Venezuela Events and Festivals

2/01/2009 - 2/24/2009Carnival

Carnival is widely celebrated in Venezuela but nowhere more so than in El Callao, a small town with a large population of Trinidadians. A former gold-mining settlement in the hot tropics, the place comes alive for the pre-Lent festival and sees the locals dress up in all kinds of colourful costumes and masks including popular figures and political caricatures. The Trinidad flavour is carried through in the calypso music, and other Caribbean influences of note are the "madames" who imitate the finery of the ladies of Guadeloupe and Martinique with distinctive African headscarves. Some of the participants wear black paint and mill amongst the crowd decorating them in the same fashion. Amid a vast cast of varied characters, an effigy of Judas appears and is thrown onto a bonfire. Dancing, music, processions and general hell-raising take place over a number of days