ALINA PANEK — On Saturday, March 10th, the basement behind Mo-Huch has changed from a homey living room to colorfully decorated with streamers, posters with bouncing music and strobe lights. La Fuerza Latina and Outlook collaborated to create a party that celebrated Carnaval, a festival that is celebrated annually in many different countries like–but most commonly recognized in Brazil–for the annual festival before Lent exuberantly with parades, floats, costumes, music and dancing in the streets.
The main events typically occur during February or early March, during the period historically known as Shrovetide. Carnaval is also inaccurately called Carnival but they are the same event. Common practices in traditional Carnaval is a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, masks, and a public street party. The event is often recognized by the costumes that the women wear in these parades.
These costumes are extravagant and are often bikini pieces that have rhinestones, sequins, and large feathers that are fanned out like a peacock tail. Carnaval participaters may wear masks and/or costumes to allow losing their everyday identities and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and other foods forbidden during Lent is extremely common.
To recreate this, La Fuerza and Outlook asked their guests to wear bright colors and decorated La Fuerza’s meeting space accordingly.
On the Facebook event page, La Fuerza asked their guests to submit their song requests, particularly looking for ones that have a theme of Carnaval or Latinx celebration. Several people requested over 100 songs for the event.
One of the song requests being “Gasolina,” played non-stop. The DJ for the event was Alexis Lopez, ‘19 who was a former executive member, and was praised by several guests the day after for a great selection of music from his own playlist in addition to the song requests. There were an estimated 100 people at the event throughout the night.