Carnaval in Salvador

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The Israelis and I were staying in an apartment in Salvador about 50m from the Carnaval parade route, which meant that until at least 5am from Thursday night onward it was impossible to sleep. But here’s a rundown of the proceedings.

Carnaval in Salvador is the following, or as the Brazilians say, “é o seguinte:” Beginning Thursday night, there is a gigantic party/parade that starts around 5 in the afternoon and goes until about 5 in the morning. There are probably around 2 dozen “blocos,” (blocs) with ridiculous names like “Chiclete com Banana” (Gum with Banana). They consist of 2 truck-based parade floats surrounded with people. I’m not talking about your typical American parade floats though—these are full-blown18-wheelers, and then some. Imagine an interstate highway going tractor-trailer, attach a SUV-sized speaker cabinet to both the front and back of the trailer, and then fill the entire rest of the trailer with speakers, woofers, and other support equipment. Cover said truck with advertisements (unless your bloco is one of the poorer ones, in which case you will have ghetto ads for let’s say, Jesus’s Paint Store rather than Motorola).

The band goes on top of the speaker truck, and around the band get to sit VIPs (pronounced “veepee” in Brazilian). This truck leads, and about 50m behind it follows another similarly sized truck, but instead of speakers, it has an upper deck for people to stand and dance, and in the trailer area, there is anything from bathrooms to a first-aid station to a little bodega from where workers sell or distribute beer from the moving truck to the drunken members of the bloco. Around the two trucks is a sea of probably about a thousand people wearing the shirts of the particular bloco (you must buy these if you want to march with the bloco). Further encircling these people who have elected to march with the bloco is a thick rope carried by what amounts to basically a bunch of thugs keeping non-bloco-shirt people out.

Outside the roped-off area is a total zoo. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people line the parade route, and everybody dances like a maniac. Bahianos dance a lot with their hands in the air. Imagine people dancing to that cheesy “hand up, baby hands up, give me your heart” song at a bar-mitzvah party, and multiply it by a factor of approximately 10,000. Approximately. Within this sea of people,there are fights that intentionally or unintentionally break out among the drunken crowd, the intentional ones being diversions for pickpockets. I got a few bucks taken from my pocket and I saw the guy reaching in and I pushed him away, and without shame he gave me a look like he had a right to rob me. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of sweaty people, including many poor ones who in addition to looking like they haven’t showered in weeks, have been sweating up a storm for several hours, and sleeping on the street next to the stalls where they sell beer, hot dogs, various grilled items, gum, cigarettes, etc. On either side of the road, there are gutters presumably created for rain, but during the Carnaval festivities the trash cans are removed from the route and trash just gets thrown on the street and cleaned up later.

In order to ensure relative security, the Polícia Militar da Bahia (Bahia State Police) set up a camp right behind the building I was staying in with the 8 Israelis. Beneath the white tent there were about 3 dozen “tropas choque”—i.e., shock troops / riot police, with riot-sized billy clubs, gray-camouflage fatigues, and helmets with CHOQUE - PMBA written across them, ready for action. Along the parade route there are also police outposts at somewhat regularly spaced intervals. They are these clip-together tube structures upon which sits a patrol unit of 5 policemen, each of which have a marathon-style number on their chest and back. Each unit has a number, say 1147, and each cop in said unit has a letter. When they sit and go out for a patrol, they are in alpha order, so you see A, B, C, D, E all in a neat line marching through the crowds. Just like in highway traffic, the best way to cut through the crowds is to jump in line behind them and follow them to your destination. Several times, I was in an area where a fight broke out (this usually happens directly on the side of the trio elétricos,where the crowd is most dense). If the fight breaks out in within the bloco’s roped-off area, troops come running in an orderly line and jump under the rope, and grab the violent people. Handcuffs are not used and instead they put the offenders in a half-nelson lock hold and march them off, sometimes putting using the club to further lock the suspect’s arms as they are lead to wherever they were probably going to get a beating.

Despite the occasional scuffles though, it’s fun and everybody is dancing like crazy and it is a lot of fun. Except for the fact that after going to sleep at 6am the blocos come by at 12pm for 45 minutes, inexplicably, and wake everybody up. Bastards.