The Dark Face of Brazil's Carnaval

Airplanes full of hopeful revellers descend on Salvador, Bahia, Brazil,
in the days before Carnaval anticipating the best time of their lives.
While posh and exclusive hotels are claustrophobically booked up,
many of the poor sleep tucked away in the "safety" of alleyways,
next to dumpsters, on top makeshift garbage bag mattresses.

Rayme Samuels

Americans and Europeans flock to Rio de Janeiro every spring to celebrate Carnaval. Brazilians know better and go to Salvador. The capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, Salvador is hailed as Brazil's real party capital during the days before/after Lent.

Days spent sleeping off hangovers at one of the cities countless exquisite beaches, followed by nights of dancing, drinking, and kissing other beautiful Brazilians until dawn.

These activities comprise the "rigorous" routine of Carnaval. A whole year of planning, pre-parties, and hype result in blissful seven days of happiness. It's a party that goes unmatched in intensity and size anywhere else in the world.

But how exactly does Carnaval in Salvador work? At least a month before the fiesta, construction crews get to work. The always sunny main streets of Salvador are lined with camarotes—exclusive VIP boxes where Carnaval goers can watch the festivities with a sense of safety and comfort above the madness below. One pays a set fee before Carnaval to ensure nights of safe dancing, eating, and drinking with some of the most important people in Brazil.

But for the more adventurous at heart, there lies an even better option to revelling in the festivities of this annual bash. Every year, the best singers and bands in Brazil sing to the masses atop of large floats, while those who can afford it pay to wear the bands signature T-shirt and follow the group along on foot for all the days of Carnaval.

The official music of Carnaval in Bahia is called pagode, a slower reggae influenced variation of samba with sexually charged lyrics. Ivete Sangalo, a spicy Baiana with a nationally recognized voice, and Chiclete com Banana, the Brazilian version of Rolling Stones, demanded the highest numbers of eager and fit followers this past year. Trails of up to 3,000 people per band bounced along after flashy and speaker laden floats, during every day of Carnaval.

Popular media images of Carnaval in Salvador da Bahia show Brazil's gente bonita, the international definition of the exotic: the most beautiful and perfectly tanned racially unidentifiable long haired women that the country has to offer alongside of their equally attractive male counterparts.

Needless to say, the thought of mixing with these specimens piques the interest of many international tourists. The easily marketable and sexy image of Carnaval helps the celebration grow bigger and bigger every year. Yet in a city of two million people, 80 percent of them of African descent, there are little to no black faces included in Carnaval broadcasts.

Is it possible that a whopping 80 percent of the Salvador's residents leave Carnaval for the hectic seven days of revelry? Yes, many blacks leave the city to make way for tourists from other parts of Brazil and few international tourists that are in the know about Brazilian affairs.

Carnaval's Ugly Side

Unfortunately, the dark side of Carnaval in Salvador is exactly that, dark. Dark faces sleeping in dark alleys, serving dark drinks, dark clothing and dark skin caked with dirt. It is not an understatement by any means to say that black equals poor in Bahia. It is the reality of a country shaped by slavery, a struggling economy, and centuries of racism.

Airplanes full of hopeful revellers descend on Salvador in the days before Carnaval anticipating the best time of their lives. Poor people from the periphery cannot afford the extravagance of taking the bus miles into the city center to set up for the quasi lucrative benefits of working during Carnaval.

Families walk for hours with the hopes of making a marginal profit for six days of working, providing drinks, local food, and security for people who don't even think twice about the luxury of being able to afford a one dollar can of soda.

While posh and exclusive hotels are claustrophobically booked up, many of the poor sleep tucked away in the "safety" of alleyways, next to dumpsters, on top makeshift garbage bag mattresses.

While the tourists and upper-class Bahians spend their days relaxing on the beach and their nights flirting and dancing, there are families of dark faces resting on the street, lying on top of cardboard boxes and garbage bags to get comfortable.

Lost little children roam the streets during the height of the Lent celebrations begging everyone they see for money to buy food, bottle cans to trade in for pennies, and that last sip from a water bottle. Kilos and kilos of cans are collected by children and the elderly every day.

In the early morning hours as the party has died down for the day, these same families can be seen rummaging through garbage cans for scraps of food to feed their beautiful yet hungry babies.

Hundreds and hundreds of cans of beer are sold by young fit street touts that sometimes don't even break even in their earnings. The reality of the failing capitalism in Brazil can be too much to bear when malnourished children can be found on every street corner.

Hard Times

With an illiteracy rate of more than 40 percent in the city of Salvador and unemployment at equally astonishing highs, it is amazing to witness the remarkably strong will of Bahia's black population to overcome their living situations and provide decent homes for their families.

Sadly, there are many factors including lack of money and access to healthcare that constantly impede the success of these ostracized communities. Not to mention the police.

During Carnaval, throngs of military police walk in groups of 5 to 10 men wearing helmets and camouflage and carrying rifles, batons, and pistols. The experience of a festival that celebrates inhibitions and merriment juxtaposed with menacing troops throws off the mood of those revellers sober enough to notice.

Police trucks are full of young poor black men that are locked behind bars as they watch the city party through the evening. It is a not so urban legend in Salvador that four black boys are ruthlessly murdered by the police every night of every year. There is an undeniably eerie undertone of poverty and oppression that undermines the joyful and carefree pretensions of one of the worlds most sought out parties.

Carnaval is a visual manifestation of the problems of Salvador and Brazil. The city is unjust and unfair and Carnaval throws these inequalities into the light for the world (or maybe just Brazilians) to see. The astonishingly obvious injustices of the world's largest afro-Brazilian city go unnoticed year after year by millions of tourists and locals.

Race and class issues, like in most countries, play a huge role in the social problems of Brazil. Salvador da Bahia, a city with a majority black population, has a ridiculously low number of ethnic minorities in political or economic power.

Access to public universities is extremely biased, leading the nations of black youth to dream of careers in the entertainment and sports disciplines: the only fields where blacks are praised and welcomed in the country. This city with a famed international reputation for being a racial paradise, does not even come close to fulfilling this title.

Luckily the creation of afro-Brazilian community groups, theatre, and political groups are raising awareness on the heightened injustices that take place every year during Carnaval in Bahia. The paradox of Carnaval experiences for rich and poor, white and black, will soon come to an end. In the beautiful city of Salvador, there lies a glimmer of hope for the future.

Rayme Samuels is a journalism student at the University of Westminster in London, England. Last spring, she spent the semester abroad in São Paulo and Salvador, Brazil and independently travelled throughout the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia and Ceará. As a native New Yorker, she enjoys travel, language, and writing about her experiences, however complex they may have been. Please feel free to contact Rayme with any questions or comments at raymesamuels@yahoo.com.