Carnaval in Rio, February 7-13, 2013

 Carnaval is not what it seems. True, at its most obvious, it is the biggest party and parade in the world. The samba school competition and parade over 5 days during the week before Lent, begs superlatives to describe it. One has to see it to believe the magnitude, the gigantic proportion and the over-the-top costumes and floats of the event. Each night 6 samba schools will be announced with fireworks, and will parade down the half mile 72,000 capacity Oscar Niemeyer-designed Sambodromo grandstand, a behemoth spectacle organized around a theme, accompanied by a specially composed samba music, performed by a huge percussion and brass band, with a drum queen, selected after a fierce competition, with more than 3000 marchers in elaborate and themed costumes, about 7 giant floats, with movable parts, and smoke, boom, thunder and water show on some, and a group of lively crowd rousers. The huge ensemble completes the half mile with strict time schedule, and a night’s show lasts until dawn, from 9 PM-7 AM! We were comatose with sensory overload after the 3rd school, and had to get back to the hotel dazed and dripping in sweat and beer. Around 900,000 foreign tourists came to Rio and spent $42.7M on the parade and generated $628M for the city, and $3.2B for the whole country. Each Samba school spent $3-4M each to put on their show. Financing these gigantic productions had been a challenge for the Samba schools, especially for the lesser known, and drug and crime money had found its way in this arrangement of public grants, business sponsorships, community contributions and fund-raising, and thousands of volunteer manpower. The purist decry the commercialization, and the high price of participating. The ordinary carioca will have a hard time coming up with the cost of a Sambodromo ticket, and to march in the parade require buying the approved theme costume, and paying for the privilege. So it appears, the Sambodromo carnaval has left the people and gone corporate to serve the tourist industry. Still there were 5-6 million people who came to Rio to party in one of the 500 blocos, street parades approved by the city, scheduled throughout the different neighborhoods, where anyone can participate for free. These consist of thousands of sweaty bodies, with a can of beer in one hand, in various states of undress or in outlandish costumes, dancing to samba music from a loudspeaker on a truck, all in good spirits and determined to uphold Rio’s famed party culture intact. We managed to parade with the multibloco group in Lapa.That Sunday 19,000 tourists went offshore from 9 cruise ships, and the temperature reached 102 degrees F. Need I say more?

Carnaval week is a holiday. Most stores along parade routes are boarded up, for crowd control and protection. Police are visible, and porta-Johns are in strategic locations. There is a fine for urinating in the street, but you can still smell urine everywhere, and the following day, the accumulation of trash is too much for street sweepers to keep up with. In Cinelandia only restaurants and souvenir shops are open. Banks are closed, and since most ATM’s accepting foreign cards are in banks, we couldn’t withdraw $R. We wanted to visit Petropolis, the Imperial summer capital, but it was closed. In Copacabana, we caught some of the street percussion bands, and the crowds were not as thick as in downtown Rio, and there’s the nice boardwalk and the beach to cool off. We got the full flavor of the Carnaval by staying in Copacabana Palace no less, where to get a standing room ticket to their ball cost $R1750, which we couldn’t afford, and in downtown Rio in Cinelandia, the venue for the biggest bloco, O Cordao da Bola Preta, where 1.8M sambaed for free, and listened to free live bands and got drunk that Saturday until dawn.

We took the Metro from Cinelandia to Praca Onze, to the Sambodromo on Sunday for $R6.40 RT, to protest the $R140 price for the hotel shuttle. We were with hundreds of costumed passengers, and I still managed to get requests for pictures with my gigantic plumed orange Can-Can hat, purchased in a Lapa 2nd hand shop. It was so huge I couldn’t pack it, so I left it in my hotel room. We loved the visit to the hillside neighborhood of Santa Teresa, with its colonial houses, cobbled street, and boutique hotels and fine restaurants. One of the attractions for visiting is riding the tram where it will take you to the hilltop to get a spectacular view of Rio including Sugarloaf mountain and the Cristo Redentor on Corcovado. However, it was in rehab due to an accident last year, and it won’t be back in service until 2014. So in the summer sun we hiked up to the top but indeed was rewarded with the vista, and discovered an upscale watering hole on the way down in the Hotel Santa Teresa, where we made a Caipirinha rest stop, then finished the visit with seafood lunch at Sobrenatural. We had to squeeze into bikinis to be part of the Ipanema beach scene, and learned the ritual of ordering a mate com limao and biscoito globo from an orange-uniformed beach vendor. We did the obligatory pilgrimage to Corcovado to pay our respects to Cristo Redentor and to marvel at the 360 degree panorama of Rio. From afar, without the close-up view of the favelas.

 Rio is very dramatic and picture perfect, with buildings marching down on its mountainside and spilling into the sea, and greenery and stone outcroppings and the golden beaches surrounding its shores and islands and the sierras silhouetted in the horizon. Ah, the favelas. We were advised not to say it loud, for it is a disrespect to the people living in the sprawling slums of Rio and the rest of the urban centers of Brazil. The politically correct reference is the communidad. The politically correct propaganda also is that Brazil is racially democratic, meaning that Brazilians do not harbor racial prejudice towards one another, that if social mobility is impeded, it is due to socio-economic class, rather than racial factors. Nobody discusses race openly in Brazil. Unlike in the US where it is open and institutionalized, it is veiled and shamefaced in Brazil. Blacks comprise 51% of the population, but the overwhelming majority in the slums is Black, in the richer district, they’re only 7%. White income is more than double that of Blacks, in universities only 6.3 % are Black, and professors 1%. Brazil was the biggest importer of slaves until its abolition in 1888, 4.9M compared to less than 400,000 in the US. After abolition, freed slaves were not hired in the work force and not offered citizenship. Communities founded by runaway slaves, the quilombos, are only recently being recognized by the government and given access to services. Instead, there was a policy of “whitening” adopted. The government subsidized European immigration to replace the slave work force, with free passage and employment, in the hope that intermarriage would cancel out the Black race. The experiment failed obviously, and was abandoned to be replaced by the racial democracy concept. It passed anti-discrimination legislation in the 1950‘s and its 1988 constitution made racism a crime, however enforcement is rare. There is only one Black judge. In Dilma Roussef’s cabinet there is only one Black member among 38. Air travel is dominated by White ridership, magazine covers feature White models, TV and film stars, business executives and professionals have White faces, and upscale shopping venues and restaurants have White clientele and Black service workers. And the hardest thing to change of course is the attitude, just like in the US. The ruling White class just assumes that Blacks belong to the bottom rung of the ladder, and the lighter the skin color becomes, the higher one goes up the ladder. Slaves had regularly mounted rebellions during colonial times, and many escaped into the jungles and founded communities, so it is a puzzle why there is only a rudimentary movement in raising consciousness and activism among Blacks. The culture, music, and art being showcased in Brazil and identifies Brazil is the Black culture. It generates the multibillion dollar tourist industry, yet Blacks do not participate in its profits. This is compellingly stark in Salvador. When the city decided to refurbish Pelourinho to be a tourist destination, it evacuated the long-time residents of this decaying city who were mostly Black, and resettled them in the periphery, and isolated them from participating in the city’s renaissance. Pelourinho virtually has no local residents. It is populated by tourists, and it’s animation are created by business and restaurant owners and tourism officials who schedule events and programs to entertain tourists. It is Disneyland. Ironically, Pelourinho is named after the pillory that used to be in the town center, where slaves who transgressed were shackled and lashed publicly to instill fear and compliance from the others.

 Having said that, the people are very friendly and helpful, and indeed fun-loving and exuberant. We loved the food, and developed a taste for acaraje, feijoada, coxinha, and moqueca, among many, including churrascos. Muito bom. We got to know Carlinhos Brown, Ivete Sangalo, and more than samba, got to listen to trio eletrico, axe, and discovered Bel Borba and Jorge Amado.