Drunken Scuffle

Some 400 years ago, an enterprising Spanish fleet sailed off to sea in a culinary expedition in search of imported herbs for the Spanish connoisseur. Halfway around the globe, this fleet unfortunately docked into these islands I now call home, which were then ran by scattered tribes of aboriginal black people. To the amusement of the spaniards, these primitive tribes ran after wild pigs with sticks for food, and dried leaves for their sparse clothing while the rest of the world were already building grand palaces, great walls, volumes of refined literature, including these visitors who were only there to extend their menu. Being the potential suckers that they were, the Spanish herb hunters took this advantage and gave the primitive tribesmen an introductory gift to Christianity: a decorative statuette of the boy jesus. The tribesmen accepted the gift and danced to celebrate their newfound religion, as what probably has been written by the scribe on board the Spanish fleet, since he was the only one authorized of recording history at that time. On the other hand, the tribesmen were probably smart enough to dance and not to pick a fight with their sticks against the Spaniard's imposition.

Centuries later, this encounter inspired a religious mardi gras contest that is annually held in our city every third Sunday of January. Different teams paint themselves black and dress up like the aborigines and reenact the whole encounter, highlighting the part where they were dancing to the statuette of the boy jesus. This celebration is loosely translated from our local dialect into English as “scuffle”, or those kinds of fracas kids do for fun.

And through the years, the competition amongst the teams has promoted glamour and color in the costume, far from the original indigenous jungle gear worn by the tribesmen, including deviating from the whole encounter which now includes drag queens in las vegas outfits, giant clamshells and all sorts of strange objects for whatever the hell they meant. The traffic downtown is closed to pave way for the mardi gras parade, and the event attracts a large crowd for the weekend. The streets would look like those spring break parties in the U.S. with all the street dancing and excessive alcohol consumption, except in those western spring breaks, you see decent people get wasted, here you see wasted people get even more wasted. These wasted people are not even here for the religious significance of the occasion but for the plethora of alcohol on the streets, and in fact is the only produce in demand for the weekend and has since become the other implied reason of the celebration. And considering the volume of alcohol being consumed on that day alone, more than half of that amount has to be released through the bladder or discarded orally out on the streets, making the morning after a reminiscent of a radioactive spill.

I do drink a lot, but it is not quite safe to have your beers out on the streets, with wasted drunkards abound shouting praises to the boy jesus while engaging in scuffles in which this feast is named after.

There’s this Christian story about Christ’s first godly tour de force, where he turned water into wine in a wedding in short of alcohol, and by creating more alcohol I suppose he rhetorically did not imply to drink moderately. And the people in our celebration took it seriously. Sometimes I feel they should quote this miracle to justify the excessive alcohol in a religious celebration