, the secondary and tertiary meanings of carnal create an atmosphere of inversion and irony; curiously, the differences between Spanish and English highlight even more connotations. Finally, local myths, legends, and practices become dominant in rituals of sincere importance, such as the corpachada ritual during carnival.

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