Pre-Lenten festivals, such as the famous carnavale of Venice, Italy, the carnivals throughout Brazil, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and of course, New Orleans’ Mardi Gras, are often described—and idealized—as “festivals of inversion.” Historically, as moments in which the populace were invited to indulge themselves in the earthly pleasures they would soon give up for the forty-day period of Lent preceding Easter, Pre-Lenten carnivals also quickly became moments for “permissible” social transgression—men could dress as women, women as men, the rich masquerade as poor, and the poor crowned as kings and queens for a day. While this kind of role reversal—what scholars have termed “social inversion”—undoubtedly has been a central part of Pre-Lenten festivities throughout their long history, many historians recently have sought to bring more nuance to the discussion of Carnival. Particularly when so many of the most famous Pre-Lenten festivals take place in former slave-holding colonies of the Americas, it is likely that the participation of enslaved people and free people of color in these carnival celebrations differed considerably from the dominant narrative throughout the celebration’s centuries-long history.
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