Carnaval in Mexico started in the Port of Veracruz, a land known for crazy parties. The first masked dance was celebrated in 1866. Today, people celebrate the passing of the “comparsas”, a group of people who dress in the same costumes and masks. Now Carnaval is celebrated in many parts of Mexico, with dancing, folk music, masks, and parades. The state of Oaxaca, south of Mexico City, has a very distinct local Carnaval tradition.

My name is Fulgencio Lazo and I’m from Oaxaca. And I come from Oaxaca, that’s my state, it’s south of Mexico City. It’s a small city and we have in Oaxaca a lot of (you know) cultural things, a lot of indigenous groups, and I came from the Zapotec region, so that’s my culture.

In Oaxaca, we do a .. procession, what we call calendas. And sometimes they are a huge celebration with all the community they come together and celebrate, you know. And everything is related with the religion, so it is a Catholic. So they celebrate different religions in different kinds of neighborhood. So, some calendas they are huge, like they have five, a thousand people in the street. And they start, sometime, in general they are during the night, they start at like eight o’clock at night, and all the musicians in the community they come together and they brought a lot of different shapes of faroles and sometimes they are huge, depends [on] the energy of the people, the family that make the faroles.

The faroles are giant lanterns.

The most important thing about the calendas is that they’re a celebration for the whole community.

... and they go to the different neighborhoods, you know. They walk for three blocks and they stop in one corner and they start to dance you know, and the people who live in that neighborhood they bring some hot chocolate, tamales, pan dulce and share with the people you know, and they stay there for fifteen or twenty minutes and just dance and dance and dance. And they continue the procession to another five or six blocks to the next neighborhood, and they do the same thing. They stop and the people bring hot chocolate, pan ducles and tamales, whatever they feel they have ... So in some calendas they go for, you know, three, four, eight hours, so .. and it’s welcome [to] everybody. So it’s [a] very community thing.

The biggest day of Carnaval is Fat Tuesday or Martes de Carnaval. You’ll hear great music, often with a Brazilian or African influence. They also carry big puppets during the calendas.

And people they also make puppets, big puppets. People go inside the puppets and they start to dance with the faroles.

These Carnavals in Mexico have been celebrated for over a century and still are to this day.