Since 1999 El Carnaval del Pueblo has added a new face to the diverse and multicultural landscape of London. This year it has been cancelled due to refurbishment. Carolina Ramirez reports
Months ago in the City Hall building, during the launch-event of an important research report whose title suggested the end of the long-lasting invisible character of Latin Americans, the Deputy Mayor of London highlighted the contribution made by this group to the ‘cosmopolitan’ character of London.
This contribution has become tangible, it was said, through the amenities and services that we can enjoy today. Just take a walk on the streets of Lambeth or Southwark – two of the boroughs with a major concentration of Latin Americans - and you will be able to see, hear, smell and taste the various ways in which Latin Americans have daily shaped our lived experience of the city.
Nevertheless, regardless of these palpable signs of their presence, we should not naively assume that the issue of invisibility has been overcome. This is a matter that has acquired renewed relevance today when one of the social scenes where Latin Americans have been able to engage with the city (and acquire visibility) on their own terms has been abruptly cancelled.
As many Londoners may know – particularly those of Latin American ancestry – including the residents of Lambeth and Southwark, El Carnaval del Pueblo has been ‘suspended’ this year due to refurbishment and development in Burgees Park. To understand the relevance of this festival and, consequently, the disappointment and concern that its interruption has brought to the community formed around it, we need to go beyond our idea of it as a simple ‘multicultural spectacle’.
El Carnaval del Pueblo has been since 1999 a central space for Latin Americans to meet and it has provided an opportunity to make room for them, as there are many Latin Americans who still remain largely hidden in a structural invisibility. This is for the most part relevant to those who have arrived in the UK during the last decade and who largely (but not exclusively) participate in this annual event.
According to research made in conjunction by Queen Mary University, LAWRs and the Trust for London, more often than not these newcomers perform invisible jobs (they are noticeable in the cleaning and catering industry) and report experiences of abuse and exploitation in their workplace, as well as various constraints on their daily well-being, such as language barriers, exclusion from public health services, low quality accommodation and overcrowding, amongst others.
Conversely, the interactions and practises implicated in cultural activities, such as El Carnaval del Pueblo, offer alternative means of social support for them, as well as a way of emotionally dealing with their on-going experiences of exclusion and dislocation. Likewise, as some of us were able to appreciate in-situ at last year’s festivities, the carnival also provides a platform for the diffusion of some of the initiatives targeted at them by varied NGOs, charities and other civil organizations.
More importantly, this involves a form of appropriation that – by developing a multi-sensory engagement with the scene - does not exclude but incorporates the wider social and physical context of London, namely the city dwellers and their material setting. Hence, this event, which is seemingly a merely entertainment-based event, and which as such is often devalued as a means of social empowerment, might be able to positively allow individuals to renegotiate their sense of belonging to the UK as part of rather than separate from the rest of society.
Let us return to the launch event mentioned above, in which Latin Americans’ contributions to the multicultural landscape of London was celebrated by some of the authorities. It is crucial that the often straightforward discourses that (rarely) emerge ‘from above’ go hand in hand with our capacity and willingness to provide and, more importantly in this case, maintain the meaningful spaces that some groups have progressively generated for themselves as well as for the broader public. This is not to say that El Carnaval del Pueblo is the magic solution to deal with issues of migrants’ sense of belonging and integration. Instead, it is to say that in order for Latin Americans to become ‘no longer invisible’ it is vital for them to go forward and not backwards in the creation of environments that allow Latin Americans to actively embrace their cultural background as well as the wider environment that they occupy at present.
