Carnaval de La Habana

Havana's carnival traces to sixteenth-century cabildos de nacion, sanctioned Afro-Cuban cultural societies whose Day of Kings processions evolved into today's seven traditional neighborhood comparsas, Los Dandys de Belen and Villa San Cristobal among them, accompanied by conga rhythms and military bands, with the modern celebration shifted to August after the 1959 revolution changed its earlier calendar.

Havana's carnival traces to sixteenth-century cabildos de nacion, mutual-aid societies organized by enslaved Africans and their descendants along shared ethnic lines, which were granted permission during Day of Kings and Carnestolendas festivities to publicly perform their own cultural and religious traditions, a rare sanctioned outlet within a slave society.