{"id":20405,"date":"2015-02-26T09:55:32","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T12:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=20405"},"modified":"2015-02-26T13:08:56","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T16:08:56","slug":"a-needle-in-a-haystack-the-politicized-carnival-bloco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=20405","title":{"rendered":"A Needle in a Haystack: The Politicized Carnival Bloco"},"content":{"rendered":"

On February 12,<\/span>\u00a0the Marvelous City saw a\u00a0new street parade, or bloco<\/em>, join the other\u00a0456 blocos<\/em> of carnival. Participants\u00a0assembled in Largo da Carioca, in the city center<\/a> near the Carioca metro station. This bloco<\/em> was an initiative of a group called Occupy Carnival (Ocupa Carnaval)<\/a>, which describes\u00a0itself as a politically oriented group, in collaboration with the groups Comuna que Pariu<\/a>, Apafunk<\/a>, and Planta na Mente<\/a>, which fight\u00a0for women\u2019s rights, social equality, and the legalization of marijuana, respectively.<\/p>\n

The bloco<\/em> started out with seventeen people and, at its\u00a0apex, drew around\u00a0500. One\u00a0thousand people had signed up via the Facebook event page.\u00a0It was a politicized bloco<\/em>, with traditional carnival songs\u00a0presented with a twist in their lyrics. One of the musicians present said: \u201cWe can’t\u00a0forget about all the things and problems happening around us just\u00a0because we have carnival.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lyrics performed during the recent bloco<\/em> were often politically\u00a0explicit. \u201cCidade Maravilhosa,\u201d a famous song, had its lyrics rewritten as:\u00a0\u201cCrib of bullets and police trucks, stealing the peoples\u2019 souls. It\u2019s the altar of the great removals, done violently.\u201d Planta na Mente changed the lyrics of\u00a0\u201cAsa Branca” to say: \u201cWhen the red of your eyes is not blood on the floor.” A line from\u00a0\u201cCacha\u00e7a\u201d was rewritten as:\u00a0\u201cThe police tank kills.\u201d The three adapted lyrics reference police violence against the population of Rio. The performers also adapted\u00a0\u201cMam\u00e3e Eu Quero” to focus on the bus fare hike\u00a0from R$3.00 to $3.40 (USD$1.50 to $1.70) between 2014 and 2015 and ask: \u201cWho is going to pay taxes? Skip the turnstyle, skip the turnstyle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bloco<\/em>‘s songs\u00a0recalled the protest songs of the 1960s during the military dictatorship, songs written as part of the popular Bossa Nova<\/em> musical genre,\u00a0by politically and socially oriented musicians during that time, such as Chico Buarque and Elis Regina. Protest songs had implicit and explicit messages against government oppression and torture.\u00a0Lyrics such as, \u201cFather, take from me this chalice of red wine of blood\u201d from C\u00e1lice<\/em><\/a>, emphasized the torture and murder\u00a0of civilians that\u00a0occurred during the authoritarian regime, especially during the M\u00e9dici government. The Como Nossos Pais<\/em><\/a>\u00a0lyrics, \u201cWe are still the same as before and live like our parents,\u201d showed the pain suffered during the military dictatorship and argued that, even with Brazil’s efforts to develop economically and socially, the country\u00a0had stagnated and its citizens had become as conservative as preceding generations.<\/p>\n

The increase\u00a0in political tension between the Brazilian government and its citizens\u00a0re-erupted in\u00a02013<\/a>. In that year, there were protests\u00a0in almost every state in Brazil, with the largest nationwide occurring in Rio de Janeiro on June 20 with some 300,000 people. Some\u00a0referred to these collectively as the \u201cBrazilian Spring\u201d, “Vinegar Revolt,” the \u201cJune Journeys,\u201d and other names, and they sparked international attention as the largest protest\u00a0movement in the country since 1992’s calls for impeachment of then-president Fernando Collor. The demonstrations were sparked by announcements of a bus fare increase; they evolved into broader protests<\/a> against all malfunctioning parts of governance\u00a0and civic life, with a focus on poor quality public health and education, and huge expenditures associated with mega-events<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though police intimidation<\/a> has reduced protesting<\/a>, public frustration looms large. It is only a matter of time before it increasingly impacts the nature and frivolity of carnival. Or, perhaps, we are still the same as before and live like our parents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 12,\u00a0the Marvelous City saw a\u00a0new street parade, or bloco, join the other\u00a0456 blocos of carnival. Participants\u00a0assembled in Largo da Carioca, in the city center near the Carioca metro station. This bloco was an […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":20407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1333,1329],"tags":[1261,168,188,18,420,130],"writer":[1547],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-event-reports","8":"category-by-international-observers","9":"tag-central-rio","10":"tag-centro","11":"tag-history","12":"tag-protest","13":"tag-carnival","14":"tag-social-movements","15":"writer-camila-de-meo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20405"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=20405"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=20405"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=20405"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=20405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}