In one of their latest interviews the gangsters,Temer and Meirelles, have affirmed that there were not masses in the streets protesting against their antipeople measurements.

In the best style ‘ I am keeping myself for Carnival’, Brazilian people all over the country, organized in Samba Schools or in Samba Blocks, denied the old consign that ‘Carnival is made to forget old sorrows’.

Either in the samba-plots or in the little marching songs, people have brought for their entertainment their indignation with the political, economic, social and moral crisis the country has beeen through, aiming their arows at the ones that cause so much misery, discrimination and exploitation. Reality has danced and sung on the feet and throats of the carnival revellers. 

Turning into mechandise

Carioca Carnival, that has started in the first half of last century with the amusement of lonely groups, began to develop itself up to transforming into the greatest cultural urban demonstration in the country.

During president Vargas period, the feast was, essencialy, coopted by the semicolonia and semifeudal State, reaching the top under the ‘regency’ of the carnaval merrymaker, Joãozinho Trinta, plus the Sambódromo building up, a leap for the commercialism and financing of the spectacle which became fancy-dressed oriented through the exaltation of luxury and wealthiness.

Because of that, the workers had, as they used to have in the factories, to submmit to the vertical organization and discipline, under a hierarchy of bosses and sub-bosses, tasks division and fitting and, different from the factories, voluntarily.

Who pays the band…

The State and the communication monopoly, Rede Globo at the head, besides the beer industry, have transformed themselves into the main money supporters for the whole Carnival spectacle, destroying the monopoly of the illegal gambling lottery which had been in command for years. The direct intervention in the parade production showed up ‘globalizing’ the time shedule, exhibition, aesthetics, thematics,etc.

Last years, the financial crisis that has reached the state and municipal district governments, let alone the mayor’s fundamentalism, reflected in the reduction of the city council support to the Samba Schools Independent League (Liesa).

They were forced to reavaluate the production costs for the samba parade; the schools had to become creative in their allegories and ornaments as well as fancy dresses by using cheaper material.

Samba was the result

This situation has led the revellers to leave the fantasy world and think over the causes of their annoyance, relating them to the miserable situation and abandon of the masses and general breakdown of the country.

From the masses’ call and the people’s voice in trains, buses and subway as well as in restaurant talkings, factories and in the samba schools rehearsals the accusation has been spread.

For Rede Globo’s surprise – its favourite samba school was Portela to win the competition – the jury has chosen and recognised Beija Flor de Nilópolis and Paraiso do Tuiuti as the winners because of the enthusiasm that both have raised on the people that saw their samba plot as an expression of the masses’ common lives.

Karl Marx during his time affirmed that the philosophers were limited to interpreting the world in different manners but the important was to transform it. In the present conditions we may consider an advance that the criticism of the winning schools have reached the heart of capitalism on its imperialist stage: the greed of the celebrated “market” Such was the main aspect of it.

In Beija Flor samba we may point out the caustic criticism to the hypocrisy of those who defend God, motherland and family: “You call me brother/ and let me aimlessly/ let us permute a slice of bread / by a piece of heaven”.

The samba school Paraíso do Tuiuti has dismistified the story of slavery aboliton through questionning that is truer than an accusation sentence.

Going further, it attacks the false freedom of the rotten bourgeois democracy mistified by ‘equality, fraternity and liberty”, which vigorate in Brasil under the abominable “Democratic state of right”: “Where the lady Liberty dwells/ There are no fetters / there is no warden”. 

A new consciousness

All these manifestations indicate that people gathers the feeling of their oppression and exploitation blowing up in revolts; very soon they will raise their consciousness level and only a revolution will be able to release them. And more, such a solution for their problems is in themselves. Life has demonstrated that the masses make history and for that they will have to give birth to their revolutionary leadership.

The Brazilian revolutionaries have already aimed at the Democratic Revolution, Agrarian and Anti-imperialist, ininterrupted to Socialism. Their task has been defined: organize the people for storming the heaven!#