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Progress

PROGRESSBetween the years 1887 and 1889, public works were undertaken to provide sufficient water for the population. In 1890, don Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico, was informed of the culmination of these works, and the event was celebrated with drum rolls during the May Fiestas commemorating not only Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza’s victory at Puebla over the most powerful army in the world, but also the victorious defense of the Port of Mazatlan against the same French invaders. This was the most remote antecedent of Carnaval Mazatlan as it has come to be celebrated.

Carnaval and progress have moved on hand in hand. In1864 Ignacio Ramirez, the seer, predicted: “Mazatlan will be magnificent when it is able to provide its citizens with water, when it constructs (an infrastructure) to counteract the movements of the oceanic currents, and when it builds dikes and bridges, when its military installations are completed, when the five or six colonias (neighborhoods) stop competing and unify into a city . . . when smuggling gives way to commerce . . . “

PROGRESSIn fact, by the end of the 19th century, Mazatlan was a city with all the legal attributes and also a port. Unlike many other cities in Mexico, it had electric power, piped water and urban public transportation. A few years later, in 1908, it had the Sudpacific railroad.

In its more than 100 years of history, little has changed in the spontaneous celebrations of Carnaval Mazatlan except its themes. It has seen its Romans and its Turks, its vampires of the silent screen and its blissful butterflies -- all lending to carnaval the pagan touches of an authentic festival of the carnal senses.

PROGRESSNow the revelry also has a cultural face, celebrating the joy of life and at the same time the love and passion for the arts: music, dance, literature, poetry and painting.

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Carnaval History

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