For 37 years in charge of the Independent League of Samba Schools of Rio de Janeiro (Liesa), Jorge Perlingeiro left the meeting with the city’s mayor Eduardo Paes (PSD) sad, but resigned. The decision to postpone Carnival to the Tiradentes holiday, in April, was taken jointly by health authorities in Rio and São Paulo and representatives of the schools.
“I won’t say I’m happy. It would be very inconsistent on my part because we prepared this with great care but obviously we would be happy because as soon as the time comes we will be ready. We are buying some more time, but the schedule for February was now complete, we were waiting for the parade”, Perlingeiro told CNN.
Liesa is organizing for next Monday (24th) a plenary session with the presidents of the Rio Carnival schools to explain the 90 days of postponement. The entity’s marketing manager, Gabriel David, however, says the associations were already warned of the possibility. “Schools understand that it is a prudent and sensible decision to have the best Carnival possible,” he said.
The president of Liesa esteemed the CNN that practically 60 thousand tickets have already been sold, which includes 60% of the total occupancy of the stands, all boxes and friezes. This represents about 80% of the total of 75 thousand tickets. He hopes that the postponement can even help in attracting new sponsors.
Perlingeiro played down the mortality and worsening capacity of the Ômicron variant of the coronavirus, which motivated the postponement, saying that it is equivalent to a “very strong flu”.
The president of Liesa had already told the policy analyst at CNN Leandro Resende who did not see any possibility of protocols suggested by the city of São Paulo being used in Rio. The list of determinations included the use of a mask as part of the costume, limited audience and the end of the harmony issue.
After the meeting with Paes, he suggested that in April “the pandemic will be over” and again criticized the measures that would be in force in São Paulo if the date of the parades was kept to February.
“Parading in a mask is a mutilation of the spectacle. Removing a question, reducing 30% to 40%, capacity, we did not see this possibility. They don’t have the slightest consent for us to accept such a thing,” he said.
In negotiations with the government and on the bridge with schools, Gabriel David has had a more moderate tone. “The postponement is within a possibility of not warning anything in allegories and costumes, schools are already prepared for this as they were in February, so all this remains”, he said.
“[A nova data] it allows us to take several actions that were committed in this pre-carnival, such as technical rehearsals, which facilitates communication to Brazil and to the world of this new carnival date. This is the great challenge: how do we communicate in
this new date to maintain the tourist movement that Carnival has always brought to the city”, added David to CNN.
Reference: CNN Brasil
