Carnival, history and networks
13
Feb
Carnival is not brazilian invention, comes from antiquity, both in Mesopotamia, as in Greece and in Rome had these parties, curiously it ends at the beginning of Ash Wednesday when Catholics and Lutherans begin their Lent.
The word carnival comes from the Latin carnis levale, remove the meat to the letter, but would be the carnal parties before the meaning of entering a period of fasting and carnal pleasures.
This date connection with the traditional Christian churches dating from the eighth century, when Lent was established as a religious period to perform the process of asceticism through which people fix their life routes.
It was the Portuguese who brought to Brazil a party called “Shrovetide” a mess event as water wars, flour, lemons and often exceeded the limits, so that was eventually banned in the 1840s.
So it was a lounge party in many years until in 1920 Chiquinha Gonzaga made the first famous “marching” the Abre Alas and the party returned to become popular, and “networks” of revelers were forming cords, blocks and later with a larger samba schools.
With the introduction of the samba schools, there are a return to different formal structure of the networks, the first was called “Deixa Falar” (Lets Talk) which years later changed its name to Estacio de Sá, but the blocks and strands remain and the Block Rooster dawn tries to stay in the Guinness as the largest carnival group in the world.
