Marketing Mardi Gras: Heritage Tourism In Rural Acadiana

Western Folklore, Summer 2003 by Ware, Carolyn E

In reality, Mardi Gras participants, local promoters, and state tourism officials alike recognize that Mardi Gras runs cannot easily absorb hordes of tourists, and tour buses would soon overwhelm any courir. Cajun folklorist and cultural activist Barry Ancelet notes that unless the flow of "casual visitors who want only a brief brush with the Cajun experience" is carefully channeled, tourists "end up in real places" (1992:258) like community Mardi Gras runs, where they may displace locals. Shane Bernard (2003) describes an incident in Mamou in which a busload of tourists unknowingly disrupted a local Mardi Gras dance; as they took over the dance floor, they marveled that so few locals were dancing.

Bruce Morgan has served as head of communications at the Louisiana Office of Tourism for the last twenty-seven years, and much of his job involves orienting travel journalists to Louisiana culture. he feels strongly that tourism agencies should play a "cultural conservator role," in his words. he calls cultural promotion a "very narrow line you walk," and remarks, "You don't want to over promote or you don't want to over-stimulate those who are being promoted" (Morgan 9-25-01). Otherwise, he says, "You end up distorting the product itself, as well as having either an adverse effect or an unintended effect on the culture that you're supposedly trying to help." Mr. Morgan comments that he sees Mardi Gras courirs as essentially private events with strong community support. He says, "I don't think that this was ever intended to be a public show. So why make it a public show? What's the point of creating a tourist attraction out of something that is not public? That would be to me the same thing as having paparazzi come to a mass" (ibid.). On the other hand, he feels that Mardi Gras festivals and fairs purposely created as public events are a positive development.

A number of rural communities have structured just such tourist-friendly public events around their Mardi Gras runs. Street dances, fairs, jam sessions, and other activities offer visitors a limited and mediated brush with the celebration. Most Mardi Gras runs leave town early in the morning, wind through the countryside for many hours, and return to town that afternoon to parade on foot, horseback, or in wagons. Downtown events keep tourists occupied-and spending money on food, drink, and souvenirs-until the courir returns. Visitors can then enjoy a parade of the "real thing" as maskers pull them into a dance and beg from them (Ancelet 1992). These events not only make Mardi Gras more accessible to tourists, they act as buffers for the runs. They are, as Ancelet observes, "ingenious ways of keeping [visitors] out of the way of what is going on" in the country (1992:260).

For years, horseback Mardi Gras runs in Mamou and Church Point publicly represented the Cajun Mardi Gras celebration. Recently, other communities have also carved out their own Mardi Gras identities and become tourist destinations. Eunice and Iota are two prominent examples. Organizers in both communities see Mardi Gras tourism as a source of income, but also as a chance to engage and educate locals. The specific contours of tourism in each place are shaped by organizers' motivations, resources, choices, and visions of the event.