Athena - Argentina - Columbus Day Parade

This past weekend on Saturday I went to the Casa Rosada- the pink house, the Argentinian version of the White house. When I got off of the subway I found a parade going on. I could see the Casa Rosada at my right and the parade at my left. What should I do? I looked back and forth- the Casa Rosada did look kinda cool and there was a nice Plaza (Plaza Mayor) in front of it. But the music and the noise of the parade was calling me. I could come back to the Casa Rosada any time; the parade would only be here once.

  



(a band performs in the plaza in front of the Casa Rosada)







The first thing I noticed about the parade was that there was a lot of brown people there- both in the parade and watching it. My experience in Buenos Aires so far has been very whitewashed. The people here don’t look like what we would in general (heavy emphasize on in general) expect Latinos to look like. (And yes, I know there’s a whole different conversation about race & ethnicity to be had here, I’m just keeping it uber simple). So after a week of almost only seeing white people- and being able to count the number of brownish people I’ve seen on two hands- I was amazed to suddenly be surrounded by lots and lots of brown people. In this parade it was the ‘white’ people who stood out by leaps and bounds. 

   The parade turned out to be in honor of Columbus Day, I would later find out. I began watching the parade at the end of the parade route. The dancers were tired, their foreheads drenched in sweat. Hairstyles were loose and sagging, or sweated out as we would say back home. But the dancers kept up their energy and enthusiasm, they had one last show to put on before ending. The best description I have for the bands is that they’re latino version of HBCU bands. Some things were very similar such as the showmanship, the importance of dancing (though the dances were different) and stopping their marching to put on a show. There were differences too. These bands had dancing men as well, who were more like when guys in a fraternity strolling at a party, the actual band only had drums, lots of trumpets, smaller tubas, maybe 1 full sized tuba and a couple of trombones. A couple of bands had saxophones too, but not many of them. I wonder where these similarities in performing styles come from. If you had told me that a band from Bolivia would be more similar than different from a band in the US I would have laughed at you. But, surprisingly, there are surprisingly a lot similarities. 

Check out video of one of the bands here: http://youtu.be/qNfyKoUUtUg

The dancing girls and men would have different routines they did separately. And occasionally there was a women dancing with the men. The leaders of each group would blow their whistle to call out which dance they were about to do. And then they put on a show. Lots of hip shaking and skirts twirling. The guys would raise & lower their hats, move side to side then suddenly take 3 or 4 large strides forward. The dances were much better and more soulful than I can describe here. I loved watching them. The costumes were so elaborate, the skirts were surprisingly short (I’m sure the guys loved that part). The dancing girls and men were always dancing, they hardly ever walked. The people organizing the parade were trying to get the dancers to move quickly to keep up with the other bands, but their efforts were in vain. The dancer weren’t just going to stop dancing and walk to catch up to the other band, they had a show to put on, and they did.

    There were a lot of people standing around at the end of the parade so I went to check out that area and see what was going on. Families were connecting, kids finding their moms who had performed in the parade. I saw one food vendor, then quickly saw many more. The parade literally ended into a makeshift food court. Lots of vendors with grills and carts fill of food. Meat, fruit, deserts, bread, freshly squeezed OJ, really whatever you wanted was here. And now I was really dreading the fact that I had had a huge lunch. All of this wonderfully smelling food and I wasn’t hungry at all, major sadface. Eventually I did get hungry and had one of the best sausage sandwiches ever. I mean this thing was GOOD. I could eat one again today, and tomorrow, and the next day.