The Viradouro samba school was crowned champion of Rio de Janeiro’s carnival on Wednesday, thanks to a parade about the strength of black women through the myth of a sacred snake from Benin.
A third title (after those of 1997 and 2020) greeted by an explosion of joy in Niteroi, a suburban town of Rio where this school founded in 1946 is located.
Viradouro led the race from start to finish, while the jurors’ scores were rattled off one by one for more than an hour, during a ceremony broadcast live by TV Globo, Brazil’s most watched channel. .
She was the last of the 12 groups to parade when the sun began to rise on Tuesday, after two nights of a grandiose spectacle at the Sambodrome, a 70,000-seat venue created 40 years ago by architect Oscar Niemeyer.
A member of the Viradouro samba school performs during the last night of the carnival parade at the Sambodrome in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February 13, 2024 / Pablo PORCIUNCULA / AFP
The great champion of this edition of the carnival made an impression from the start of the parade, when an enormous articulated vermilion-colored snake crawled as if by magic between the dancers.
The theme of the parade was the cult of a sacred serpent venerated by the Mino warriors, who defended the Dahomey kingdom, where Benin is located today, from where many slaves were sent by force to Brazil.
Viradouro at the same time paid tribute to Afro-Brazilian women, in a country still hit hard by racism, even if 56% of the population is black or mixed race.
Second place in the ranking goes to the Imperatriz Leopoldinense school, last year’s champion, which evoked the theme of luck and chance through the story of a gypsy girl.
A member of the Viradouro samba school performs during the last night of the carnival parade at the Sambodrome in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February 13, 2024 / Pablo PORCIUNCULA / AFP
This year, several schools have decided to pay tribute to Afro-Brazilian heroes or indigenous peoples, like Salgueiro, ranked fourth with a parade on the drama of the Yanomami, who are facing a serious humanitarian crisis caused by incursions of gold miners illegal in the Amazon.
