The Negro y Blanco Carnaval is celebrated in the beginning of January every year in Pasto, Colombia. The carnaval is a historic and cultural tradition going back hundreds of years to when slaves existed in Colombia. The festival lasts a week but the two most important days are Black day and White day when people cover eachother’s faces in black paint, white foam and talcum powder. I’m not really sure the original intentions still hold up in the modern interpretation of these traditions, but the idea was to celebrate the ethnic diversity of Colombia by equalizing everyone’s race (if for one day a year) by taking on the guise of black and white. The Carnaval itself is the second largest in Colombia after Barranquilla’s Carnaval in February and has been on my bucket list ever since I first heard about it a few years ago. Pasto is the capital of the southern department (or state) of Colombia called Nariño, which I had never visited before. Like Bogotá, it is at a high elevation of over 8,000 feet (2500 m) and so the weather is considered cold, often cloudy, and often wet. The culture of Pasto and Nariño is similar to […]
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