In 2021, some 215 million Brazilians mourned a carnival that is part of the DNA of an entire people: the edition was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which killed 700,000 people. . And last year the carnival had been postponed to April, the very popular street processions, which could bring together hundreds of thousands of revelers… and sprinkled with a lot of alcohol, had been banned.
For this 2023 edition, the fervor reached its peak during the parade of the twelve samba schools, on February 19 and 20, in front of 70,000 spectators each evening and tens of millions of television viewers.
At stake is the hotly contested title of champion of the most grandiose carnival on the planet, the meeting of the year for Brazilians, an outlet, an enchanted parenthesis of popular jubilation. The winning school for this 2023 carnival will be known on February 22.
This 2023 edition was also the first since the return to power of left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who in October defeated the outgoing far-right head of state, Jair Bolsonaro.
“The carnival represents the culture of an entire people, previously the freedom of expression of our culture was repressed”, says Carla Andrea Barbosa, a fifty-year-old costume designer who has been there for thirty years. The Bolsonaro government had abolished the Ministry of Culture, cut credits and censored creations that it disliked.
Lula promised to restore its place to culture in Brazil and, sign of the times, the Minister of Culture, Margareth Menezes, marched on top of a float from the school of Mangueira during the night from Sunday to Monday.