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Open Spaces and Carnival Icons
The most famous square in Salvador is called the Pelourinho (the
pillory column to which slaves were chained as public punishment). The
name now designates the whole central historical district. After gradual
social decline through the twentieth century, this formerly patrician
enclave of urban mansions had become a dangerous red-light district. As
pointed out in the 1960s by the famous Bahian novelist, Jorge Amado, it
was also the locus of cultural initiatives and a meeting place for
various Afro-Brazilian practices. Many European tourists were more
interested in this rich living culture than they were fearful, an
attitude contrasting strongly with that of most of the local white
elite, who avoided the area. This persistence eventually prompted the
local government to restore the area and catalyze a spectacularly
successful commercialization process. The area today has been reclaimed,
both for conventional tourism and for social recreation for the local
population, including both poor and rich.
Picture # 01. "A Streetcar named History" The trolley car in the foreground is festive, like a merry-go round, but may also be inspired in the saying "não perca o bonde da hist—ria" (don't miss the street-car of history"). Behind it on the left we see restored mansions and on the right the Casa Jorge Amado. In front of it, the decorations (forest, Indians, parrots, rainbow) are in fact a set, depicting the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil exactly 500 years earlier, in 1500. The set is not for a play - other than the carnival itself, a form of social theater.
Picture # 02 "500 years of '500 years' ". Perhaps the most famous singers in Brazil over the last 30 years are a group of Bahians who emerged in the 1960s in Bahia's first great cultural renaissance. Here we see Gilberto Gil (to the left), Gal Costa and Caetano Veloso. All are associated with the tropicalismo movement that simultaneously celebrated local ethnic and folkloric sources and mixed in eclectic electric sounds and psychedelia, while indirectly inferring the absurdity of the national pretensions of the military dictatorship. Gil and Caetano are fixtures of the Bahian carnival. For the "500 years" celebrations (500 years since the Portuguese "discovery"), they accepted invitations to this government sponsored float, which suggests Portuguese caravelas (ships) arriving in a tropical paradise, and a subsequent happy mixing of races (miscegenation). While carnival is about subverting a certain proprietary order, it is not a challenge to the political order. Here, Gil wears the costume of Filhos de Gandhy (see Picture # 03), a group he helped revive in the 1970s.
Picture # 03. "Reincarnation" This citizen is the mascot of the largest carnival club, Filhos de Gandhy (Sons of Gandhi), with up to 5,000 members, whose costume of white robes, beads for the *orixá Oxalá, and turban, is the same each year. It was founded by dock-workers in 1949, with a general mission of Afro-Brazilian representation and an ideology of social justice inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. It is an afoxé - it plays *Candomblé liturgical music in secularized festivities. The gent parades beneath a fake camel, with a little boy in costume on top. Despite the theatrical element of "impersonation", there is also an aspect of genuine reverence to this figure. Where is the line between fantasy and sacred ritual, especially when a group is involved? In a society where animist beliefs are widespread, "incorporation" of a god or of an ideological force or message is not inherently absurd or suspicious because "fake".
