Flogging Festivals (2)

 

The Mardi Gras Chase

In Louisiana, in the USA, in the area of the Cajun culture, of French Catholic heritage, there is another festival that involves flogging.
 

Some Louisiana cities as Choupic or Gheens, celebrate the Mardi Grass Chase. In it, masked teenagers from 16 up and young unmarried men chase children, both boys and girls, all over the county, to "beat the sinful stuff out of them so they can be clean for the lent".

 

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is the last day of the Carnival period, the day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the forty days Lent, ending in Easter.

Carnival (from carnelevare, “the removal of flesh”, limiting the pleasures of the body) is a festival of freedom and excesses, in preparation for the self-restraint and purgation of Lent.

 

The celebration itself takes long days of preparation. The would be floggers reunite in the outmost secrecy (not even their families are supposed to know that they will take part in the chase), for preparing the chase’s strategy. They plan the routes they will cover, the masks they will dress and try to get intelligence on where the children plan to run and hide, with special emphasis in knowing the plans of the tougher older boys, the favorite target for the floggings. In this, they can usually count with insiders’ information from the collaborating parents.

 

 

On the opposite side, children plan where to hide, the escape routes (even booby-trapping them, for making the chase harder for the chasers) and all they will try for avoiding being caught.

When the day comes (and the children get up early, waiting for the day as eagerly as they wait for Christmas), vans and pick up trucks driven by unmasked adults run all around the county honking their horns. Some of them carry hidden chasers; others are there just for making noise and adding to the confusion. Children must hide or run. Many are locked by their parents outside their houses for denying them any protection. For the chasers, drinking beer is part of the ceremony.

 

Finally, the vehicles enter the town, and the chase begins. Groups of chasers cover the different areas, looking for the kids. When they are discovered, they have two choices for trying to avoid a first flogging: kneeling asking “pardon, pardon!” or running. Many run, even daring the chasers to get and flog them (what usually happens).

But, at last, the children are caught. They are then driven to a central location, usually on Main Street, where all the community is reunited (even the children’s own parents), awaiting for the ceremony. The children are forced to kneel and say their prayers, and then flogged on the buttocks and legs, usually with tree switches, but anything can do, even flexible ends of fishing rods. Floggings are not too severe. "They whip you hard enough so at night when you get in the bathtub you got whelps (welts?) that pop up, but they don't hit from the waist up", a child said. But they are not just playful.

The ones that flog harder are the children’s own older brothers, cousins and young uncles, who seem to enjoy the opportunity of tormenting the same boys and girls they would normally protect and care for.

One of the adults commented, “You get a kick out of seeing the poor kid who's trembling and scared to death." But the children themselves seem to enjoy the fear, the mild pain of the switches and the thrill of being chased, humiliated and whipped in front of the community. And they wait for the moment they would be old enough for becoming the chasers.

 

• The chase’s photos are mostly stills from the documentary film “PARDON! PARDON! The Cajun Mardi Gras Chase” directed and edited by Rene Broussard

• For a paper on the Choupic chase, see “Neither Spared nor Spoiled: The Mardi Gras Chase in Choupic, Louisiana” by Madeline Domangue Cagle

 

Published: 05/10/06