Argentina Carnival Warms Up – Gualeguaychu

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) — In the Argentine province of Entre Rios, where the pampas meets the jungle, the 100,000 people of Gualeguaychu are contending with the annual surge in half-naked women and pale tourists and the mixed blessings of a paper mill.

Gualeguaychu hosts the country’s biggest carnival in January, February and early March. Last year saw about 400,000 tourists come for the feathery costumes and pre-Lenten abandon, according to tourism press officer Barbara Delcanto.

Part of that crowd learned of the carnival after locals began protesting over the environmental impact of a paper mill that Uruguay planned to build across from Playa Nandubaysal, Gualeguaychu’s most beautiful beach. Finnish joint venture Metsae-Botnia Oy announced plans for another mill at a site nearby in 2005.

The dispute climaxed when Evangelina Carrozzo, the city’s 2006 Carnival Queen, managed in May of that year to jump into the frame of a photo op featuring four dozen heads of state attending the Latin America and Caribbean Business Summit in Vienna.

The poohbahs were in sober suits. Carrozzo wore a rhinestone-studded thong and bore aloft a sign decrying the paper mills. Carried worldwide, the resulting photos brought the carnival a big shot of publicity.

“It was incredible. Everyone wanted to know Gualeguaychu and they wanted to know Evangelina,” said Maria Luz Villagra, the city’s tourism director.

The episode boosted tourism, which represents as much as 40% of the city’s economy, yet the mills remains a worry.

“We are thinking of our future and our children,” said Lorena Leonhardt, 32, the reigning Carnival Queen. “It’s politics. It’s a situation where governments have bad judgment.”

Lowing and Spewing

Since the paper mills opened, the dispute has quieted down. The town goes about its daily business of raising Argentina’s famous grain and beef, processing food and making chemicals and truck parts. Amid the lowing cows and spewing factories, hot thermal spa complexes have opened for tourists seeking a break from carnival or during the less-frenzied days of winter.

The sun hits hard against crumbling art-nouveau and beaux- arts buildings. I’ve been to Gualeguaychu and the carnival before, and once again, I felt I was lost in a remote 1910 French town turned tropical. Siestas are a necessity.

The carnival was just one of dozens of regional parties until the city in 1996 built its Corsodromo, or carnival arena, to house samba competitions and parades. The arena’s popularity and the city’s proximity to Buenos Aires, where a third of the country’s 40 million people live, turned it into the National Carnival.

Walking around the Corsodromo, I asked Fabian Godoy, the carnival’s press officer, about the white leather couches set up under an awning. He said these were for the new VIP section.

“You have to pay more,” he said, $100 for four seats. “But you get free beer from Brahma,” a Brazilian beer company. That’s cheap by U.S. arena standards, and yet five times the price of regular benches.

‘Bag of Garbage’

I headed to Nandubaysal, an 18-kilometer (11-mile) ride away, where the Uruguay mill rises on the horizon beyond the Rio Gualeguaychu in what had been a vista largely of subtropical forest.

“It’s like putting a bag of garbage in your neighbor’s house,” said 28-year-old Gabriela Delmagro as she sunbathed with friends in lounge chairs in the river’s shallow water. “They should have put it near Punta del Este,” Uruguay’s most important beach resort.

As I waded into the water, I worried more about the visible pollution Argentina brings on itself, like food wrappers, water bottles and even a disposable baby diaper floating among the gentle waves.

‘No Impact’

Uruguayan officials insist the mill hasn’t produced air or water pollution. Dr. Diego Pastorin, a legal adviser with Uruguay’s Department of the Environment, explained the safety measures and monitoring maintained by his office and local officials, checking for sulfur, phosphorus and other problem components.

“There is no impact of value for the air, for the water, for the environment,” Pastorin said.

Of course, carnival is a time to forget worries, to dance, drink, ogle. The main action is the carnival parade, which consists of three comparsas, competing teams each led by its own queen, followed by hundreds of elaborately costumed members singing and dancing on floats.

Carnival is a weekend event, and the competition gets heated in the later parades as the comparsas tighten their routines, more members join the route, and everyone in the overflowing arena wonders who will be the new Carnival Queen, selected the last weekend in February to reign for the closing event the first weekend in March.

Crystal Tears

Watching the parade might take six hours from start to finish, but Gualeguaychu’s carnival weekend nights seem never to end, with young people still partying long after the sun comes up.

The Mari Mari comparsa focuses on the annihilation of the Guarani Indians, native to the region. Floats carry men in feathered thongs on a reed boat, chained women crying crystal tears, dancers with white satin fish on their shoulders and a Spanish galleon with Christopher Columbus. Gervasio Larrivey, a 33-year-old makeup artist I’d met earlier, was a garish bishop with a church strapped over his body.

The Papelitos comparsa, led by Carrozzo herself, is clearly political. Above her tanned, nearly naked body, she holds a giant sign with “No a Las Papeleras” — No to the Paper Mills — and is greeted by exuberant cheers. The comparsa’s name brings to mind the paper mills once again, but it’s an old word for the papier mache on its floats.

‘We Have to Fight’

At four in the morning, I met Carrozzo at the Papelitos clubhouse, where participants store their elaborate costumes. The building reeks of the acrid sweat only dancing for six hours can produce. Carrozzo has already changed, a rack full of bikini bottoms behind her. I almost knock her rhinestone crown off a table, surprised by its weight. More than the mills rests heavily on her head.

She hasn’t yet removed her false eyelashes, and they bring an intensity to her anger as she says, “It’s a visual pollution that we have, this is the reality.” Her painted nails flashing before her, she adds, “We feel we have to fight for the environment, for the land, to do this for Gualeguaychu.”

I spent the rest of the evening in the clubs El Angel and Bikini along the city’s waterfront and watched thousands of young people dance on the beach as the sun rose. The paper mills probably were the last thing on their minds.

Gualeguaychu is about three hours north of Buenos Aires and reachable by rental car or bus. Accommodations range from beachside camping in Nandubaysal for $3 a person to rustic spa lodges like Termas de Gualeguaychu for $45 a double or the city’s largest hotel, the riverfront Aguay for $110 a double. Information: http://www.carnaval.com/argentina/gualeguaychu/.

(Michael Luongo is a travel writer for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Luongo at mtluongo@aol.com.
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SOURCE:
“Argentina Carnival Warms Up on Feathered Dancers, Mill Dispute”
News
By Michael Luongo
Feb. 5, 2009
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