Carnivales

Disclaimer: Carnivales is clearly one of those things they warned us about in our program orientation, where the customs in another county seem downright WRONG to you, but perfectly normal to the people here... so read the following with a grain of culture-shock salt. All I can recod is my own expeience; perhaps later on I will come to undestand this better, but there are certain aspects of it that I hope I never come to approve of.

So February in Peru is the time of Carnivales, something that was probably originally related to Mardi Gras but has now become totally different. Instead of one day, it's the whole month, and instead of any celebrations that I can see, the custom is for young people to throw water at random passersby on the streets, especially on Sundays, especially off the main roads where they can wander around in groups waiting for potential targets. Water balloons, buckets of water, hoses, and water guns are all included. Now I don't mind a water fight between friends, especially since it's summer and hot, but to me there are several things very wrong with this little custom.

1. It can be dangerous. Kids throw water balloons at passing buses and cars, and Dr. Tony says he has known them to shatter the windows. And water balloons thrown at people on the streets can hurt. (See story below.)

2. It is disrespectful. In Lima, the throwing can include paint as well as water; here in the suburbs it is a little calmer, and they stick with grass clippings in their buckets of water. Not to mention the fact that they do it to complete strangers who may not want to be soaked!

3. It is a battle of the sexes. Boys soak girls and girls soak boys; when we took the kids to the park for the first time in February, some of the male volunteers were very sternly lectued by the boys for being traitors and thowing balloons at them instead of the girls. Now this is not a bad thing when there are plenty of boys and girls all throwing water at each other, like when we all go to the park together from the house. But what happens in practice is that groups of boys roam the streets targeting girls to soak. Last week, Catherine and I were coming back from the Intenet cafe in the evening and we decided to take the back road through the pretty, quiet suburban neighborhood... or so we thought. We didn't even notice that there were eight or ten teenage guys nearby until we had passed them, and suddenly they yelled, Now! Let's go! and ran toward us with water balloons and buckets. One of them came up three feet behind me and pegged me straight in the butt with a baloon. I couldn't believe it. They tossed a bucket of water and grass clippings all over us, which Catherine got most of, and there were balloons exploding eveywhere around us. We didn't want to scream and run, but we basically had nothing else to do. These were not little kids; they were young men in their late teens, ten of them, laughing and soaking us as we stuggled to comprehend the situation and remember our Spanish curse words and failed at both. We half-ran away and quickly turned back to the main road, where we have not had problems so far.

It was kind of a scary feeling because we were really helpless, but I was more ouraged than afraid. It was not a water fight because we had no water; it would not have been fair even if we had had water because they were ten young men and we are two women. It was absolutely sexual harrassment because he hit me in the butt with the balloon. But what really set me off was how the kids laughed at it when we got back. Incensed, I told my story about how they attacked us ten to two and hit me in the behind, and one of the boys said, Oh yeah, the girls always hope the water doesn't get them here! and pointed to his chest. I don't have time right now to go into how this mentality really really scares me. Suffice it to say that it shows how the machismo of this culture, the objectifying of women, goes waaay deeper than I'd thought, and you'll never convince me that this water-throwing is unconnected to the early sexualizing of young Latina girls and the issues with respect for women here. The kids try to tell me that it's a two-sided battle and that girls throw water too, but you don't see groups of girls roaming the streets and hitting solitary boys in the crotch with water balloons. That's all I'll say. I was ranting angrily about it all night, but the kids were all laughing, and what troubles me is that I don't know if I can make them see why it's a problem.

Anyway... rant over for now. The next day in the park, I got out a lot of my anger by pegging one of the more obnoxious boys in the house with a balloon--while he was running, too. It was very satisfying. Especially because he hit me first with two balloons and then sprayed me and the other girls with the hose, after I told him I wasn't playing. To their credit, John and Victor, the American volunteers, were very suppotive in equalizing the playing field a bit among the kids and chasing down the more troublesome boys so that the girls could have a chance at hitting them. Sheesh.