Politics and sequins collide as Rio Carnival laments a country in crisis
It’s the Friday before the carnival parades begin in Oscar Niemeyer’s monumental 700 metre long Sambódromo stadium. This is the heart of Brazil. Samba itself was born a stone’s throw from the vast arena - between the shadow of the Christ statue and the spray of the Atlantic on the Pedra do Sal – or Salt Steps. This is where Africa arrived in greater numbers than anywhere else in the Americas.
Hidden in a cavernous warehouse near the Pedra do Sal, Afro-Brazilian workers from the Mangueira samba school are putting the finishing touches to their costumes and floats. There are giant painted heads, with tongues sticking out, a cartoon replica of the city’s striking Candelária church, and the familiar assemblage of glitz and glittering platforms.
At first glance it looks as familiar as football – no more than that seductive sparkle you see in every other image of Rio. But this year Carnival has changed. For the first time since Brazil became a democracy it’s gone political.
Crowning one of the floats is a Judas effigy, with the daubed-on face of the city’s mayor Marcelo Crivella, a dyed-in-the-wool evangelical Christian. Mangueira’s president, Chiquinho expects it to create a shock.
“Brazil is passing through a very difficult moment and there’s nowhere this is more obvious than Rio,” he says. “We have a mayor whose job is to promote the biggest street festival in the world. Yet he hates Carnival and all things Afro-Brazilian. He’s cut our budget. He’s trying to ban Afro-Brazilian troupes, to destroy the culture that defines us.”
The following Saturday night the parades begin. The whistles, the roar and the foot stamps are deafening. At least until the thunder of samba drums begin. Then a three-storey high float - built around a giant armadillo with a swinging head - wheels into the arena, surrounded by hundreds of costumed dancers. Behind them is a huge woman, muscular as a weightlifter, wearing little more than sweat and sequins. She’s dancing wildly, floating over the ground in a skip and whirl of samba steps.
More floats follow. Many are little more than colourful pageantry. But like Mangueira a few schools have broken with tradition. Their allegories have real social bite. The Salgueiro samba school celebrate African women as the womb of the world: pregnant dancers swing around poles on a three-storey float topped with giant African heads. Paraíso do Tuiuti depict Brazil’s President Michel Temer as a giant vampire. Beija Flor imagine Brazil as Frankenstein’s monster, created by Petrobrás – the company at the heart of the money laundering scandal which brought Dilma Rousseff’s government down in 2016.
Over the following three days the parades continue, culminating on Shrove Tuesday – Mardi Gras itself. You need a ticket to attend. But not everyone pays to celebrate. Out in the streets there are hundreds of free blocos (troupes). Some announce their routes only days before, and only in Portuguese. To find them you need to know someone who knows - like Rodrigo Vieira who specialises in underground Carnival tours.
“To really experience Carnival you’ve got to get beyond the Sambódromo. What makes the festival special is that it’s a huge democratic party where some 4 million people of all social backgrounds meet on the streets to dance, sing and have fun.”
But this year even the blocos are political. Banda da Concei??o process over the Pedra do Sal steps bearing yet another effigy of Crivella with demonic red eyes scrawled-in. Beneath the skyscrapers in Rio’s commercial centre, bloco Cacique de Ramos champion indigenous Brazil, and in Copacabana revellers gather around the drums of Afoxé Filhos de Ghandy – the most African of all the blocos.
“There’s a general sense of dissatisfaction with the way politics and economics are conducted here in Brazil,” says Barbara Fran?a dos Anjos, a strikingly elegant young fashion designer in the crowd, “and this goes hand-in-hand with the rise of a new middle-class made-up in great part of Afro-Brazilians like me who are looking to push against the racial divide that limits us.”
Only the carnival balls seem free of politics. The biggest and most lavish of all is in the Copacabana Palace ball. This is where Rio’s great, good and surgically-enhanced elite come to dance samba – in art deco ballrooms hung with glittering crystal chandeliers. Black waiters in black tie offer champagne and tables burst with sumptuous tiger prawns, steaming feijoada stews and tropical fruits.
By Ash Wednesday Carnival is over – but for one crucial event – apura??o. This is where the winners of the Sambódromo parades are announced: for Carnival is not merely a show. It’s a competition. Each samba school is part of a league, with the Grupo Especial (who parade on Sunday and Monday) comprising the Premier league. The stakes are high. Carnival in Brazil generates somewhere between ￡700 million to 2.5 billion pounds for the national economy, employing more than 24 thousand people. Hundreds of workers migrate south from the distant Amazon every year just to build the moving parts on the floats. Relegation from the Premier League a Mangueira supporter informs me, is like losing a beach front apartment in Ipanema for a flat in the city’s impoverished northern suburbs.
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The atmosphere at apura??o is fervid – wild cheering, pounding drums, firecrackers. Women in wigs, kilts and glitter-paint jeer and hurl insults at supporters from other schools. Huge shirtless men in pink Speedos and angel wings size each other up. Banners flutter, samba school flags wave. And then all goes silent as the judges announce their decisions. You could hear a sequin drop.
Everyone expects the schools with a strong political message to be ignored. Even relegated. But they triumph. Beija Flor are the winners, Paraíso do Tuiuti come second, Mangueira fifth. Carnival as politics has arrived with a beating. They rat-a-tat again with a wave of whoops, whistles and roaring cheers. A huge African-Brazilian wearing sunglasses grabs the carnival trophy and holds it aloft on bull-like shoulders. Everyone is a friend once again. And the cynicism and bitterness evaporate into that most Brazilian of all emotions. Hope.
In the cab on the way back to Copacabana even the driver is overwhelmed. “It’s the right decision he tells me, “the people’s choice. Now there is hope.”
Maybe. But “to hope” in Brazilian Portuguese is the same verb as “to wait”. And Brazilians have been waiting for a long time.
The winning samba schools parade at the Champions Parade on Saturday February 17
Behind the Scenes Carnival tours with Bravietour, bravietour.com.br
Revealed Travel can organise trips to Rio during Carnival including Sambódromo tickets and flights from London Heathrow. See its website for full details.
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