Sexy Catholic, Part Two: Be Pushed.

When I first interviewed almost three years ago for my job here in Rio at the co-living space situated inside of a favela, Adam my boss, described Rio to me as sexy catholic. He was apprehensive to hire me because he assumed that with my degree in Religious Studies and desire to go into further religious pursuits, the culture here might be… offensive. This surprised me.

According to the 2010 census, 90% of Brazilians consider themselves to be Christian, compared to the 75% and declining numbers in the U.S.. Brazil has the highest global population of Catholics at 123 million! So how could a country that was more “Christian” than my own be offensive to me as a Christian? This crux, is where I find myself today. And it is in that unique, sexy, catholic juxtaposition, where Brazilian carnival lives. It is raucous, African, colorful, vivacious, surreal, sparkly, smart, loud, empowering, dazzling, tragic, European, seductive, black, brown, Latin, and beautiful.

So back to our carnival unfolding right? Why the heck Emily did you just start Part Two of a carnival blog posts talking about religion?? Well, I will give you three reasons why, then let’s dive deep shall we?

1. African Religions play a pivotal roll in defining Brazilian carnival. Unlike carnival celebrations in other South American countries, or in Europe, we see overwhelming African influence in Brazilian celebrations.

2. There is a current resurgence of a “Christian-led” far-right . How is that influencing carnival celebrations?

3. I am an avid student of religion, and hope to take this to the graduate level next year. Learning how religion brings people together and tears people apart is part of the process to bring peace.

Now, let’s go back to that glorious Sunday night and our drenched seats at the Sambódromo. Where we last left off was after the very first school, well they kept coming. The next Samba School was:

Unidos do Viradouro

The twelve dancers that kicked off Viradouro’s school were starkly contrasting what we had seen with Império Serrano. Their magnificent song (that is another KEY criteria for each school, original composition of a new samba song each year] was called Viraviradouro! And the story that they told with 7 floats and thousands of dancers was EVERY STORY from your childhood. Yes they brought to life children’s books, fables, and Disney movies, and it was mind blowing. Their parade commenced with a small boy opening up a children’s book and 10 handsome princes appearing. They were followed by 10 witches on elevated smoking cauldrons, brewing up some evil plot to kill them all. The princes were then transformed into…. Can you guess it? Frogs! And hopped away so Viradouro’s first float, a giant sparkling globe topped with a crown and over twenty female dancers dripping in golden feathers could take center stage. As if the giant globe wasn’t enough it was towing an even larger float which was a whole library that I’d guess was around 60 feet high and flanked with dancers on wires that rose up, and down the length of the 60 feet, while dancing. When their feet touched the ground they were given around 15 seconds to samba on land, before their wire would snap them back up the bookcase, and they would become part of the library of books once again.

What I can only compare it to is if you have ever paid an obscene amount to go see Cirque de Soleil, and in anxious and excited anticipation had your mind dazzled and rocked for their two hour performance. Well, that is but a mere fraction, like .009 percent of what Rio’s Samba school’s lay on the floor at the Sambódramo. It is the most magnificent production in the world.

Following the glittering library was a Halloween float with 100 people dawning pumpkin heads ushering in a gigantic set of haunted houses, and witches flying high into the air on suspended broomsticks. Following that it got even BIGGER! A Pirates of the Caribbean float spewed water into layers of a tiered pirate ship flanked by goblins, and a shipmate that swung around the entirety of the sinking watery ship on a rope (we are talking a 360 degree circle 60 feet in the air.)

For each float there are 500 dancers grouped into segments of one hundred. So for each one hundred dancers you have a different costume that tells the story of the float you are about to see. (So let’s do the math, that would be around 30 different styles of costumes and over 3,500 costumes in total!)

This is also part of the judging criterion. The order of each massive Samba School is roughly the same:

- 12 Dancers

- 2 Flag Bearers

- Opening float

- 500 dancers

- 2 flag bearers

- Second Float

- 500 dancers

- Third Float

- 500 dancers

- 2 flag bearers

- Fourth Float

- 500 dancers

- Fifth float

- 500 dancers

- Sixth float

- 500 dancers

- Maybe 7th float

- 500 hundred dancers

From that framework each group can be held to the same judging criteria. Which brings us to samba school number FOUR and the first in our categories:

1. African Religions and their ties to the history and culture of samba and carnival.

The fourth School to roll out that evening (for the sake of time and content I am skipping over school number three which was Grande Rio) was Salgueiro. Now this is when the crowds really went wild. The clock hit midnight, everyone has a good buzz going, and now the heavy hitter schools were about to perform.

Salgueiro’s theme was: XANGÔ, the Orisha of Justice.

Orishas are deities in human form from African religions. Salgueiro’s performance was going to tell the creation story from African religions through the illumination of the Orishas. Their first twelve dancers were African warriors resembling Xangô, fierce, golden, and wise. Their movements were strong and pronounced as they danced along side a moving float that appeared to be a giant sacred text. The doors were pried open to reveal inside the God Oba, with a long grey beard sitting in contemplation and power. The doors were closed shut by the warriors after moments of awing and ooing from the crowd, the 50-foot book spun around to be opened again, revealing a much different scene. Black men dressed in 1930s circus performer outfits dancing atop a tiny drum in black face, with imagery of favela housing behind them. This gross and real contrast of realities was artistically genius at is mockery and ability to make you sad and sick simultaneously. The ancestors of royalty, with elaborate and beautiful religions and diverse beliefs and backgrounds, minimized to consumer products.

Many of the slaves who came to Brazil were from what are now the Congo and Angola. Kings and Queens of nations were ripped from one another and tribes were mixed up on the slave ships to begin the horrific process of dehumanization. Slaves from different tribes could not speak the same languages on the giant vessels making communication difficult and the deafening isolation amplified. Rio received over 1 million of those slaves at its downtown port alone.

On my tour of Rio’s Little Africa, the Thursday before Carnival began, Gabriela Palmera, our tour guide, of the company Sou Mais Carioca, brought us to the center of Rio to Cais do Valongo on Av. Baral de Tele. (If you come to Rio, DEFINITELY book a tour of Little Africa to let the untold history of Rio sink into you physically.) Cais Valongo is now recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site, but for over one hundred years it went unmarked. It is the naval port where over one million slaves were brought into Rio from Africa. Following abolition there were efforts by the succeeding mayors of the city to cover up slavery all together. The auction square was turned into a park to resemble those in Paris. This port was covered up with buildings and the waterline increased to build more land and roadways.

In 2012 when construction was underway for the Olympics, pieces of the naval port were unearthed and archeologists marveled at the paramount historical significance of the site, which a small chain linked fence now surrounds. Juxtaposition is a word that nestles into he heart of Brazilian daily life.

Carnival is no exception. It toys with the word and puts it on show. Juxtaposition lives and breathes in the feathers of the iconic dancers that tell the elaborate history of slavery, and murder. Juxtaposition is woven into the fabrics that cost the city billions of dollars in both legal and corrupt funds.

Sexy, catholic. Sexy, sad. Sexy, suffering.

A stark contrast to the largest sporting event in the U.S, the only thing I can possibly compare to the scale of the Samba Parade- The Super Bowl. This year players who wished to take a stand at the iconic game, or rather a knee to violence against black men, were asked to do so behind closed doors. The NFL made a head nod to the Civil Rights movement by asking Corretta Scott King, Ambassador Andrew Young and Representative John Lewis to do the coin toss, but there was no kneeling allowed on the field. In Rio, the displays of intolerance are poked at, made naked, dressed up, amplified, covered in glitter and eloquently spoken. The levels of resistance on display in Rio’s samba parade are unparalleled in their creativity and boldness. Last year the school Paraíso do Tuiuti’s theme asked the question Is slavery really dead? Their one hour and fifteen minute performance told the history of global slavery, then magnified the history of slavery in Brazil from the foundation of the country, to ending with men and women carrying around favela homes with bars, resembling the housing injustice that still plagues the country. Their final float in their desfile, or parade, was the president as a blood-sucking vampire.

Mangueira did a similarly educational theme this year by outlining the “Storied Untold”, the histories black, poor and indigenous people in Brazil today. Their first float was ushered in by black and indigenous people of color, replacing the images of the colonizers faces with their own in the history books. A young girl appeared from inside the first float holding a new history book representing those left out, and when unfolded the book turned into a giant purple PRESENTE sign. The motto of the Marielle Franco movement protesting her death and raising awareness to black, LGBTQ and women’s rights issues. WE ARE HERE. Mangueria’s final float was dedicated to Marielle, the FIRST AND ONLY black, queer, favela-born, city council woman who was shot dead point blank last year, and whose killer still remains anonymous and uncharged. They had members of the LGBTQ community fly gigantic rainbow flags creating a river of color and the entry concluded with Marielle’s family marching with a giant Brazilian flag painted purple with the flag’s words “Ordem e Progresso” changed to “Indios, Negros, e Pobres”. (Indians, Blacks and the Poor)

“The parade comes at a time when the Brazilian far right, fueled by the newly elected Bolsonaro government, has weaponized one version of history to write a white, Christian and patriarchal past for Brazil. President Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s movement wants to say that Brazil is, and always has been, the legitimate heir to Western Civilization, erasing the history of indigenous and black peoples and denying the country’s diversity.” – Paulo Pachá, commenting on Mangueira’s performance in his article A parade to fight the far right, in the Washington Post.

Brazil like many countries around the world has a newly elected far right leader. President Bolsonaro in his first days of office, eliminated the office of Human Rights, to replace it with the Universal Church led “Office of the Family”. This new office stands against LGBTQ rights, legal abortion and sex education in the classroom. Bolsonaro has further armed the military police and allowed them to more recently use sniper rifles within favela communities. These are residential high-density neighborhoods, think snipers in the lower eastside in between apartments, like this is unheard of in a country not at war… Or is it??? To further silence his opposition, the dictador-esque leader has threatened to outlaw government opposition protests. In a time where more voices are being silenced, the samba parade provides a mega phone for marginalized communities.

This year after we left that rainy night that had turned into a glorious sunny morning, the last school was in the middle of their performance, telling the history of bread through stories of the Bible. We left the giant stadium as the golden sun illuminated purple clouds and cotton candy folds of daylight. We took the metro through Rio and ended up at Rafael’s father’s apartment where we had been staying that week. It was in a luxurious condominium nestled into a Sheraton Hotel. It was very, white, the favela where I had been staying was very black. There are many people today in Brazil, in the U.S., and in other racially diverse countries that claim because diversity exists, racism doesn’t. This is our biggest threat to the fight against racism. One glance at Brazil’s housing divide to begin to digest the explicit racism here. The housing violence committed here. ! By claiming racism’s non-existence, whether in Brazil, in the US, or in our local community, we can let ourselves off the hook. By saying “I have a black friend, so…” does not disqualify you from the hundreds of years of systematic conditioning that as left us as RACISTS. I AM RACIST. Say it, own it, and then take action around it. I cannot recommend enough Layla Saad’s Me and White Supremacy Workbook .)