Life in Brazil, Life in Salvador

Abstract

Samba, parades, scantily clad women, and ostentatious behavior: these words are synonymous with Carnaval in Brazil and even with the country itself. This global perception of Brazil as a land of sensuality, decadence, and beauty, which is exemplified through the phenomenon of Carnaval, only captures the superficial, albeit fantastic, aspects of everyday life in Brazil.¹ Furthermore, this narrow focus on Carnaval can lead to misconceptions about Brazilian culture’s tolerance of male same-sex sexuality, transgender issues, and same-sex sexuality in general. In a critique of foreign observations about Carnaval, James Green argues in Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil: “For many foreign observers … these varied images of uninhibited and licentious Brazilian homosexuals who express sensuality, sexuality, or camp during Carnival festivities have come to be equated with an alleged cultural and social toleration for homosexuality and bisexuality in that country” (1999a:3). Similarly, a simplistic understanding of Carnaval as proof of Brazil’s success as a “racial democracy” ignores the important political, social, cultural, and economic issues that are apparent in the production and execution of this festival throughout the country (Pravaz 2008b). The racialized, gendered, sexualized, and class-stratified aspects of Carnaval are the legacies of early forms of nationalist rhetoric in Brazil, particularly those ideologies that were produced at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth century (Costa 2000; Costa 2007; Ferreira 2005; Matta 1991).