Imagine that you are standing inside a building the size of an airplane hangar, and that you are surrounded by gigantic musical instruments -- guitars, mandolins, french horns, piano keys. That’s the fantasy world in which Rigoberto Lewis has been living for the past five months, for he is the designer and the creator of almost all the floats that paraded down the malecon during Carnaval Mazatlan 2001. Dr. Lewis, a retired dentist, explained that he selected the theme for this year’s edition of Carnaval, “. . .And let the music play,” because “when you think about it, our best moments in life have music in them.” To come up with the ideas for his mobile flights of fancy, he said he “traveled mentally to the time of Vivaldi, of Bach, of Beethoven, to imagine what kinds of worlds they lived in when they wrote their music. The best of music, you know, is cosmic -- a gift from God.” That may be his inspiration, but turning his ideas into tangible creations on parade floats requires plenty of cardboard and papier mache. Never plastic, said Dr. Lewis, “I just don’t like to work with plastic.” His workshop was a warehouse on the docks of the Port of Mazatlan, and in the final days before the first of the two Carnaval parades his crew was working long hours to finish the 29 floats (of a total of 34) he designed for this year’s parades. A craggy mountain, when you looked at it closely, was just an artfully arranged pile of cartons that

had been smashed and dented. The posts supporting the railing around the deck of a Mississippi steamboat (to represent jazz in the parade) were mere cardboard cutouts that wouldn’t stand up to a brisk wind. In a way, these creations that Dr. Lewis makes year after year are minor masterpieces, and you wonder if it doesn’t sadden Lewis to realize that after all the work of making them, they last for only a few days. But the thought didn’t seem to faze him. As he put it, “A bouquet doesn’t last very long, either, yet that doesn’t keep people from buying flowers.” The doctor inherited his last name from his great grandfather, an Englishman who owned a substantial goldmine in El Rosario. Lewis himself started sculpting and painting at the age of 11, he said, receiving formal training in the arts in Mexico City and always had a gift for design. “I’ve been making Mazatlan’s carnival floats since 1960,” he said, “and I think of them as my children. It gives me pleasure to see how happy they they make the people every year during the parades. It’s such fun to watch the crowd’s amusement when a tall structure on a float has to be bent back to clear the wires overhead. The queens’ floats are always the most elegant. I have made the royal floats for the past 40 Carnaval queens. “This is my life.” And now that Carnaval 2001 is just a memory, you can bet that at least one Mazatleco is already dreaming and planning, and in fact living, for Carnaval 2002.