Arts & Entertainment

Barranquilla Carnival returns with joy in ‘river of people’

Barranquilla, Colombia, Mar 26 (EFE).- The traditional “river of people” returned to the Colombian city of Barranquilla on Saturday with the Battle of Flowers, the first big event of this year’s Carnival.

A crowd applauded the 10,000 dancers, musicians and other participants that paraded along with 15 floats in a riot of color, joy and music after two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Declared a UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, Barranquilla Carnival was suspended in 2021 due to the pandemic and this year it was postponed by a month due to the Omicron variant.

The Battle of Flowers, with a route of more than 5 kilometers under a blazing sun that pushing the temperature to more than 38 degrees Celsius, is the largest parade of the carnival, a popular festival in northern Colombia that tens of thousands of locals and visitors attend each year.

Like every year, politics was present in the costumes that paraded through the streets. The first to pass was a character of the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who with his unmistakable mustache approached the boxes to shake people’s hands.

A man in military uniform carried a Ukrainian flag and a banner against the Russian invasion on which a photo of the President Volodomyr Zelenskyyy was pasted. Near him, a costume of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Fifteen floats, the product of the work of more than 80 families in charge of the “rolling works of art,” adorned the parade with colorful figures.

In addition to the Carnival Queen Valeria Charris and the child queen Victoria Char, on the floats were other women from show business throwing flowers to the public, Carnival queens of previous years and the singer Fanny Lu, among others.

The parade was enlivened by artists such as Checo Acosta, Bazurto All Star, Kevin Flórez, Grupo Kvrass and Diego Daza, who passed by in vehicles with large sound systems, entertaining the public on both sides of the road. EFE

hpc/tw

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