A decision by one of Rio’s top samba schools to let a seven-year-old girl lead its 2010 carnival procession has caused uproar on the eve of what Brazilians call the greatest party on Earth.
The honour of being one of the carnival queens, the nimble-footed women who lead the deafening samba troupes along Rio’s Sambadrome, is normally reserved for immaculately tanned and half-naked soap opera stars keen to keep their faces – and bottoms – in the Brazilian media.
This year, however, one of Rio’s best-known samba schools, Viradouro, has opted for a more unusual queen: Julia Lira, who is set to lead the drum section of her father’s samba school, becoming Rio’s youngest samba queen.
Children’s rights activists have reacted angrily to the news that Viradouro, which was last carnival champion in 1997 and is one of 12 schools that will dispute this year’s crown, plans to use a girl as its carnival queen, a role normally reserved for TV sex symbols or models. With just days to go before carnival officially begins, a local judge is considering whether to ban the child’s appearance in the annual festivities.
Carlos Nicodemos, director of the Rio de Janeiro state council for the defence of children and adolescents, said: “We are not against kids participating in carnival; it’s part of Brazilian culture. What we can’t allow is putting a seven-year-old girl in a role that traditionally has a very sexual focus.”
Márcia Regina Alves, a Rio prosecutor, said Lira could not be permitted to wear bikinis or any other traditional samba queen clothes. “The mother and father must be present on the day of the procession,” she said. “The child cannot be exposed until the early hours of the morning.”
Many of Rio’s samba maestros have dismissed the criticism directed at Lira’s parents, arguing that attempts to bar her from the school’s procession were exaggerated and threatened the future of Rio’s carnival itself.
“Julia is there because she wants to be. She wasn’t forced to do anything and she will process with her parents,” Edson Pereira, the school’s samba chief and costume designer, said. “Most of the schools have children’s sections and it will be hard to stop the girl processing as a queen.
“If they stop encouraging this kind of thing, in 20 or 30 years’ time there will be no more carnival. Children are the future of the samba schools. The costume will be appropriate for a child of her age to use.”
Samba aficionados have also questioned whether a child who is only 4ft tall is physically capable of enduring the gruelling samba procession, dancing for thousands of fans under the gaze of the world’s media.
But her parents have dismissed accusations that their daughter’s appearance in the samba parade is inappropriate.
“We cannot transform a girl into a woman, much less exploit any sensuality. It will be a coherent and very pretty costume,” Pereira said last week, adding that using a “beautiful, pure and delicate” child was a “fantastic” choice for the school’s new queen. Lira’s mother, Mônica, said: “Anyone who looks at a child like Julia, so pure, and says there is some erotic appeal must be very sick.”
Julia Lira, meanwhile, is said to be revelling in her new-found fame. “Samba is fun,” she told a Brazilian newspaper following a rehearsal last week.
