Creamfields Wasteland: A Short Parable

Creamfields Perú, 2011: I could tell you about how my roommates and I prepared for the all-night electronic concert by sleeping all day, shoveling heaping forkfuls of pasta in our gullets and smuggling cereal bars into the remotest pockets of our purses.  I could tell you about how David Guetta got the party started with his Top 40 dance hits and spark-shooting robot aides. I could tell you about the performances of other main stage dance DJs—John Digweed, Laidback Luke, Afrojack.  But instead, I want to tell you a precautionary tale.

Entering Fundo Mamacona (the Creamfields venue) on Saturday night was like locating paradise for twenty-somethings along the Panamericana Sur highway: balmy air, well-manicured lawns, skyscraping palm trees and free cigarettes at the entranceway; stands selling beer, Red Pull, pizza and anticuchos (shish-kebab cow heart) to nourish the mobs throughout the night; tarps laid down in front of the staging areas to catch the fallen debris from careless, hungry/thirsty hands.

At first, the tarp ingenuity seemed to work.  When we stole away to the central open area from the bobbing sea of bodies after Guetta´s set, there was plenty of space to accommodate or group.  We sat cross-legged or stretched out on the grass, idyllically sipping on our beers, breathing in the springtime air, and listening to the pulsing music from afar.

But the harmony between man and nature did not last.  The more beers consumed, the more plastic cups disposed.  Garbage cans piled over.  With the constant movement, the tarps did not catch the debris as anticipated. All of the trash migrated to border between tarp and grass, creating junk fences for concert-goers to leap over on their travels to and from the staging area.

The mobs must have gotten hungry during the second and third sets, because the next time we went in search of green space, plates and personal pan pizza boxes littered the lawn. You had to kick the orphaned cardboards out of the way to make a suitable space to sit, while lying down lost its allure entirely.  When the sun came up again, there were no clean spaces in which to sit at all: bodies still rested, but they slept with plastic pillows.

Sure, sure, I know recklessness is the object of any all-night concert, and that teams of cleaning crews would be coming in the next day to restore the garden to its original pristine state; by the following nightfall, there´d be no traces of the Creamfields wasteland at all.  But where would be that garbage´s final destination, and who would be swooping in then to clean things up?