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London's Latin lesson
By Mike Tait, Metro 06.08.07
Painting the town: two colourful revellers enjoy the carnival
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More than 100,000 people basked in the glorious sunshine yesterday and enjoyed the Carnaval Del Pueblo - the biggest Latin American festival in Europe.
Revellers took advantage of a climate more like South America than South London to enjoy dancing, music, exhibitions and food.
The festival began with a huge three-hour float parade from City Hall to Burgess Park, in Camberwell, South London.
Once at the park, the party really started as thousands of festival goers enjoyed an open salsa competition, held by the World Salsa Dancing Federation champions Ricardo Murillo and Viviana Vargas, from Colombia.
Four stages provided entertainment throughout the day, including traditional Andean dancing and the latest in South American hip-hop and reggae.
And stalls sold traditional Latin food and crafts.
The free event has been held in London every year since 1999, when 4,000 people attended.
Reader views (2)
Carnival del Pueblo is amazing, I had a fabulous time and I am even looking forward to next years carnival. The weather was great, the atmosphere was amazing. There were loads of things to do, I especially enjoyed the Latin music with its fantastic rhythms and I had some delicious Mexican food. The music was great especially the main stage acts. I also managed to get some great handmade items from the wonderful stalls.
I would recommend this carnival to everyone.
- Yvonne Gonzales, London
It was truly a great day out for anyone who likes Latin culture/music/dancing/food. The street procession was impressive, especially the Bolivians who turned out in great numbers, making up almost half of the total procession, dancing some of the most popular Bolivian carnaval dances e.g. Diablada, Morenada, Caporales, Tinku. Also notable was a good Samba group representing Brazil, several Colombian entries and couple of floats representing Mexico.
The gathering at Burgess Park had a really friendly atmosphere and there was lots to do - the different stages gave plenty of variety of music. Something slightly odd happened with the Bolivian contingent, who set up their own impromptu stage near the Andean stage to allow the dancers from the procession to show off some more. However, their recorded music didn't combine very well with the live music coming from the Andean stage nearby - at one point I could hear live Tinku music coming from the Andean stage, and recorded Tinku music from the Bolivian stage where the Tinku dancers were... it would have been nice to see them combine efforts.
There was plenty of food to try, with stalls offering Mexican, Peruvian, Colombian, Bolivian and Jamaican food, amongst others. I even managed to get my hands on some Paceña beer which is virtually impossible to get hold of over here. All in all, a great day. I'll look forward to next year's.
- Ben, London
