Hi Tanamesars,

As many of you know, the past week I spent my first Carnival in Brazil ever (as an adult).

I landed back in Milan today at 9 a.m. and went straight to work — still carrying glitter in my suitcase and a slight existential confusion in my head. So today I wanted to leave you with just a taste of it.

• With the rise of Christianity, those pagan celebrations were reframed. Carnival became the last indulgence before restraint. Even the word comes from the Latin carnis levare — “to remove the meat” — referring to the fasting of Lent. Feast before sacrifice. Excess before discipline.

When Carnival arrived in Brazil through the Portuguese Entrudo, it was chaotic and violent. But it was in Brazil — in the encounter with Afro-Brazilian rhythms, in the terreiros, in the organization of Black communities pushed to the margins — that Carnival found its soul.

Samba (the Brazilian music genre) was born as occupation. As presence. As resistance. And that presence came at a price. Until the early 20th century, samba was literally criminalized. Police would arrest musicians for “vagrancy.” For Black bodies to occupy the asphalt without repression, a negotiation had to happen.

• In 1934, under Getúlio Vargas, the Carnival parades were officially recognized — but with conditions. Samba schools would receive funding only if they presented “educational” themes. They had to exalt Brazilian history, national heroes, the riches of the fatherland. Celebration became curriculum.

And what started as a bureaucratic toll — a cultural tax for visibility — slowly transformed into something else. Samba schools learned to speak the language of power. And then, they learned how to bend it. The parade avenue became more than spectacle. It became narrative. It became memory. It became, sometimes, a ballot box disguised as sequins.

Watching it live this year felt different. It truly feels like millions of people saying: we are still here, and we will tell our own story.

I came back exhausted, sunburned, and so so so happy. I’ll probably come back soon with more details about what it felt like to be there — the blocos, the chaos, the beauty, the contradictions. But for now, I just want to sleep for 12 hours straight.

With love,
Micael