Carnaval

So this is my blog. It begins now, 3 February, 2008, and I'm 26. It's 23:26 and I've a veritable boner. My blog!!!!!

First off, to those Brazilians still reading this and wondering why I'm being so fucking pretentious as to write in English... I'm pretentious, I intend this blog to be... yes... for FOREIGNERS!!! I actually think people of other nations, individuals other than my closest of friends, will read this. I also believe in the saci pererê, but only on leap years.

In any case, if you're having trouble with the English thing, you can translate this with Foxlingo, a Mozilla Firefox extension. But if my blog interests you that much, just fucking buy me a drink and let's go have sex already.

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The latest edition of Carta Capital (which, for those not in the know, is Brazil's only decent weekly) featured an article on a recent wave of protests that took over parts of the Pela-Porco favela (slum, or shanty town) in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, due to the assassination, on the part of the Bahia Military Police, of four young black males. The article is certainly revealing as inside much information can be gleaned, especially the fact that there are actually protests, not just episodes of crying in front of television cameras at the four mens' funerals. The situation is so fucked-up, so ridiculous, that several people have manifested themselves in all sorts of very unBrazilian ways (one of the boys' mothers, a handicap mother of 3 -now 2- is in hiding for fear of retaliation, since she has spoken to the press).

But, alas, this isn't what the current post is about. I got really interested in a YouTube post the article mentioned, entitled Carnaval 2007 - Salvador Negro Amor??? It reminded me exactly of why I hate (and I'm using the word hate, not detest or anything like that) Carnaval. It reminded me of why I sometimes (but only sometimes, mind you) hang my head when walking the streets of São Paulo (or any Brazilian city, for that matter).

The video, as one can see, details police acting during one or more Chiclete com Banana (a Brazilian axé band) shows in Salvador. More than that, it details the entire social dynamic of these concerts. What happens is that, to "jump" behind one of these shows during carnaval in Salvador (the band is playing atop a moving truck), you have to buy a shirt (an abadá) that could cost several hundred reais, maybe upwards of one thousand. A rope is then set around the people who have the abadás (the green and blue shirts in the video) and anyone without them cannot come inside and "jump" along with the band.

Typical Brazil, in other words: black people create something -axé, the moving truck business, Carnaval- and only white people doing ether get to enjoy it. Part of what's seen in the video is this: blacks and pardos, the vast majority of Salvador's population (83%, according to the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute), attempting to enjoy something they're not allowed. However, as other blacks noticed, people of color can serve as protection for whites inside the ropes and sell 100ml cups of water.

Or better yet, they can go work for the Bahia Military Police and beat the shit out of other black people.

The reason I liked this video is not it's message, which I wasn't too hot for (the guy who edited the video seems to think everything in Brazil comes down to race when, in fact, problems are much deeper-seated. I would reckon a guess he just got into a Federal college and finished reading Marx.). I liked it because it's funny... in a sadistic way. You could show this shit to most of the white people I know (reactionary Jews, quasi-fascist Christians, etc.), and they would not only find it normal (a regular complaint from the video's editor), they'd find it amusing. Brazilians these days, especially the rich ones, dig violence, the love it, they get off on it; many only wish they could make sure the State could monopolize power just to make sure poor people would "stay in their proper place" (hence the ignorant and misplaced nostalgia for the 64-85 dictatorship, one of the principle reasons we've such rampant violence these days).

But my hatred of Carnaval is much deeper. Pray tell: do people even know what they're celebrating? Is it Ash Wednesday, the religious component of the holiday? If it is, it's funny, cuz that's when everyone's back to work. Are we celebrating our joy as a people? Then do tell me, what joy this is? Is it the joy those people at the Pela-Porco favela are feeling? Maybe it's the joy the almost half-a-million people who died of violent crime in the past ten years felt.

"Oh, Rafael, you fucking pussy," is what you're probably saying, am I right? Really, am I right?

Then tell me, is Carnaval about this country, Brasil, the winner of five fucking MEANINGLESS World Cups? What fucking country, I ask you? You go to Belém, Pará, and come back to São Paulo, São Paulo, and it's like you've been to two separate nations. And it has nothing, NOTHING, to do with regional accents or any such thing.

Oh, I know, maybe its revealing thoughts by shit pseudo-journalists like Ali Kamel, from Globo (where else?): Brazilians are not racists. Yes, and then there's Veja Magazine, which I remember telling me about Brazil not being homophobic either.

I was once talking to a friend of mine, a guy who'd recently just returned from living abroad. He told me two things, one of which left me dumbfounded, the other which left me... I don't know... curious. The first one is that people don't have a class consciousness. The second is that I shouldn't pity poor people for being poor.

On account of the first argument, I don't even know where to begin. Maybe he was fucking with me. Maybe he wasn't himself that day. Hell, even a fucking Nazi can see that rich people are completely aware that they're part of an elite, and wish to remain so. What's so terrible about the Brazilian elite is that it not only knows it's a class of extremely filthy-rich white people but it has absolutely no conception of what it even means to be an elite.

As for the second argument, I don't pity the poor of Brazil for being poor; I pity them for having to deal with us, with people that read books that enlighten us as to our lack of racism and our acceptance of fags and dykes because (and I swear on my mother's eyes that this was Veja Magazine's central argument) São Paulo has a Gay Parade.

But I rant, as a certain comedian once said. I'll now continue to ignore this bullshit holiday.

Cheers.