The calenda commences at Santo Domingo as it might for a wedding, but the enormous, spinning dolls are dressed in graduation garb, and the revelers don either cowboy hats and checkered shirts or the uniform of their profession: hard hats and work boots, doctor coats and comfortable shoes. For me, graduation season is somewhat unnerving for the abundance of alcohol and the inexperience of the revelers.
In a matter of minutes they can fill the pedestrian street, stopping cross traffic with their mad dancing and toasting to the rest of their lives.
They have every right to celebrate, but in less than an hour’s time, it looks like a battlefield out there. I emerge as the music dies down to watch people carrying their drunk and desperate colleagues off into the dark.