J’Ou­vert in Venezuela? Did you know that there is al­so a Bur­ro­keet, Dame Lor­raine and stick fight­ing in Venezuela's Car­ni­val?

Three years ago An­dreina Briceno-Brown, the founder of the La Ca­sita His­pan­ic Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in Ari­ma, with sev­er­al of her friends from Venezuela and a few Trinida­di­ans spon­ta­neous­ly came to­geth­er for the love of Car­ni­val and J’Ou­vert and played mud mas in Port-of-Spain and the bor­ough.

This year she al­so brought out a kid­dies’ Car­ni­val band for the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty with sup­port from Trinida­di­ans.

Yes­ter­day the band Los Buenos So­mos Mas (Most­ly The Good Ones) had their first bap­tism of fun at First Cit­i­zens Ju­nior Pa­rade of the Bands at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain, and to­day they will be play­ing mas in the streets of Ari­ma and around the Princess Roy­al Park (Ari­ma Sa­van­nah).

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the cen­tre and mas camp at Pro-Queen Street in Ari­ma, Briceno-Brown, who is mar­ried to a Trinida­di­an and liv­ing in Trinidad for 19 years, said

"We have chil­dren in the band, the ma­jor­i­ty are Venezue­lan but there are Trinida­di­an chil­dren al­so, from three years to 15 years. Car­ni­val is all about cul­tur­al ex­change and mu­tu­al re­spect.

"We will be blend­ing the na­tion­al em­blems, birds like Trinidad's scar­let ibis and Venezuela's trou­pi­al, flow­ers like the or­chid Cat­t­leya mossi­ae, Trinidad's cha­co­nia and if we have time to make them, the coat of arms of the two coun­tries to show in­te­gra­tion.

"We hope the chil­dren en­joy them­selves, have a good time, learn how to jump up and learn about the tra­di­tions of Trinidad Car­ni­val."

Briceno-Brown said large cities like Mara­cai­bo, her home town, and Cara­cas held pa­rades with schools and dancers par­tic­i­pat­ing with dif­fer­ent types of mu­sic. In some cities there are pa­rades with cul­tur­al groups, schools, and bands.

She said each re­gion of Venezuela host­ed its own type of Car­ni­val fes­ti­val, and some of the small­est towns threw the biggest par­ties. She said the dif­fer­ence in Venezuela was that you can buy any out­fit and go in the pa­rade. She said peo­ple buy cos­tumes of com­ic book char­ac­ters such as Spi­der-Man and wear them.

Briceno-Brown said the Car­ni­val in coastal cities like Tu­cu­pi­ta and Guiria were sim­i­lar to T&T's as Venezue­lans came to Trinidad to buy ma­te­r­i­al for com­pe­ti­tions.

Briceno-Brown said many Trinida­di­ans were liv­ing in Venezuela, her great-grand­moth­er was Trinida­di­an who went across to Venezuela dur­ing the oil boom in the 70s and they had a cross-in­flu­ence of cul­ture and com­merce trav­el­ling be­tween the two coun­tries.

Briceno-Brown said when she came to Trinidad, she knew what Dame Lor­raine was be­cause that was the nick­name they used to call her moth­er; La Madama.

She said Venezuela had La Bur­riq­ui­ta, that was fa­mil­iar to Trinida­di­ans and in­dige­nous stick fight­ing called juego del gar­rote (stick game).

She said the first year her friends played J'Ou­vert in Ari­ma and Port-of-Spain in 2018, there were 25 of them. Last year there was al­most 100 Venezue­lans and Trinida­di­an friends who came out to play mud mas and she had a lot of ex­pec­ta­tions this year for her J'Ou­vert and kid­dies' bands.

Briceno-Brown said the first year their theme was "The Melt­ing Pot," the sec­ond year was "Nat­ur­al Dis­as­ter" be­cause of the po­lit­i­cal up­heaval in Venezuela and the cir­cum­stances that forced them to come to T&T as they want­ed to sur­vive, and this year it's called "Los Buenos So­mos Mas" (Most­ly The Good Ones).

She said the theme came about from many of the Venezue­lans who came—they are pro­fes­sion­als, pos­sessed knowl­edge and skills that can help con­tribute to the coun­try and they want­ed to cov­er some of the "bad news" with good, pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ences.

The ac­tivist and for­mer mul­ti­me­dia jour­nal­ist said for many years La Ca­sita as­sist­ed the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty, but now with an in­flux of Venezue­lans, it be­came more crit­i­cal.

Briceno-Brown said they were try­ing to as­sist as best as they can—be the voice of many peo­ple who have no say, try­ing to help those who don't know what to do, who to turn to, the lan­guage bar­ri­er, the lack of knowl­edge of T&T's rules and reg­u­la­tions.

She said La Ca­sita al­so pro­mot­ed the cul­ture and tra­di­tions of Venezuela and T&T.

Mas lovers are in­vit­ed to the open house at La Ca­sita to watch the Car­ni­val pa­rade.