Viva Carnaval!

The Mission's Carnaval is the beating heart of San Francisco

Like a lot of people who have lived in San Francisco for decades, I often bemoan the changes in the city that have driven out artists and musicians and sanitized and gentrified neighborhoods that were once filled with a lot of character and creativity. I live in the Haight, where, in my 20s and 30s, I used to be able to dance every night of the week to live bands at several venues. Recently, the last of these, the jazz and swing Club Deluxe, shuttered for good, unable to meet the high rents demanded by its distant corporate owner.

That’s why, more and more, I find myself drifting down to the Mission District. Yes, Valencia St. is nearly unrecognizable since the gritty days when it was inhabited mainly by lesbians and Latinos. Yes, the tech booms have made rents there inaccessible for most people. But still, there’s a life force that courses through the Mission, pumping blood into the heart of the city to the drumbeats of a wide variety of cultures, from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, indigenous Americans and beyond. There’s still a vibrant dance and music scene in the Mission, and you can still buy a wet burrito big enough to last you for two days.

The Cuba Caribe contingent at the 2024 Carnaval parade (Brisa Camacho-Lovell in front). Photo by Lou Dematteis, used with permission.

Nowhere can you feel those heartbeats and the spirit behind them than at Carnaval, the free two-day parade and festival, now in its 46th year, that draws thousands of joyful participants and spectators to the neighborhood. The parade this year, with the theme “Honoring Our Roots,” featured 69 contingents of low-riders, floats, dancers, musicians, and kids, all in colorful costumes. Carnaval has become so important as the premiere cultural celebration of the West coast that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum, the Guatemalen activist, acted as parade marshal, seated on the float alongside Carnaval’s King and Queen.

People not only dance in the streets, but on the sidewalks, and for a day, the Mission turns into a barrio full of feathers, beads, headdresses, salsa music, taco trucks, pupusa vendors and takeaway margaritas. People come from all over the Bay Area to experience this community of celebration and delight.

A brief history of SF’s Carnaval

I danced this year with Cuba Caribe, whose live Cuban musicians drummed for our contingent of kids and dancers, all festooned in sparkling hot pink and turquoise. Along 24th Street, while doing some salsa moves with our comparsa, I noticed Lou Dematteis taking photos (along with thousands of spectators shooting from their phones). Lou, a professional photographer who is a Mission activist and spent years in Nicaragua and Central America shooting the conflicts there, was one of the founding members of Carnaval. The day after the parade, I called him to chat about those early days.

Historic photo of dancers in front of the Carnaval mural at 24th & S. Van Ness. Photo by Lou Dematteis, used with permission.

Carnaval, he said, was the brainchild of a samba dance teacher named Adela Chu, originally from Panama. She staged a Carnaval-themed dance at San Francisco’s Masonic Temple in 1976, and organized a Carnaval performance with Ana Halprin’s Dance Company at the 24th St. BART Station. The next year, she created a Carnaval at Ocean Beach—a kind of precursor to BurningMan. In an article for Shaping San Francisco’s FoundSF, Peruvian-born writer/photographer Willy Lizárraga wrote, “She wasn’t creating or importing an event so much as simply giving San Francisco’s drummers and dancers a chance to come together in a slightly more focused and organized fashion.”

The next year, Chu visited Brazil, and returned determined to have a Carnaval parade. She and a group of dancers, artists, and musicians — including, among others, Cuban drumming master Marcus Gordan, costume designer Pam Minor, Sir Lawrence Washington, Lou Dematteis, and acclaimed local percussionist John Santos, who was teaching drumming at the time at the Precita Cultural Center — planned for a parade at Carnaval time, in February of 1979.

Just three months before that event, San Francisco suffered the tragic blows of the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. That very same week, in Guyana, hundreds of Bay Area residents died at the Jonestown massacre. The city was in shock. But the organizers decided the show must go on.

That first Carnaval, with perhaps 300 participants, the parade wrapped around Precita Park a few times in the rain, Lou recalls. In 1980, the parade moved to Dolores Park. After a couple of years, San Francisco officials wanted the parade moved to the Civic Center, which caused the organizers to split, with some, like Chu, bowing out, because they felt it should be in the Mission to retain its cultural flavor. Eventually, Carnaval moved back to the Mission, and the festival portion of events opened on Harrison Street.

Carnaval founder Adela Chu (in silver) and other organizers at the first Carnaval in 1979. Photo by Lou Dematteis.

Lou says that when some condos were recently built on Harrison Street, some neighbors complained about the Carnaval bands and noise, but housing activists in the neighborhood had foreseen that trouble. “There was a clause in their leases that said that Carnaval happens nearby every year and they weren’t going to shut it down because it made too much noise.”

Activists in the Mission were also responsible for saving Carnaval about ten years ago, Lou says, when the non-profit that had been managing it was going under and owed a lot of money. “The Mission community stepped in to save it.”

It’s that community,  in particular the Calle 24 Cultural District, Lou says, that has also been responsible for getting 3600 units of affordable housing built in the neighborhood, and helping to protect small businesses. “Over the years there’s been a movement within the Mission community to maintain what a wonderful neighborhood the Mission is, and Carnaval is one of the things that gives the Mission life,” says Lou. “I don’t buy the idea that the Mission is dying. The Mission is a living organism and Carnaval helps keep it alive.

Creating community with Carnaval

I’ve only participated in Carnaval three times, twice with former Carnaval Queen Elizabeth Soberanes’ large Latin Dance Grooves contingent, and this year with Cuba Caribe. That makes me a dilettante compared to the many people in Carnaval who participate year after year, planning their entire spring around a procession that lasts only a few hours.

It’s a big commitment: This year, we had ten weeks of rehearsals, some outside in the cold. We paid for costumes we’ll likely never wear again. We had to wake up very early in the morning to apply makeup, glue on false eyelashes, make last-minute costume adjustments, and figure out how to get to the Mission without being able to park anywhere nearby. (One year, when I foolishly tried to drive, I called a friend who lived not far from the staging area who heroically showed up when asked him to rescue my car and go park it somewhere.) Then we waited in the staging area, taking photos and queuing in long lines to use the porta-potties. If it’s cold out, you shiver in your skimpy costume. Then you have to dance 20 blocks on concrete, which is difficult even if you’re not wearing 6-inch heels, like the samba dancers. It’s a real high to dance in front of the crowds, but it seems like it’s all over in a flash.

But as with most artistic pursuits, the process is as important as the final presentation. During the ten weeks of classes I got to know and appreciate a diverse group of dancers, many of whom would linger after class, sitting in the sun and chatting at a nearby bakery. I took classes with the best Cuban dance teachers and musicians in the Bay Area — Susana Arenas Pedroso, Ramon Ramos Alayo, and Miguel Suarez. I appreciated that while they were serious about the choreography, and wanted us to do it right, they emphasized that Carnaval is about having fun, the dances playful and sexy. 

Maestra Susana Arenas Pederoso

Maestro Ramon Ramos Alayo (and me)

“In Cuba, people hear the music and they come running out to come dance in the parade,” Ramon said. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t worry about being perfect.”

I’ve enjoyed taking classes with Ramon (who founded Cuba Caribe) and Susana over the years because they are both so generous about sharing their dance and their culture with whoever shows up in the studio. They both have their own professional dance companies, but they encourage amateurs like me because they are motivated by sharing and preserving their cultural traditions.

A warm, beautiful morning at Carnaval (that’s me).

As a white woman who loves to dance but grew up in a household with very little music, who even has relatives who don’t dance because it goes against their religion, it’s been a joy to be able to learn Cuban dance in a warm community, as it has been a joy to be able to participate in Carnaval and feel the wonderful inclusion in that event.

And as a long-time San Franciscan, it does my heart good to know that no matter how else the city’s creativity has been hollowed out by tech booms and greed, there are always great dance classes in the Mission, and once a year, there’s always Carnaval.