“Glory to those who work all year long?”

notes about the "barracões" of the carioca carnival

Abstract

Without the intention of concluding questions, the work takes a panoramic look at the productive chain of the parades of the samba schools in the city of Rio de Janeiro, taking precariousness as an interpretive key, in order to question the limits of the idea of ​​“professionalization” linked to the industrial complex of “Cidade do Samba” (CdS), opened in 2006. It is intended, in general, to observe the extent to which the discourse of the “romanticization of the precarious” serves to validate a series of risks and abuses linked to labor relations that underpin the making of the “greatest show on Earth”. Initially, in dialogue with the field notebooks of anthropologist Ricardo José Barbieri and other authors who walk through the “world of samba”, reflections on the “barracão” category are presented, unveiling a historic framework of spatial precariousness (and of serious accidents, which have resulted in successive interdictions) that sew different spaces in Rio de Janeiro's geography and that expose power relations linked to multiple social actors, from public authorities to misdemeanors. Then, the labor relations that clash within these spaces are focused, based on reports by workers from the “samba factories” (Marina Vergara, sculptor, and Rafael Vieira, art painter) compared with the ethnographic studies of Maria Laura Cavalcanti, prior to the inauguration of the CdS. At this point, aspects such as the existence or not of formal contracts, the avalanche of labor debts, gender issues and unhealthy conditions are briefly debated. Finally, in view of the pandemic context of Covid-19 and the cancellation of the carnival of 2021, something unprecedented in almost 100 years of festive event, the paper observes actions idealized to assist the workers of the revelry, thousands of professionals who have found themselves adrift, plunged into instability.