A Not-So-Carnal Carnival

A little more than 50 years ago in the desolate interior of northeast Brazil, there rode an outlaw named Lampiao, who wore a large leather hat with a broad brim turned up in front and back. Fringe and strings of beads hung from the brim. Lampiao and his comrades, vigilantes of the sertao, or back lands, ransacked farms, killed those who got in their way and seemed unstoppable until they were finally ambushed and gunned down by government troops.

Time has tamed the image of the feared bandit Lampiao and turned him into a major icon of the Festa Juninas celebration in Caruaru, a picturesque artisan town about 1,600 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. In June, Caruaru swells from a sleepy town of a quarter of a million residents to more than a million as visitors from around the world arrive for the annual Big Party. Festa Juninas dazzles with fireworks, food and forro, a type of Brazilian music that keeps partygoers dancing until dawn.

When my husband, Lewis Campbell, and I visited Caruaru last June, it was a journey to a territory I had been traversing for some time, if only in literature. I had been studying and translating literatura de cordel, or “stories on a string”--folk ballads printed in pamphlets that were strung on clotheslines across poets’ stalls and sold in the open marketplaces of northeastern Brazil. Part of a fading folkloric tradition, these ballads of human folly involve simple country folk, talking animals and Catholic saints.

As a child, I lived for a time with my grandmother in Brazil. I remembered Festa Juninas and the frilly traditional costumes my grandmother made for my sister and me for the celebration. An uncle took us to see the fireworks arc across the sky. In a sense, returning to Brazil during Festa Juninas was returning home.

The better-known Carnival, held before Lent in Rio and elsewhere in Brazil, is an all-out glorification of carnal delights, a celebration of the wild id that changes dramatically into the superego come Ash Wednesday. Festa Juninas, on the other hand, celebrates the ego, the constancy of life and hard work. The festival originated in pre-Christian Europe to honor the harvest and fertility, and came to Brazil with the Portuguese.

Besides its festival, Caruaru is known for its ceramic figurines, considered a major form of Brazilian folk art, and for its twice-weekly market, one of the largest in northeastern Brazil, held Wednesdays and Saturdays. The city can be visited during a day trip from Recife, a budding resort capital 95 miles away that is known as the Brazilian Venice.

Part of our stay included Recife, Brazil’s fourth largest city. The colonial section of town huddles by the coast; the rest sprawls around three rivers, connected by several brightly painted bridges. My husband and I stayed in Boa Viagem, the hotel zone, which has a beach that rivals those in Rio.

Settled by the Portuguese in the first decade of the 1500s, Recife was used as a harbor for ships transporting harvested brazilwood to Europe. Sugar mills were established in the early 1530s, and the area rapidly became one of the most important sugar-growing regions in the world.

In the interior, owners of large estates raised cattle, initially to supply sugar workers with food. These isolated estates gave rise to a unique population of flamboyant cowboys, wandering outlaws and African slaves. Some of the slaves escaped and established independent communities. They named one of these communities Kau’lu, after an herb brought from their African homeland. “Kau’lu” evolved into the name Caruaru (pronounced car-u-a-RU).

The city sits in a small valley in the heart of the Agreste, a part of Brazil that gets some of the moisture of the coast yet hints at the harsher landscape of the sertao. To get here, we took a two-hour bus ride from Recife. We passed rolling hills of sugar cane, patches of thick bromeliads and clusters of palm and banana trees. The lushness gave way to stubbier vegetation and cactus. Donkey carts shared the road with speeding cars, and goats grazed nonchalantly in empty lots that doubled as soccer fields. We watched while a man tried to harness a runaway pig, the animal clearly winning as it dragged its master through the mud.

Festa Juninas was everywhere. Rows of small flags were strung around town squares and across alleyways, attached to trees, windows and eaves. Baloes, colorful balloon-like lanterns, hung from lampposts.

The images of this harvest festival are pure matuto, which translates as “country bumpkin.” During Festa Juninas, even the most ardent city dweller longs for the farm. Straw hats and fringed leather hats a la Lampiao appear on the heads of refrigerator salesmen, TV cooking show hosts and jitney drivers. Lampiao also appears on billboards advertising Burger King and rock music radio stations.

But the Festa Juninas is actually the celebration of three saints. Street parties start June 13, Dia de Namorados, or Sweethearts Day, which is also the day of St. Anthony of Padua. For the next two weeks the frenzy increases, reaching the height of country-style bliss on the Dia de Sao Joao, feast day of St. John the Baptist, on June 24. Things start to wind down on June 29, the day of St. Peter.

In Caruaru, the St. John’s Day party became so big that the city built a special fairgrounds, the Vila do Forro, for the annual event. Food booths offer grilled meat, roasted corn, shrimp or tripe soup and my favorite Brazilian alcoholic drink, caipirinhas, made with limes, sugar and cachaca, a wonderful rum that gives your lips a blissful numbness. Open-air dance halls compete for space with a chapel where people manage to pray despite the hubbub.

A festival of fertility, Festa Juninas features children as a star attraction. Little boys wear patchwork pants and neck bandannas. Their faces are painted with signs of manhood--small pointed mustaches and smears of 5 o’clock shadow. Little girls blossom in gingham and flowered dresses with puffed sleeves, ruffles and ribbons. Swirls of rouge and fake freckles decorate their cheeks. Was this really what I looked like many years ago wearing my blue eyelet-trimmed dress?

We stayed at the spartan but clean Center Plaza Hotel, close to the festival grounds. With the windows open, music drifted in from shops along the street. The daily buffet featured regional favorites: sun-cured beef, boiled cassava, stewed chicken, fried bananas and scene-stealing cakes. There are good reasons they call the northeast sugar country.

On the second day of the St. John’s celebration, we went to the festival grounds to see the parade of the bacamarteiros, battalions of mock soldiers dressed in fringed leather hats with cartridge belts slung over their shoulders. They carried rifles modeled after those used by army troops during Brazil’s war with Paraguay in 1865. The soldiers arrived at a dusty empty lot, milled around and chatted. When they felt ready, a few ambled out, held their rifles above their heads and fired blanks into the air. At the end, this gentle army did nothing more than fill the air with booming sounds, the smell of gunpowder and clouds of dust.

During the weekend celebrations, quadrille groups of young adult couples dressed in colorful clothes promenaded through crowds that rapidly parted for them. The quadrille originated as a 19th century European court dance, but once it arrived in the open frontier of Brazil, the polite hush of the palaces let loose with the shouts of the marcante, or dance caller. Couples circled, swirled, wove together, broke apart and rejoined.

Most of those who visit Festa Juninas do a different type of dance, the forro. Caruaru has crowned itself the “Capital of Forro” after the kicky but melancholy music that is the lifeblood of the northeast. Although forro has European origins, the sound is unmistakably regional in its primary instruments--accordion, triangle and zabumba drum, with the occasional addition of guitar, tambourine and other percussion.

Partners dancing the forro snuggle tightly, the man’s leg slipping between the woman’s legs to varying degrees. In a more conservative rendition, the knees kiss; in the sensational, stomach-rubbing rela-buxo, they embrace. The young couples dance their forro in double time and insert a few extra hip wiggles into the beat. Older women, who have the short, square-shaped build of their ancestors, dance affectionately with their tired, lean-faced men. The drunk dance while holding beer cans or bottles of scotch. More affluent Brazilians from Sao Paulo and Rio dance in pressed khakis and silk scarves. Because the forro is danced almost in place, a small floor can heat up with a lot of forrozeiros. All night long, fireworks glitter over the churning masses.

Of course, you don’t have to arrive during Festa Juninas to dance--or to learn more about the forro. The Vila do Forro houses a forro museum that is open all year round. The building also houses the Museu do Barro, a ceramic museum that displays the best examples of the painted figures for which Caruaru is famous.

The forro museum honors the father of northeastern music, Luiz Gonzaga, revered for his ability to chronicle the hard life of the northeasterner. His most famous lament, “Asa Branca” (White Wing), tells about a migrant who has fled his drought-ridden farm but who waits for rain so he can return to the land and the woman he loves. I grew up with Gonzaga’s warm voice playing on my parents’ phonograph every Sunday afternoon. I was delighted when I saw the lyrics to “Asa Branca” posted on a display board so that everyone could sing the words.

Upstairs, the ceramic museum contains many figures done by Mestre Vitalino, Caruaru’s master craftsman. Some of the statues are quaint, such as women feeding chickens and pipe-smoking grandmothers riding donkeys; some are political, such as black maids nursing white infants, and men and women toiling in the sugar fields.

Four miles outside town and easily accessible by city bus or car is the tiny artisan village of Alto do Moura, which we visited twice. The small shops are populated with figurines for sale, with prices ranging from a few dollars to a couple of hundred. If waiters at the open-air cafes seem a bit slow, not to worry. Throngs of street vendors wander around the lunchtime crowd, selling cashews and salted shrimp to stave off hunger.

While we waited our turn, my tall, northern European-looking husband caught the eye of a repentista, or balladeer. These singers are very much a part of northeast Brazilian folklore. They improvise on the spot. In a distinctive nasal singsong style, the repentista told a tall tale of our journey and gently teased, “Perhaps these Americans brought some money with them?” Even though my husband doesn’t speak Portuguese, he knew he had no choice but to pay up.

Around the northeast, I saw a couple of cars with bumper stickers that proclaimed: “Sou orgullo ser um Nordestino.” (I’m proud to be a Northeasterner.) Festa Juninas harks back to a simpler time of honest farm work and uncomplicated lives. For the month of June, all Brazil is “proud to be Nordestino.”

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Guidebook: Carousing in Caruaru

Getting there: There are no nonstop flights from Southern California to northeast Brazil. American and United fly to Sao Paulo, connecting in Miami. From there, take Varig to Recife. Alternatively, fly Varig to Rio de Janeiro with one stop, then to Recife; or Varig nonstop to Sao Paulo, then TAM Linhas Aeras to Recife. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $847.

Buses from Recife to Caruaru leave from Terminal Integrado de Passageiros, the TIP terminal, for the two- to three-hour trip. The cost is about $8.50 one way. Lines are long during Festa Juninas weekends, so buy your passage early. Make sure you also obtain a boarding ticket, or cartao de embarque, with your bus ticket, ingresso or bilhete.

To drive to Caruaru, take the BR-232 freeway going west.

Transportation in Caruaru is cheap, and there are plenty of buses. Taxis line up by the bus station and in front of hotels. A taxi ride from the bus depot to downtown costs about $2.50.

Telephones: To call the numbers below, dial 011 (the international dialing code), 55 (the country code), 81 (the regional code) and the local phone number.

Where to stay: In Recife, the Hotel do Sol is on beautiful Boa Viagem beach. You can buy a bus ticket to Caruaru with your reservation and avoid waiting in line at the terminal: 978 Av. Boa Viagem; 3091-0991, www.hsol.com.br. Doubles $32, ocean view about $40.

Hotels in Caruaru sell two- to three-night packages during St. John’s weekend. Reserve well ahead. The e-mail response time is one to two weeks.

Hotel do Sol in Caruaru, 3721-3044, www.hsol.com.br, is part of the same northeast Brazil chain as the hotel recommended in Recife. It is at the intersection of routes 104 and 232, a three-minute drive from the center of Caruaru. Festival packages for doubles are $143 for three nights, $118 for two nights. At other times of the year, doubles are about $50. Big breakfasts are included.

Center Plaza Hotel, 84 Rua 7 de Setembro, 3722-4011, www.caruaru.com.br/hoteis.htm, is walking distance to the festivities. Its three-night festival package is $215 double with breakfast and a buffet dinner.

You can find basic information about the Center Plaza Hotel and Hotel do Sol at www.hotel.com.br. In the box Cidade, type Caruaru.

Where to eat: Buffet dining is the rage in the northeast. In Caruaru, try Mestre Vitalino, 13 Rua Leao Dourado, 3721-0499, for local favorites. If you’re looking for a break from regional foods, try the Italian cuisine at Restaurante Giardino, 151 Rua Oswaldo; 3723-6049. Their specialty is filet mignon with Madeira sauce.

For more information: Brazilian Consulate Trade Center, Tourist Information, 8484 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 711, Beverly Hills, CA 90211; (323) 651-2664, fax (323) 651-1274, www.embratur.gov.br.

The following U.S. travel agents specialize in travel to Brazil and are familiar with the northeast:

Cheviot Hills Travel Service, 9819 National Blvd., Suite No. 1, Los Angeles, CA 90034; (310) 202- 6264 or (818) 501-4426, fax (310) 837-2214, e-mail Lfern2000@aol.com.

BrazilAmerica, www.brazilamerica.com.

Guia Quatro Rodas (an annual guidebook) and Brasil Travel News magazine, www.travelnews.com.br, are in Portuguese but are easy to understand because they use many visual aids and quality symbols. They can be found at Brazilian newsstands.

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Kathleen de Azevedo, a San Francisco freelance writer, was born in Brazil.