Brazil’s notoriously bacchanalian carnival is more political than usual this year with organisers and revellers tackling sexism, homophobia, Donald Trump and the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff.
The mood was evident at Occupy Carnival and anti-government parades in São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Rio ahead of the world’s biggest street party, which officially starts on Friday.
Some revellers in sombreros carried mock-ups of Trump’s proposed Mexican border wall scrawled with his racist and sexist comments. Others wore costumes highlighting the alarming wealth gap in Brazil.
Roseanna Martins was with a group of female friends dressed as the rich, pampered wives of corrupt politicians – complete with plastic champagne flutes and even a security guard – at a street party, or bloco, in Rio’s middle-class Laranjeiras neighbourhood last Saturday. “Many people are showing discontent,” the teacher said.
One party on Friday is called Temer Out, echoing the leftist rallying cry calling for Rousseff’s unpopular replacement, Michel Temer, to be ousted. The slogan was also chanted by a huge crowd at the Cordão de Boitatá bloco in central Rio last Sunday and “coup-monger out” was written in gold on one of the parade’s colourful standards.
“Carnival is a mirror of what we dream will happen one day with society,” said Tomás Ramos, one of the organisers of Occupy Carnival, a group that helps a network of dozens of blocos articulate anti-government arguments.
Rio’s street parties have long touched on political themes. After the 9/11 attacks, some people dressed as Osama bin Laden. Last year, in the midst of Brazil’s vast Lava Jato – or car wash – corruption investigation, parades featured giant dolls of the prosecutors, police and judges involved in the case.
Vágner Fernandes, an author and the president of the Timoneiros da Viola bloco, said the political element may seem more prominent this year because the country was going through the worst crisis he could remember. “Carnival is there to exorcise all the demons of day-to-day life,” he said. “It’s an occasion for reflection through joy. That may seem paradoxical, but in Brazil we express all the bitterness while laughing and jumping around.”
Some carnival organisers said the political dimension reflected bigger issues being fiercely debated in Brazil. “We need to talk about prejudice,” said Rodrigo Bento, an organiser of the São Paulo bloco Pilantragi, whose theme at last Sunday’s parade was “love yes, homophobia no”. “Carnival is an opportune moment to remind people who maybe never had any relationship with the cause,” Bento said.
A campaign under the hashtag #CarnavalSemAssedio – meaning harassment-free carnival – has taken off among Brazilian women fed up with the aggressive approaches men traditionally adopt in the charged atmosphere of carnival.
The campaign’s samba anthem – a duet by Bruna Caram and Chico César called Se Você Quiser (If You Would Like) that gently explains the difference between flirting and harassment – has been watched more than 500,000 times. “People grab women by the arm, pull them by the hair, at times force a kiss,” said Letícia Bahia, the institutional director of the feminist magazine Azmina, one of the campaign’s organisers. “You realise that the guy doing it does not see it as an aggression. For him it is normal, an expression of carnival.”
The campaign began at last year’s carnival, when calls to a helpline for women to denounce violence increased 221%. This year it has exploded. In Belo Horizonte, a group called As Minas do Carnaval de Belô (Belo Carnival Girls) has produced its own video manifesto, complete with costumed dancers and music. “I am a carnival lover,” it explains. “But don’t touch me without my permission.”
Some blocos have changed the words to traditional songs seen as sexist or homophobic.
Bianca Behrends, a historian, said carnival had a long tradition of good-humoured social criticism. Recently, this has been largely absent from the main samba school parades at the Sambódromo due to the event’s commercialisation. But this year two of the big schools address politically sensitive themes: Imperatriz will highlight the plight of indigenous tribes in the Amazon and Beija-flor will focus on miscegenation.
But it is the street parties that more forcefully echo popular sentiment. “In Brazil as a whole, people are disillusioned,” Behrends said. “You change gender, parties, the situation – but everything is still so bad, nothing works. People are saturated, and now they are on the streets, criticising this in their own way.”
