Bienvenidos!

March 19, 2022 is Carnaval in Cabarete!

Cabarete’s Carnaval is the only Carnaval parade in Dominican Republic that happens right on the beach!

Carnaval is a yearly tradition practiced in every major city in the Dominican Republic before or around Easter Sunday.

Carnaval has many different practices across the Caribbean. The main idea is that it’s a celebration that happens right before lent.

In Western churches, lent begins on Ash Wednesday, six and a half weeks before Easter, and provides for a 40-day fast in imitation of Jesus Christ’s fasting in the wilderness before he began his public ministry. Some people give up meat or sweets or alcohol during the period instead as a way of practicing lent.

Shrovetide (or Pre-Lent) is the traditional time for this kind of celebration but here in the Caribbean where the Roman Catholic tradition mixed with African and native traditions, sometimes Carnaval happened even on Holy Week (Easter week.)

Carnival typically involves public celebrations, including events such as parades, public street parties and other entertainments, combining some elements of a circus. Elaborate costumes and masks allow people to set aside their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity.[

This festival is known for being a time of great indulgence before Lent (which is a time stressing the opposite), with drinking, overeating, and various other activities of indulgence being performed.

Other common features of Carnival include mock battles such as food fights; expressions of social satire; mockery of authorities; costumes of the grotesque body that display exaggerated features such as large noses, bellies, mouths, phalli, or elements of animal bodies; abusive language and degrading acts; depictions of disease and gleeful death; and a general reversal of everyday rules and norms.