Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

sombreros, indicating that they are simply dressing the citizens up for the event. The
‘social wrong’ is revealed by those who perform it, so we feel no concern for them
when we laugh.
Everyone in town participates in the parade, making banners, marching and
witnessing it. Some women throw confetti and clap, but we see one throwing rubbish
from her bin instead. Her behaviour is wrong but she is punishing the authorities and
those who accept payments to take part. If we approach this from Bergson’s
perspective, we celebrate her insolence: she is doing something we would not dare, for
fear of the consequences. There is another group of people paid to participate in the
festivities, a group of strong men who first pretend that they are the sick people from the
hospital, and later dress up as prisoners. Since their condition as ‘acarreados’ does not
vary from the previous examples, we will not examine them. Nevertheless, it is
important to mention that we are aware of them.
In these examples, the issues are very explicit and exaggeration is part of the
comedy. However, if we did not know the practice of acarreo, then we would recognise
the incongruity but not the social grievance. Knowing what the scene is making
reference to gives us a fuller understanding and increases the benefits of the comedy,
but also the subsequent cold carnival, as we will see next.
Corruption of society
We have seen how those in a position of power can abuse others, even if the line that
separates them is very thin, for example, the case of civil servants. In Mecánica
Nacional, a group of people are talking about how they charge for their services. The
TV technician explains that he lies to his customers about what he needs to repair, and
Eufemio says that he also carries out work that a car does not need in order to charge
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