reflections of carnival + rio de janeiro + asian patisserie + supper club + new fairytale-like cornish cottage + coffee shop with live music + revisiting the past + brazilian way of life
Having dual citizenship is a double-edged sword. On a not-so-positive note, you sometimes absorb too much of one culture and let go of the other. In my case, it might have happened that I became too Italian, to the extent that most people abroad ask me if I am Italian, never Brazilian. Starting with my surname. Then my accent, present even when I say my name, “Nataaalia”, gesticulating like a friend from Naples.
To bring me back to my grounds, this month I will write about my original country, Brazil. I thought about releasing this edition in Portuguese, but then I thought my non-Portuguese speakers’ friends and subscribers wouldn’t know about this side of my background and Brazil’s own story, so here it is.
P.S.: London’s recommendations for March are still a scroll-down away.
“In February, we have Carnival, we have Carnival”, as Jorge Ben, a Brazilian singer, used to sing in one of his famous lyrics. It is always a struggle for Brazilians who live abroad to know that the happiest party of the year takes place on the other side of the world in more favourable temperatures. I don't miss bloquinhos, sweat, cold beer or crowding. Not even 40 degrees. I miss samba, de raiz. That wakes up and vibrates Rio de Janeiro—the passion. I miss seeing the Mangueira samba parade. The memories of bohemian Rio that only the magic cauldron of Lapa gives you.
This Carnival, I celebrated differently. For me, one way to pay homage to a country's history is to revisit it. Perhaps for foreigners, Carnival is not history. But for Brazilians, it is.
A couple of years ago, I bought “The History of Rio de Janeiro”, a book by Armelle Ender, shortly after visiting Brazil and staying in a beautiful hotel in bucolic Santa Teresa that served as an old coffee farm; I wanted to go to nearby Gamboa beyond the Pedra do Sal samba and closely look a little-known World Heritage of UNESCO, a hidden hole with almost no sign - the Cais do Valongo, the witness that refers to one of the most severe crimes against humanity, the slavery in Brazil. All - I repeat - all my friends had no idea what it was about when I mentioned the historical landmark. A place of memory that Brazil seems not to want to remember.
Right next door, we also wanted to visit Casa da Tia Ciata, unfortunately, opening in limited hours in compassion for the pandemic, another invisible war of modern times. According to the book: “Tia Ciata's house was one of the main meeting places for the ranchos, who never failed to greet her before setting out to conquer the streets. The baianas also helped to bring Afro-Brazilian talent out of the environment in which they were confined.”
The book, which I revisited and finished reading this Carnival, explains the trajectory of Rio de Janeiro since the beginning of slavery, not only in a historical context but mainly in a cultural one, like how Africans dictated Brazilian popular culture, which is still present today. It is not by chance that central Rio was named “Little Africa” during that period.
Cais do Valongo, Tia Ciata, and many main characters and events are detailed in pages of basic Brazilian knowledge. Brazilians probably know more about the independence of the United States, the monarchy in Britain, and what caused the First World War than its own History. I think that is what the book is about: reconciling with the past.
The pages go back from the birth of samba to the “aunts” - not just Ciata - and their religious rituals that kept the resilience in an uncomfortable everyday life without many perspectives, the capoeiras, the Vacina revolt, the nickname of Cidade Maravilhosa, the Princesinha do Mar, the first tenements that gave rise to the current favelas, and the beginning of Mangueira, Portela and Estácio. Well, Brazilian history. Because Rio “is a region without regionalism”. It's the Brazilian way of life.
And going back to the origins of samba, how it all started: “The regulars of Little Africa improvised a loud party or samba circles: in the middle of a circle whose participants mark time by clapping their hands, dancers sway. The Kimbundu term ‘semba’, which means ‘navel’, has become a masculine noun in Brazilian Portuguese, a generic word whose universe of meanings is in perpetual expansion.” That way, I celebrated Carnival. Rediscovering History.
In the following days, I watched the film “The Collini Case”, one of the best I've seen this year so far, that tells the story of a young German lawyer of Turkish origin, greatly played by Elyas M'Barek, who, when starting to investigate a case in which he was assigned, unravels one of the biggest judicial scandals of post-war Germany.
The plot is not precisely based on a true story, but the film is inspired by the book of Ferdinand von Schirach, grandson of the head of the Hitler Youth, who used the story to confront his grandfather's past. According to the author, facing the truth is how to deal with the ghosts afflicting its population.
The novel is a classic example of what is known in Germany as “vergangenheitsbewältigung”, the process of dealing with the past. It is also concerned with the guilt of generations of Germans born after the Holocaust.
I don't believe that Portuguese has a similar word, and not that long either, but not knowing that even in the German vocabulary, this exists, perhaps unconsciously, this impetus is my duty as a Brazilian citizen to deal with the past - almost like a therapy. That collective unconsciousness that Pluto, my ruling planet in astrology, invites me to dig in for the evolution of humanity.
What did I learn? Not everything in Brazil is samba, and from the joy of sway, there are tears away. The past sometimes calls to be revisited, as if to give the blessing of being free for the future, like a letter of manumission from the sins of a generation.