‘Camarotização’ makes samba schools secondary, protagonists of the party – 01/03/2023 – Cida Bento

It was born in São Paulo, in the midst of Carnival, a movement to preserve the culture of black-African matrices in samba schools. It has a multidisciplinary character, focuses on gender and class and is a response to the racist statement of a samba school leader, trivializing the raised clenched fist gesture, which has characterized protests against racism for decades.

This movement materializes in the Permanent and Multidisciplinary Observatory to Combat Racism in the Carnival of the São Paulo Samba Schools, and its members, specialists and samba dancers delivered a letter of demands to the League of Samba Schools of São Paulo.

The Observatory will work on issues involving human relations and education on Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage within the management of Carnival at schools, including training and instruction for managers, association communities and Carnival contest judges.

The document points out that “the holders of power and management of Carnival are contributing to the erasure of the true history and social function of the samba schools as a network of sociability, territories where black men and women resisted, facing all sorts of violence and persecution to maintain their black-African heritage and form organizations that for a long time were criminalized and condemned by the white and racist elite”.

They emphasize the “whitening” of Carnival and the erasure of black history and narratives of this cultural heritage. In Carnival 2023, the consequences of a process of domination became evident, which for a long time removed the protagonism of the black population from the party in the Sambódromo”.

An example of this is the “camarotization”, which disrespects the show of the sambistas and the investment of the public in the stands, promoting an apartheid in which large companies offer high-cost shows and events, during the passage of the samba schools, making them secondary, when in fact they are the protagonists of the party. The precarious occupation of pushing floats is also included in the agenda.

Here, it is also worth remembering that this process of whitening and elitizing Carnival is not exclusive to the city of São Paulo, which may inspire similar initiatives in other states. At Salvador’s Carnival, for example, it is noteworthy that the “noble” seats on the electric trio are almost 100% white. And that the lambs are black and black, people responsible for holding the rope on the blocks to separate those who paid (almost 100% white) from the rest of the revelers. This in a city where more than 80% of the population is black.

And, in Rio de Janeiro, as the singer Tereza Cristina, the comedian Yuri Marçal and the writer and actress Elisa Lucinda recently pointed out on their social networks, all the jurors for this year’s Carnival were white people. Outraged, Lucinda wrote on Twitter: “Great connoisseurs of Carnival and studious thinkers of popular culture, people really prepared to be parade juries and who are solemnly ignored in favor of that white body of judges…”.

She also stresses: “The same sadness fills my chest when I see the football crowd at Maracanã today. It definitely does not look like the Brazilian people”.

Finally, what is considered “the greatest show on earth”, which moves us by its grandeur, inventiveness and beauty, which tells the country’s history in a vibrant, engaging and often critical way, and which moves the country’s economy like no other event, also has numerous contradictions.

And we have to talk about them to change this scenario. And the Observatory could be an important step towards starting a time when the richness of our culture in all its multiplicity is recognized, where it has always been.

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