Riosucio's principal attraction is the Carnival of Riosucio, also known as the Carnival of the Devil, that takes place every two years (in odd-numbered years) in early January. It is one of the best known and most popular carnivals in Colombia, along with those of Barranquilla, Manizales and Pasto. Unlike those large cities, however, the small town of Riosucio is not equipped to host the tens of thousands of visitors that descend on the town for the festivities, and consequently accommodation is extremely difficult to come by: most of the town’s hotels are fully booked months in advance, and many visitors resort to bringing a tent and camping where they can find space, or even simply sleeping rough on the streets.
The main participants in the processions are the cuadrillas: teams or squads of people, usually based around members of the same family or their relatives by marriage, who parade through the streets in costume on several of the carnival days. Although activities and partying take place all around the town, the focal points are the plazas outside the town's two main churches, San Sebastián (the red brick church of the upper town) and La Señora de la Candelaria (the cream and yellow painted church of the lower town), set just one block apart from each other. All the processions end at one or other of the plazas, and temporary stages set up in each plaza are used for the presentations made by the cuadrillas, and also for the live music and folkloric dance presentations that occur during the day and evenings of each day of the festival. The music is usually provided by salsa bands or chirimías - bands named after the woodwind instrument similar to a primitive oboe that they play, as well as guitars and drums.
With the exception of the Sunday, every day of the festival starts early and ends late. A musical band parades around town playing alboradas ("reveilles" or music at dawn) at 5 am each morning, and every night verbenas entertain the festival-goers with music for dancing late into the night. The official close to each day's events is midnight, but in practice impromptu verbenas carry on in the streets all night.
Although beer, rum and the staple Colombian liquor aguardiente are widely drunk, the traditional drink of the carnival is guarapo, a fermented sugar cane liquor traditionally drunk out of a gourd. This is the origin of the Gourd as one of the features of the carnival.
A large model of the Devil is the central figure of the carnival. There are also two other models: a She-Devil, and a Gourd. During the period of the carnival the Devil and She-Devil are not allowed to meet, and consequently the Devil is kept in one church square, and the She-Devil in the other square.
The carnival was declared an Event of Cultural Interest by the Colombian government in 2006.
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