ABSTRACT
This chapter provides examples that show how carnival masqueraders perform politics, and how carnival itself can be a feedback loop through which policies are both implemented and generated. By the turn of the 21st century, though, scholars more often saw carnivals as ambiguous events that might as easily work to exert control, impose order, and internalize hegemony as to subvert and resist. Festivals allow people to reflect on society through play but the presence of multiple, competing messages makes them “inherently ambiguous”; community is certainly constituted through these events, but who constitutes this community, and who benefits from its constitution, remain open questions. The creation of competitions and the infusion of cash—from participating emigrant Dominicans, businesses, media, and occasionally government sources—have impelled ever more elaborate and costly costumes and masks, while also creating additional pressures on participants to give an orderly performance even as various factions vie for primacy.
