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2/27/04: Snapshots

The Carnvalistas descend on Ouro Preto.

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The above is my best way to describe the crazy proportions Ouro Preto took on this week as the quaint spaces of this small, historic mining town were stretched to the seams by hordes of party-goers from all over Brazil. The town itself is an absolutely incredible feat of historic
preservation, especially considering the slightly limited political resources here with which to do so.

The town of about fifty thousand residents is still almost entirely built of its early 18th to 19th century structures. Everything from the houses, to hotels to grocery stores, restaurants, banks are really naturally integrated into the architecture and without a sort of overly cleaned Disnified sheen. It's still a tourism town to be sure, and there's little sign of any other sort of economy, but Ouro Preto seems to avoid the North American contrivances that make say the French Quarter in New Orleans or Gastown in Vancouver seem a bit like stage sets.

The mountains of Minas Gerais + the 1000-body
strong Bloco da Praia in all their glory.

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Ouro Preto is a college town too and that creates the character that this city's Carnaval takes on - an exceedingly twentysomething crowd. Each of the universities' Rep?blicas, which are (I'm guessing) the equivalent of fraternities and sororities, organizes a giant theme party called a bloco at some site near the edge of the valley.

Each day, there are about four or five of these blocos at opposite ends of the city that assemble in the early afternoon, basically getting completely wasted with 1000 fellow republicanos. Then the bateria, a giant team of marching drummers, comes through and everyone spills out toward the town. It takes about three or four hours of happily singing and samba-ing along in a packed tight crowd of sweaty, confetti strewn revellers, with Ouro Preto's residents constantly throwing buckets of water on the crowd from all the second story windows.

By about sunset, each of the day's blocos have collided at the center of town and it's complete madness after that.

Me with some spontaneously made friends drenched

and giddy after an afternoon in the Bloco da Ladera.

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In many ways Ouro Preto's Carnaval admittedly becomes a sort of MTV Spring Break set to samba. On the other hand, it's a far less commercialized and more off the cuff sort of party than you'd likely find at the major celebrations in Salvador or Rio de Janeiro.

A friend has just returned from Rio his description makes the whole thing out as Copacabana hookers in high season and the American sex travellers who love them. Ouro Preto's to me seems more a party by and for the people that adore the Carnaval every year and less a show for the rest of us tourist folk.

Some very lovely ladies. Some slightly disturbing gents.

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And this is the friendliest place in the world - you'd have to be a complete mosca morta ["dead fly"] to not come out of here with 100 new acquaintances. I travelled alone and am returning with my paperback novel scribbled over with random email addresses and I'm not exactly Joe-talk-to-everybody under normal circumstances. Except for a morning spent with some Swedish backpackers, I spent the entire five days speaking only in Portuguese, although often reduced to exchanging drunken party cheers - "E a?, cara! Beleza! Absoluta! Doid?o! Mata le?o!"

A girl from Salvador took on the sisyphian task of teaching me to samba - "Chuta as pedras, Jeremy!" ["Kick the stones"]. Another girl from Belo Horizante had more success twirling me around outside of a forr? club. After five nights of this constant blurry socializing, I was convinced that I'd developed some sort of doppelg?nger as I was hearing "E a?, Jeremy!" and "Falou, meu amigo americano!" every five minutes from people whom I hadn't the foggiest memory of meeting. There's also a strange scrape starting from the top of my nose and across my forehead and I can't for the life of me figure out where it came from. Either my doppelg?nger's a badass streetfighter or drinking buckets of cheap wine at high altitudes makes for a mean amnesia.

Tearing up the Pra?a Tiradentes on the last night.

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My other casualty is a horribly sunburned neck. But I'll just let that attest to Brazil's rainy climate graciously holding off its storms until the night I returned home. This expanded the 10-hour bus ride to 15 hours of slowly stumbling through disrepaired mountain roads. Here, I met a girl from S?o Paulo who lived in Chicago for two years, a student in Hyde Park, the first Brazilian I've met whose been anywhere in Chicago besides the airport and who can attest that a long cold winter has a charm all its own. In some really specific conversation about everything Chicago, she told me about a store in Roscoe Village called Brasil Legal* that sells an assortment of music, food, and assorted knicknacks from here. So if you're reading this from Chicago and want to try to a salgado without paying the airfare, check it out.

And after five days of blissful Carnaval in a a colorful mountain town, I arrived in a chilly, rainy S?o Paulo, an appropriate Ash Wednesday of a city for sure. I'm returning to work, burning the clothes I took, and throwing together a little photo album that I'll put up here in a few days. Stay tuned.

*Located at 2153 N. Western, according to Fuck Corporate Groceries.

posted by jeremy @ 4:01 AM