By María Angélica Troncoso |
Rio de Janeiro (EFE) and aspire to a quota that allows them to be among the best.
Two weeks before the Rio Carnival, thousands of costumes receive the last stitches, in the workshops of the 92 samba “schools” that will parade this year in the traditional celebration that will paralyze Brazil from February 17 to 22.
But only 27 “escolas”, less than a third of the total, have the right to parade in the Sapucaí avenue sambadrome, the cement temple where tickets are sold out to venerate the most outstanding.
This catwalk of 700 meters and with capacity for about 90,000 spectators is the place reserved for the 15 samba schools of the Gold Series (second division) and for the twelve of the Special Group, the latter, an elite category to which the most traditional belong. from Rio, such as Salgueiro, Mangueira and Portela.
Behind them, another 65 companies from the Silver, Bronze and Group B categories seek to shine in free parades on Intendente Magalhaes avenue, in a party unknown to the general public, called the People’s Carnival, where they fight to get a fit for the sambadrome, or to get closer to that goal.
The ones to show
The contest for all demands creativity, originality, will and money, but in the lower categories the difficulties are greater.
The support is concentrated in those of the Special Group, each one made up of more than 3,000 people and where the statuesque ‘garotas’ waste energy with their frenetic dances next to huge floats that seek to attract the public with the magic of their effects.
This group has tax benefits, government financial and logistical aid, as well as a rain of private sponsors that is not long in coming.
Only the subsidies of the Mayor’s Office in recent years are around between 200,000 and 400,000 dollars for each one, more than ten times what is allocated to a school in the Silver or Bronze series.
Added to this is the income they earn from a variety of events throughout the year and the percentage to which they are entitled from the sale of tickets to the sambadrome, where each ticket ranges between $16 and $1,200.
It is a business machine that generates jobs throughout the year and income in the tourist season and that is why it is the focus of contributions.
“There are more or less 400 to 500 people working normally, but at the peak they can be 900 or 1,000, because in addition to those in the barracks -where the workshops are- we have people who work in the community,” Edson explained to EFE. Pereira, general director of the parade at the Salgueiro school.
The ‘minor leagues’
Although the lower categories also have some public resources and logistical support, most of the money they get for the parades comes from rummaging and solidarity.
“The difficulty is tremendous because many companies do not value these schools, they do not see Carnival outside of Sapucaí,” Darlan Santos, president of Académicos da Rocinha, a “school” that is part of the Silver category, told EFE.
That is why the ‘minor leagues’ manage to stand out by buying, at lower prices, elements already used by the Special Group, to rebuild them and give them a new life in their floats.
Those who make up the lower categories assure that twice the effort of those of the Special Group is required to be able to ascend.
“You can’t think small,” said Santos, who has already taken Rocinha to the “major leagues” where sustaining himself, he said, requires professionalism.
“Here you give more with your heart,” he emphasized.
In the barracks where several of the companies in the Silver category assemble the structures for the parades, solidarity predominates and the suspicion that reigns in the immense City of Samba, where the twelve sheds of the “escolas” are concentrated, is not seen. » of the Panel.
“The dispute is there on the avenue, but inside this barracks we all try to walk together and push the other so that they don’t get left behind,” Santos said.
a single joy
In any of the categories, without exception, joy is the dominant note.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who parade every year in the sambadrome or in the Intendente Magalhaes, the majority of whom live in favelas and poor communities.
It was there, on the hills where their crowded houses rise, where the Carnival parades were born two centuries ago.