J Yes, how nice! I wanted to ask in what decade were you seeing these costumes and these people when you were a child? Pardon the disclosure.

R My age? I’m going to be 58 now on June 3, so this was in the ‘70s, the decade of 1970, Portela was the champion in 1970, it had been around for 5 years going on 6. So, around that period. Then, I began to follow the school sort of from a distance and then I got closer until I joined it. 

J I imagine that there have been many changes throughout this time in the city as well in the carnival, right? 

R Goodness, well it has changed a lot. It has changed so much, because they were…they were smaller in dimension, but not in terms of membership, because at the time Portela…it definitely had 2,800 people in the early 70s, today it parades with practically the same group of people because the rules were always changing. So the schools will always adapt. And even between 1970 and 2022—today—there was a period in which we, samba musicians and dancers, scholars, researchers, called…the “the golden age” of samba schools, which was in the ‘80s. In the ‘80s, the schools exploded in size and in membership. I mean, why do I say “size”? Size is visual. It’s what is transmitted on TV, what is seen on the street because they were adapting to the rules, which change each year, but also the dimensions of the avenues where they parade, because previously the carnival was more horizontal, and later it verticalized. So the schools were adapting to this new requirement, to this new context. And the visual, artistic language changed as well. So to accommodate for the growth of the audience in the bleachers, which were becoming vertical, the schools also verticalized with bigger, taller allegories, taller costumes, the incorporation of coastal elements, etc. So I followed this transformation, because as a child, you start becoming aware of what this cultural manifestation means, and as a spectator and later as an activist, a volunteer, a person, a supporter who grew up along with other people. The Portela Web site, which was the foundation, began at the end of the ‘90s, ‘98, ‘99, and it was founded on November 25, 2000. So thanks to the Internet, we began growing a network of friends from Brazil, from Rio de Janeiro, from other states in Brazil and even from outside the country. So the samba schools were also adapting. We who were, shall we say, Internet innovators at Portela—because there also were groups in [the other samba schools] Salgueiro, in Manguera—but we who were the pioneers in this incorporation of technology at Portela, started using this tool to understand history, memory, and later have a political role, which we can talk about later on. 

J Yes! We’ll talk about this project, which is also an archive, it is keeping the memory of the school. This subject is very interesting for me as a historian because I think it says so much about national history, like you said, the political context as well of the ‘80s, a decade of many transformations in Brazil and also in the city of Rio de Janeiro. So let’s first concentrate on the city because I want to understand and also bring this context to people who don’t know the samba schools within their contexts, because the idea of this podcast is to understand where the Brazilian culture comes from. Who are the producers of this culture? In what contexts and conditions do they work in? As we know, it’s very difficult to fight to produce support culture beyond the moments of the annual Carnival parade, because we know that an entire community works daily all year round to make the Carnival happen. So I wanted to understand a little more what it is like to work within Portela, as well as in the neighborhood of Madureira, and how this is part of a peripheral context of Brazil as well.

R It’s a pretty broad matter. We’ll have to break it down to understand what it is, what the representativity of Oswaldo Cruz is within the macroregion of Grande Madureira…but where do you want me to begin?

J The local context.

R The local context of Oswaldo Cruz, Madureira, etc.

J Yes, the interaction with the neighborhood. What does Portela mean to the community? 

R Portela is a great catalyst for community bonding because in the block…when the samba schools emerged, they identified a neighborhood. For example, the name “Portela” refers to the Estrada do Portela [Portela Road] because it comes from, it was founded on an adjacent street, but it was…it had its first headquarters on Portela Road, and the founders lived on Portela Road. So this axis is important, which is an avenue.  It’s a road that goes from Madureira until Oswaldo Cruz, from Oswaldo Cruz to  Grande Madureira, in the neighborhood with Rocha Miranda. It touches the region that has Portela as a main institution. The association will celebrate 100 years next year, 2023, it has this representation because it was the center of sociability, of socialization in the region, which is Oswaldo Cruz—unlike Madureira, which was already a subcenter, an important commercial warehouse because of the Mercadão de Madureira, at the two stations, Magno and Madureira, on the railway. So it had this importance. There was movement, the roads were paved, there was a local middle class, unlike Oswaldo Cruz, although they are nearby neighborhoods, they are very close to each other, very close indeed. But Oswaldo Cruz has the characteristic of having been a rural location for decades. So, the train station was inaugurated in 1898, but I think five years after Madureira. But even so, the most urbanized part of the neighborhood was restricted right around the station where Portela was founded, which is a path parallel to the railroad. It was a region that didn’t even have paved roads. There was practically no sanitation. So they were big, they were houses with immense land and had a samba block there called Quem Fala de Nós Come Môsca [Whoever Talks About Us Eats Flies]. It was founded in February 1921, led by a woman, a great partyer, a great local community leader, which was Dona Esther Rodrigues and her husband, Euzébio Rosa. She was a white woman. He was a Black man and the embryo of Portela because it was a samba block that paraded. Quem Fala de Nós was allowed to parade. This is important too, because the associations of Afro-Brazilian origin lived under State control. So they needed permission to parade. So, they had permission because she received people, influential figures from the newly created Republic. People scuttled along Oswaldo Cruz, and she threw parties that lasted for days. So Dona Esther gave away her license to a samba block that was founded by three Black boys: Paulo Benjamin de Oliveira, Antônio Rufino, Antônio Caetano, who were the fruits of the urban African diaspora in Rio de Janeiro. Paulo came from the downtown region of the city, specifically here in Gamboa, at the foot of Morro do Livramento, better known now as Morro da Providência, which was considered a favela in the beginning. Antônio Caetano came from the Vale do Paraíba do Sul region in Vale do Café in the interior of the state of Rio de Janeiro, and Antônio Rufino came from Zona da Mata Mineira. Many Black populations migrated from these two territories in these two environments there. Due to the decline of the coffee culture in these two places—in both Vale de Café, Vale do Paraíba, in the state of Rio, and in the mining zone, Zona da Mata Mineira, close to northern Rio the state. So Oswaldo Cruz ended up receiving these populations because of different politics, multiple migratory movements of multiple co-origins—multiple causes, whether they were economic, political, historical, in summary. So Oswaldo Cruz, the periphery in general, and Oswaldo Cruz specifically, ended up receiving these populations. So Portela was funded by the children of the Black diaspora. So Oswaldo Cruz has this symbolism as well as this social function because it surrounds the carnival association, Portela. First it talks about “Nós Como Môsca,” then there was Portela, which changed names many times, although that nucleus was known as being the people of Portela, but it had different names. It was first: Vianinha Oswaldo Cruz, second: Conjunto Carnavalesco Oswaldo Cruz (Oswaldo Cruz Carnaval Group). Then it was Quem Nós Faz é o Capricho (Perfection Makes Us), because the group won a samba contest promoted by a pai-de-santo [Candomblé priest], in Engenho de Dentro, which was Zé Espinguela. So they won. Then Heitor dos Prazeres, one of the presidents from the Portela entourage, feeling proud for having won that first competition in 1929, had the idea of renaming the Conjunto Oswaldo Cruz as “Quem Nós Faz o Capricho” and then the school’s name changed to Vai Como Pode (Go as You Are) until it was established as Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Portela (Recreational Guild of the Portela Samba School) in 1935. So, Portela is important to the community because people are born, they get baptized, they die, they are veiled, they have parties, all around Portela’s headquarters. It was always like that. 

J What a beautiful story, it’s very rich, certainly. Let’s jump back to the present a bit. I want to know about your life experience and career with Portela, but also about your personal life. How is the periphery defined in an urban geographic and social context?

R Well, today I’m certain of it, but it was a sentiment I carried within me. First of all, the place of belonging. The periphery is a place of belonging. And I am more aware now than ever before that the periphery is very powerful. It is very powerful because it is pedagogical, it is civilization, and it doesn’t rely on the centrality of decisions—it exists by itself. So, my experience from the periphery, which is here, began spontaneously through play. After, it became a practice…a practice of activism. And today it is a fountain of academic learning, of knowledge. So, I went through all these stages as a person, as a professional, as a researcher. So, it’s difficult to peel apart one face from the other because the researcher has to have at least some level of impartiality. But it’s hard because I can’t deny my ethnography. I can’t deny my experience, my construction as a political subject, as a historical subject, as a cultural subject. I can’t deny my trajectory. So the importance of the periphery is immense to me. I have to be grateful for being a man of the periphery. The only thing I can say is how important it is for my existence, for my resistance, and for my daily practice, because we understand what it is, what solidarity is, what empathy is, what friendship is, a sense of belonging, what collectivity is. So this…everything about the periphery, everything I am as someone from the periphery, is because I have lived and am thinking about them—all the peripheries.

J Yes. Thank you so much for sharing that. Would you like to comment on the relationship between the periphery and Brazil in terms of politics or not? 

R We should because…because for example, I was there. I saw the news in Rio de Janeiro and in all the national editorials from the other states, but specifically in Rio de Janeiro. And just before coming to talk with you, I was seeing that just under the government of the current governor there were 34 Black young men killed in alleged confrontations with the military police, and on the other hand, a mother, who at the very least is a complice in the murder of her own son, received the benefit of house arrest, which was the case of the boy named Henry Borel. That white, although peripheral, still white family belonged to the political elite, thus she received the benefit of house arrest yesterday evening. And on the other hand, there is the concept of genocide that is promoted against the Black and peripheral populations, but above all, Black men. We see that it is this justice system that puts young Black people in jail that, through photo recognition and people without any…without the right to defend themselves, end up imprisoned and remain imprisoned, forgotten. So, if it weren’t for the press’s work to give them a voice and at the very least demand that these cases be reviewed, because the judges are white. They are white men. So we stop to think, because this is the political context of this country, especially in current times, as we are in a government that, when it was justly and democratically elected, wants to deny democracy, it wants to deny rights, it wants to deny freedom, it wants to deny, it wants to deny diversity. So it’s complicated. So it’s a government that when it took office it exposed everything bad that existed in Brazilian society until then. Brazilian people were known as cordial, but then the masks came off because Brazilians are not cordial; Brazilians are misogynistic. They are homophobic. They are racist. So, there is hate toward the poor. So this face…this ugly face of Brazil began appearing because when [the Bolsonaro government] was elected, this government gave a sort of license so these people could take justice into their own hands and stay within their white privileges, their hierarchical structures. It is to defend their heritage [and generational wealth]. These patrimonialistas have been defending their privileges since 1500. So the context? The peripheries are abandoned, and not just abandoned, they are the target of a politics of extermination. 

J It is crucial to bring these power dynamics and the violence that is faced to light. Every day the periphery is a place of wisdom, of solidarity, of so many good things. But we can’t forget what it faces and that it is always under attack as well.

R Yes, and on the news, on the morning news when they cover urban mobility, we are seeing that the more transportation services, health and education services are privatizing, the worse it becomes for the peripheral population, because that’s the population that suffers, because they are the ones who are…those who live in the city center have their health plans, they have their…they have subways, they arrive in these peripheral neighborhoods, they have the means to pay for an Uber, they have drivers, etc. So they don’t know what this reality truly is. These policies are meant to erase, the policy of erasure, of extermination, of massacre.

J Yes. The tourists who come, the foreigners who watch, who come to celebrate the carnival, don’t understand anything about what’s really going on. So in part this is what I want to bring to an international public as well. And from my understanding, the samba enredos [stories or plots] are social commentary, right? And I wanted to hear from you if you could tell us about a memorable story from Portela’s trajectory. 

R There are several, especially the ones in my memory. “Legends and Mysteries of the Amazon” was a story with which Portela was champion in 1970, and “Lapa em Três Tempos” (“Lapa in Three Eras”) in 1971. I thought it was so great because I live on the outskirts of Lapa in Rio de Janeiro. I am living here in this region. It took me decades. I was very prejudiced against the city center because I thought it was abandoned. I thought no one lived there, but I thought people only worked in my [mind] as a child. Then I discovered a very nice residential area with an incredible cultural diversity. 

J I want to visit! 

R Yes, come, come! So it's good because I can lead this exchange. As a man of the periphery, I am always traveling through Centro [a neighborhood in downtown Rio de Janeiro), the outskirts, the center, Lapa and Oswaldo Cruz and Madureira. For me, it is just an enriching experience. So it’s a fantastic story because it put in the scene a character that I have heard of but has since turned into a star—with all the possible wordplay, which is “Ilu-ayê” (“Tree of Life” in Yoruba). In 2022, this story is 50 years old, and was realized by Candeia, Antônio, Candeia Filho, and that very Antônio Candeia Filho became an inspiration to me, not just as a person but as a leader, a composer, an artist and Black intellectual. Because aside from having idealized this story, he was a samba artist, a man, a very complex person. He had several roles in the construction, in his construction of a citizen, a person, a samba artist. He is a tragic hero, I call him a tragic hero because he was born within Portela; he is the son of Portela, portelenses (people of Portela). Candeia was his father, he was called Candeia Velho, who created the front commissions in the samba schools. So he’s a…he’s organic, he’s…what do people say…he’s the root of the school, but after he took different paths, he became a cop, he became defiant cop, he got shot, actually here near Marquês de Sapucaí, as a result of a traffic altercation. He became paraplegic, he became bitter, and after he became a great leader for the Black movement. He was a very interesting figure. And of the many different legacies he left behind, we have a book called Escola de Samba: A árvore que esqueceu a raiz [Samba School: The Tree that Forgot its Roots], in partnership with Isnard Araújo, [on] the founding of the Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Arte Negra Quilombo, a study about Paula da Portela. It’s a fantastic musical piece, marvelous. It’s emblematic. So the story this year, “Ilu-ayê,” brings me these references. The other story that I liked as well was in 1995, which was the year in which—after  several disagreements, separations—many portelenses returned to the school. The school was recognized as the best from that carnival, but it ended up losing the championship by a half point. But I paraded that year in the previous parade, and aside from ‘95, ‘87, it was my first parade in the “Dove of Peace,” which was based on the poem by the writer Wagner Ayala. Another really important story for me was in 2014, “Um Rio de mar a mar: do Valongo à Glória de São Sebastião” (“A River from Sea to Sea: from Valongo to Glória de São Sebastião”), because the story is of my own authorship. I am the author of this story. I did all the research and the school accepted it. And in 2017, Portela was champion finally, after 30 something years. So these are the most important stories. And now, this year, “Boabab Portela” will talk about the importance of the baobab [tree from Africa]. It is precisely a tribute to the 50 years of “Ilu-ayê.”

J And for those who don’t know what baobab is, it’s a tree, right? 

R It’s the millennial tree that exists in Africa and exists also in Oceania and was transplanted to Brazil, particularly in Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro. So it has all this symbology because it references ancestry, memory. And it is legacy.  So I think it is important to tell this story and Potela, at its 99 years [of existence], has a lot in common with the baobab because it is bushy, it gives fruit, it works with ancestry, with memory. So they have a lot in common…

J It’s a home as well, right?

R Exactly, a home deserving of respect. 

J With really deep roots. 

R Deep and solid. 

J Congratulations. 

R Thank you. 

J It’s really awesome to follow Portela’s trajectory and now get to know everything that happened. And we spoke a little about the political context, the challenges that it faces. But I wanted to give some space for you to share the reality of working in this area of culture today. 

R It’s really hard because, like I said a little while ago, we have governments, public instances of power…in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, we had a mayor from the Neopentecostal church, from those Neopentecostal Protestant churches. We have a governor who follows the same line [of belief] and a president who also tries to dress up like a Catholic, sometimes like an evangelical, but he’s really just a dictator or dictator’s project. So it’s hard. The [current political] culture doesn’t have space because the culture–everything having to do with thought, critical thinking, awareness–doesn’t interest these governments because they are paths to liberation, they are liberating paths. So they don’t want people who are liberated. They don’t want people who are free in their bodies, minds, and speech. They don’t want that. So the context, working with culture is very difficult because we don’t have a financial incentive. We practically have no policies for culture. Right now, yesterday, this president of the Republic vetoed a law, a law project that would benefit millions of workers in the cultural area. He vetoed it because the law is called Paulo Gustavo, and he does not think this is government policy. I saw the universities. We will see the cases of national heritage. Why did the National Historical Museum catch fire? Because historically, especially in non-progressive governments, there isn’t a policy for the preservation of heritage memory. So the National Historical Museum, which belongs to UFRJ (the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro], caught on fire and suffered a fire due to a lack of investment, because the university invests in research, science, teaching, and extension. And in UFRJ’s case, this is more serious because it is the owner of material assets in terms of buildings, archives. It’s massive. It invests in teaching, research, and expansion. It invests in heritage when it should belong to the Ministry of Culture’s competent entities, whose secretary was even demoted. And the budgets keep on shrinking more and more, especially under this government. So working with culture isn’t easy, it’s not easy in the eyes of the public power of governments, but it also doesn’t have due recognition by the media, the creators of opinion, of intellectuality. It is the media, in this case, the carnival media, which is a type of media dedicated to samba schools that has this agenda. With the samba schools, people only see the carnival. They don’t see that the samba school exists the entire year, in the Portela Cultural Department, we have a very strong agenda, very powerful, very diverse, which values Oswaldo Cruz do Madureira’s territory, which values the exchange of knowledge, which values the racial ethnic agendas, and gender identity, but this doesn’t have visibility. So it’s hard. It’s a daily struggle. It’s very difficult. 

J I can only imagine. I want to emphasize everything you are doing as an educator as well as a cultural producer, despite the current Brazilian government where you don’t have support, you don’t have the resources to carry all of this out. So it’s even more incredible that you are still resisting, that you continue on. 

R Yes. We can rest when we are dead, right? 

J Right. Because there are references to the ancestors who have already passed away…

R Exactly… We talk about Portela, Zé Kéti, the founders, the women. So we have these references in the name of these people, these subjectivities that we work with. 

J And speaking of these ancestors. Could you talk a little more about the process of creating PortelaWeb and the website’s objectives? 

R Yes, our idea, firstly, was a group of fans who met on a closed list from a website domain. So at that time, our origins, in the early days of the internet, in the late ‘90s, mid ‘90s, 2000s, people got to know each other and, by affinity, they were grouping together, creating specific sublists for us. We created a list with Portela fans. And from there, there was the idea to create a website, a website for the school, as the school didn’t have anything like that. It was right at the beginning of the internet and it went live on November 15, 2000. So what was the idea? It wasn’t just to tell the history of Portela, but also the history of the portelenses. What is the history of Portela? The history of the carnivals. So it was a work to reconstruct the school’s parades from 1932, but it is even a little before that: the history of the formation of the association, the history of the populations that migrated and populated Oswaldo Cruz and the crossing of cultures of people from different African origins. And we began to reconstruct Portela’s history, but also value the characters [within it]. So truthfully, the goal was to work with memory, the school’s memory, the school and the people’s memory, the memory of the [historical] characters. Because it’s very easy to talk about Paulinho da Viola, João Nogueira, Clara Nunes, but we always had the goal of redeeming people who are not anonymous, who don't have due respect. So we seek to work on these fronts. 

J Congratulations on this work, because it’s very thorough. I think it’s innovative as well, and if you want to know more about these people, these stories, which is the visual aspect of these projects, you can check out the website. 

R Yes, here’s the website: www.portelaweb.org. There. And the Cultural Department’s website is portelacultural.com.br. 

J Oh, great!

R They are interfaces of the same work. One is more historical memory, and the other has a more current agenda from the Portela Cultural Department. We have digital archives of everything that has been built since 2013 at Portela Cultural, and from before 1932 until today on Portela Web. 

J Would you look at that! This history will never be erased. 

R I hope not!

J That’s great. So we are already nearing the end of our interview. I have learned so much and I love these dialogues because I can visualize the history, the people involved, as well as the urban context. And to end, I wanted to ask: how do you bring the local context of Rio de Janeiro to the world with Portela, with this website and with your pedagogy also? And do you have a message you would like to leave for our audience? 

R Well first of all, I think the work itself already carries the message, right, many messages, many histories, many narratives. But also, in terms of practices and objectives, we have a project called Portela Consulates, which are representatives of Portela managed by the Portela Cultural Department. So we have representatives in São Paulo, Brasília, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. We have them in Petrópolis here in Rio de Janeiro state, we have representation in Japan, Turkey, we have requests in Portugal, the United States, the United Kingdom…the United Kingdom and France. So it’s a project that is taking this work of Portela’s history, and all the Cultural Department’s work to different parts of the world. It’s that…it’s more or less the fulfillment of our founder’s—one of the founders from Paulo da Portela proposed the parade, Portela’s first parade when it was champion of the official parade, when it was champion in 1935 which the story was called “O Samba Dominando o Mundo” (“Samba Dominating the World”)—so it’s a kind of achievement of this prophecy through the world of the consulates, but we are using the agendas as well. We have literary parties, and in this literary party we seek to always invite and dialogue with other people from Rio de Janeiro, from the lowlands of Grande Rio and even from other states as well. We are always making this two-way street, streets of many ways, with all the producing entities. So it’s a way to also carry our work and our sharing of knowledge, ideas and information. So I think these are the projects we do there, everything is there also. I don’t want to invite my friends to be there once more, to access these websites and places. Our social media on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and we are always there sharing news. And on the Portela Youtube channel we also have an incredible series called Portela Cultural on Youtube. During the pandemic, we made four weekly programs over seven months on many great talks, very powerful, very interesting, very enlightening. You can go check them out. 

J Yes, check them out. I will cite everything on our website as well on our Resources page. You can follow along and check out the materials produced by Portela. This was an advantage from the pandemic, recording, right?

R Yes, because it was the way we found of maintaining our bond with the community, our friends and fans, and our collaborators from the Portela Cultural Department and in the samba world in general. So we will establish a great dialogue for our mental health as well. 

J Yes. This podcast also began with this initiative to continue the conversations, to meet people and spread knowledge, and we are continuing this project. And Portela is already out in the world, and we will expand it even further. We will know the history. We will know where Portela and the Brazilian carnival come from, as well as the erased social context, which I think is important. Erased history that isn’t part of the images that are spread about Brazil. So we are bringing this outside as well and sharing this with friends and fans and associates and colleagues. So thank you so much for participating, Rogério. It was a pleasure to get to know you and your story and Portela’s story better. Thank you very much. 

R No, thank you, Jamie, for the initiative, for this wonderful invitation. It’s a great pleasure to be here conversing about this, and to know that we have these affinities, starting with Bahia. This work in your podcast and our work at Portela Cultural emerged as a challenge of a reality, as difficult as it was and still is, right, the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope to have the opportunity to meet you in person—

J —Me as well—

R —and your family. It would be a pleasure to have you all here, and let’s continue this dialogue, let’s continue conversing, researching, dreaming. I’m just a call away. 

J Yes, let’s continue. You are welcome here as well. For the time being, I am in Pennsylvania at the university, but I’m always doing exchanges and conferences, right, circulating in the networks and expanding knowledge between Brazil and the United States. 

R How wonderful!

J This episode was recorded with Jamie Lee Andreson and  Rogério Rodrigues Santos on April 6, 2022. Thank you to the Brazil Culture Connections team, the interns Amanda Talbot, Madeleine Tenny, and Naomi Lauseker. Thank you also to Jonatas Borges Campelo’s technical support. The music is called “Retumbante Vitória” by the Portela Samba School from 1975. You can listen to all the episodes from the first season, Bahian Women In Focus, and the second season, Art and Culture on the Peripheries, on all the platforms where you listen to your podcasts. Additionally, all of the transcriptions and English translations of the interviews can be found on our website, www.brazilcultureconnections.com. Please share and spread the podcast in your networks. Thank you very much and until next time.