This past Sunday, during the opening day of the Special Group samba “escolas” parades for the Rio de Janeiro Carnival, criticism of censorship, racism, and discrimination in Brazil stood out. This marked the full return of the celebration after it had been postponed or severely curtailed for two years due to the Covid pandemic.

Salgueiro, a popular group born in a favela in the Tijuca neighborhood, took advantage of a song in tribute to Joazinho Trinta, a historic artistic director of one of these samba companies that was characterized by parades with strong social criticism that were even banned, to launch a shout against censorship.

The group mainly recalled a historic parade in which Trinta had to cover a gigantic reproduction of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer surrounded by rats and vultures with a black canvas, due to a veto imposed by the Catholic Church.

Against violence and intolerance

“What is prohibited is to prohibit,” he sang at the Salgueiro sambadrome, which also exalted the right of “those excluded to release their pain” and called for an end to “violence, oppression, and intolerance.”

The group also shouted against the different forms of discrimination; He included among his dancers a group representing the LGBT population eager to live in peace, and recalled in the lyrics of his samba that, “in the interest of those who want to judge, if each one has their way of being, the best thing is live without prejudice”.

“In my dream of king, I want a time of peace. War, hunger and misfortunes never again,” the group sang during a parade in which they first presented hell and then redemption thanks to the ability of the carnival to allow the relief of the people.

Salgueiro even brought a group to the sambadrome representing “hunger that kills more than any disease” and denouncing the “epidemic of misery and malnutrition” that Brazil faced again with the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro in power after Lula, who took office in January for his third term, removed the country from the world map of hunger.

Endurance

With the same critical tone, Mangueira, the most popular samba “escola” in Brazil, dedicated its samba and its parade to the forms of resistance of the blacks who came to Brazil as slaves and who still practice today to keep their ancestral customs alive. .

“The Africa that I recreated. Resisting is law, art and rebellion”, was the name of the Mangueira parade, recorded precisely by the black singer Margareth Menezes, Lula’s Minister of Culture.

In the parade, the various clubs, comparsas and groups were presented, such as the Timbalada and Ara Ketu musicals, in which the blacks of the Brazilian state of Bahia organized to exert resistance and keep their culture alive, and the laws imposed by the “white elite ” to dominate them, such as one from 1905 that prohibited the beating of African drums in the carnival.

The presentation also highlighted the aesthetic, political and racial revolution introduced in Brazil with the creation of the “blocos (comparsas) afros” in Bahia, the state with the largest Afro-Brazilian population in the country.

Contrary to forecasts of strong storms, which caused 36 deaths in the neighboring state of São Paulo and forced some cities to cancel their parties, the first night of parades at the Rio de Janeiro sambadrome passed without rain or incidents.

After the presentation of six “escolas” this Sunday, another six from the Special Group, a kind of first division, are scheduled for Monday night, and the juries will announce the new carnival champion on Wednesday and the two that fall to the second division.

The parades of the “escolas” of the Special Group, each with some 3,200 musicians, dancers and leading figures, as well as gigantic floats, are the main attraction of the Rio carnival and considered the world’s greatest outdoor spectacle.

In the two days of parades of the Special Group, some 35,000 samba players, 1,200 percussionists and 70 allegorical floats pass through the sambadrome for an audience of some 200,000 people, including those attending the special spaces mounted in the stands.

Source: EFE