They love their burros in Colombia, and nowhere more so than in San Antero, a...(More)

They love their burros in Colombia, and nowhere more so than in San Antero, a small town on the Caribbean coast. They love them so much they built a statue to celebrate the "noble beast" and for four days at Easter every year the whole town goes donkey-mad with the world's only Donkey carnival. "At the beginning people just made fun of me," recalls Cristoval Correa of the first time he proposed the party more than 20 years ago. "But now look," he says proudly surveying the 400 or so donkeys and their owners readying themselves for the donkey stampede which kicks off the annual festivities. A few of the locals have really gone to town this year, dressing up their beasts as soap stars or paramilitary leaders in a bid to win the donkey costume competition. The original idea of the festival, explains Correa, "Was to protect the donkey;to stop it from going extinct." Oh kaye In any case, by this point Correa's floppy-eared little brainchild has taken on a life of its own. The 20th celebration of the National Festival of the Donkey was marked by the inauguration of the Burrodome, San Antero's own version of Rio de Janeiro's Sambadome. That's right, they built a stadium where man and beast can hang out together, grab a beer, and listen to Colombia's vallenato legends belt it out in competition for "King of the Donkey Festival." Despite the ready admission of many a Northern Colombian male to occasional (or frequent) dalliances with the brown beast, Correa is not happy with the implication that San Antero celebrates the animal due to collective zoophilia. "Please, it is a sacred being that has allowed the town of San Antero to be internationally recognised and has become a symbol of our community," he says. "Perhaps there were some indiscretions in the old days when sex was taboo and the kids could not have sex until they were 21, but not today." Incidentally, while he was carrying on at me attempting to debunk the myth, the mayor of San Antero was right next to us, handing out t-shirts with a donkey on the front surrounded by the words "A good Coste?±o never forgets his first love."(Less)