Carnaval del Pueblo

A masked jester leaps out from the parade to slap me on the backside with a cardboard wand, and it seems a fitting welcome to London’s vibrant Carnaval del Pueblo, the largest Latin American festival in Europe.

In its twelfth year, the free carnival begins with a three mile street procession from the Elephant and Castle to Camberwell’s Burgess Park where five stages blast out music from all over the continent, whipping up an energy so effervescent it threatens to fizz over onto the drab surrounding streets.

As the parade arrives to kick off the party, giant dancing puppets reach out their over-sized hands to gawping children and Ecuadorian-caped warriors wave at us from a float adorned with paper mountains. Genuine Andean backdrops may have been replaced by south London tower blocks, but Bolivian folk dancers still whirl round in ecstatic glee, in costumes of rainbow colours.

Similarly, a looming grey cloud does nothing to dampen the spirit of two energetic Samba dancers as they split from their troupe to entertain the police officers who try to avert their eyes from their gyrating, barely covered assets.

Later on, the stages erupt with Cuban salsa through to Brazilian funk and bad boy reggaeton, strangely juxtaposed with five-year-olds salsa dancing, to melt even the hardest Latino rapper’s heart. But some of the best moments are spontaneous, like when Mexican folklore musicians break into song in the queue for the ice cream van, or a Peruvian man attempts to teach inebriated English people to salsa, with mixed success.

Food stalls offer rare treats like arepas (corn cakes) piled with juicy artichokes and shredded beef, hearty Brazilian acarajé (bean patties) filled with prawn puree, and strips of mango prepared in mouth zapping Colombian style with lemon juice and salt. There seems no reason why some of these dishes couldn’t go on to achieve the ‘London staple’ status now reached by Jamaican food. But Latin cuisine and culture sometimes seems to go unnoticed in the capital for the rest of the year.

‘Everyone knows about salsa,’ a representative of the Latin Americans’ Recognition Campaign tells me, at their festival stall, ‘but Latin America is much more than that.’ Their campaign aims to raise awareness of the UK’s ‘invisible’ Latin American community, and their cultural roots.

Music seems a good way to start, and one band, Zona Protesta, rap about problems faced in their native Colombia, reminding us that Latin American history has been fraught with troubles, in contrast to the euphoric, carefree visions of it we might have unthinkingly received from Bacardi adverts. Others, like D-KeL, mix UK styles such as grime with Latin beats, proving that a community that arrived in the UK during the 60s and 70s is now creating its own cultural fusions.

The event is not for the faint-hearted, getting more and more crowded until it feels a bit suffocating. But this doesn’t stop the fun, and in the evening Latin American families get down to some serious dancing, all draped in their countries’ flags and colours. And its not just the youth who lead the way. Everyone, including the older generations, are swinging each other around, having fun, and showing London a thing or two about how to party.

Carnaval del Pueblo took place in south London on August 1.