By Alexander Zevin

Gualeguaychú, a small city in Entre Ríos province, used to be famous for one reason: it is the site of Argentina’s largest Carnaval celebration. In January Carnaval seems almost to land in Gualeguaychú – flooding this greyish city in a sea of visitors and incandescent feathery flesh which then lifts off again sometime in early March. These days, though, Gualeguaychú is as likely to be known for its role in the standoff between Argentina and Uruguay over the construction of two paper plants on the right bank of the Rio Uruguay.

In 2003 the Uruguayan government gave Spanish company ENCE permission to build an enormous pulp mill on its side of the Río Uruguay. But the dispute began in earnest after a second company, Botnia of Finland, was also cleared to build a paper plant in the same area. Since 2005 residents from Gualeguaychú have engaged in a highly effective, if intermittent, blockade of the bridges leading into Uruguay in order to stop the plants’ construction. The protestors believe the plants will inevitably pollute the river and air they share with Uruguay. ENCE appears to have given up its project at Frey Bentos but Botnia’s plant continues to rise from the littoral. The situation is a serious diplomatic event. Argentina and Uruguay have both brought their case to the World Court at the Hague; Spain has offered to mediate; and Uruguay, which estimates that it has lost more than US$400m because of the blockades, has appealed to the regional trade group Mercosur.

Photo by Kate Stanworth

Despite the stakes involved, there is something unmistakably carnivalesque about the dispute between Argentina and Uruguay. In May, President Kirchner joined a massive rally held in Gualeguaychú’s corsodromo where he exhorted the crowd to ’stand together’ to solve the environmental issue. The piqueteros who drink mate on lawn chairs and march down Routes 135 and 14 carrying banners and flags are protestors, but they are also on parade.

As if to underline this point, Evagelina Carrozzo, the Queen of Gualeguaychú’s Carnaval, ambushed a meeting of world leaders in Vienna last May. She strode directly into a photo shoot of 58 heads of state wearing nothing but a bikini and carrying a sign reading ‘Basta de Papeleras Contaminantes – No Pulp Mill Pollution’.

Carnaval time for the Contre-Papeleras

Gualeguaychú does not look like a city about to explode into celebration. In the twilight hours couples stroll peacefully along the costanera while below them, in the sliver of park that fronts the Río Gualeguaychú, kids play football, using tents as goalposts. On Av. Irazusta, the main street leading towards the corsodromo, young men are unloading the parade floats from warehouses. Above them are the high hulking walls of a prison. Men press their faces against the bars of their cells to get a better look at the scene below; an orange float with a patio and staircase is making its way along the prison ramparts. All seems primed for a highly colourful prison break.

Once inside the corsodromo, the barely-contained energy is palpable: Carnaval is indeed about to begin. The smell of roasting meat wafts towards the parade route, the floor of which is covered in advertisements for beer and soft drinks and drugs. Girls are delivering coupons and newspapers and refreshing cups of Nestle lemonade. Gualeguaychú’s carnaval is a phantasmagoria in which each advertisement becomes a kind of absurd and indecipherable symbol that melts into the collective spectacle.

Photo by Kate Stanworth

The political dimension of Carnaval is likewise built directly onto its dazzling surface. As soon as you enter the grounds of the corsodromo there is a prominent stand, run by the Environmental Assembly of Gualeguaychú, selling ‘No a las Papeleras’ t-shirts, mugs, hand-bags, hats and sandals.. Carnaval begins after a voice blares over the loudspeaker: "Stop the Papeleras. No to Contamination, Yes to Life!" And the very first ‘float’ is a group of students shouting slogans and carrying a giant banner which reads ‘No Dejemos Que Nuestras Sueños Se Vayan Por Una Chimenea. No a las Papeleras’ (Don’t let our dreams go up in smoke. No to the paper mills).

Nor is this political message something imposed from above by the official organisers of Gualeguaychú’s carnaval. The crowd reserves their hardiest shouts for the students or anyone else carrying a sign that opposes the construction of the paper mills. During lulls in the parade, people begin to chant "No a las Papeleras" along to the guitar riff from the White Stripe’s song, ‘Seven Nation Army’. The entire corsodromo is hit by wave after wave of this chorus. It is a battle cry which is no less serious for being shouted seemingly at random. President Kirchner, who has condemned the recent violence between asambleístas from Gualeguaychú and residents of Montevideo, would do well to look at Carnaval for clues as to why the protestors are so fiercely committed to their cause. ‘Yes to Life!’ is the motto for both Carnaval and the anti-papeleras movement.

And then there are the floats and the dancers. Attempting to describe them is to risk losing yourself in a sea of adjectives, a hellish inventory of fabulous nonsense. The floats include a Moorish castle that sprouts out of purple ice; a monstrous Leprechaun masthead that juts out of a forest hideout; and an Egyptian river barge led by Greek settlers. During the height of the performance the audience and the costumed dancers gyrate in blissful harmony. Girls in silver bikinis and white-plumed wings follow the anti-papeleras protestors. These are followed, in no particular order, by darkly clad witches dancing devilishly around a foaming cauldron, by some kind of Liberace-inspired superheroes in silver space suits. Submariners dressed in fencing outfits entrance the crowd with a display of batucada drumming and choreographed samba. There are dancers whose wings are tipped by miniature hot air balloons, propellers, solar panels! People are about to dance themselves into space!

Photo by Kate Stanworth

Carnaval is not a parade but a wild, unreasonable excuse to flirt. Girls shake their behinds with such careless insouciance that men put up their hands, begging them to stop.

But the girls won’t stop so the men have no choice but to wink and make jokes, to throw numbers at the supple young forms who come vibrating past them. The girls are not cynical either. From beneath a layer of glitter they smile indulgently at their crazed admirers. Women extend their bodies over the barrier to reel in the male dancers. Everyone in the crowd is touching each other needlessly and giggling. The paper mills aren’t about to stop them.

The mills are, in fact, at the very centre of Carnaval’s peculiar historical mixture of oblivion and social protest. They fulfill a double function: as objects of general approbation and reasons for the people to dance and sing – a celebration of life which is also, and by its very nature, a ward against the baleful effects of the mills. If Gualeguaychú’s carnaval is an official spectacle it is also one whose energy, once unleashed, is difficult to control. This is certainly one reason why, despite attempts to calm tensions on the border between Uruguay and Argentina, the anti-papeleras movement shows no signs of giving up.