Participation in Rio de Janeiro's escolas de samba was a powerful form of collective action that Brazil's military dictatorship (1964–1985) paradoxically tolerated and even promoted. While these organizations operated as vital civil society organizations, their yearly Carnival parade themes ranged from overtly regime-apologetic to subversively critical. This paper revisits a classic debate at the intersection of culture and politics: was Carnaval a tool for authoritarian co-optation or a vibrant space for resistance? To address this, we leverage a newly built dataset of thousands of samba-enredos (parade lyrics) to establish broad historical trends, and then zoom in on the critical decade of the 1970s by pairing local lyrics with newly uncovered, geocoded fine-grained electoral data. We find that escolas de samba significantly increased anti-regime opposition. Crucially, this effect was strongest among schools with a rich tradition of politically critical and racially conscious themes, demonstrating how cultural resistance directly translated into electoral pushback.
This event is presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
LOCATION:CGIS South, Room S216 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20261020T160000Z DTEND:20261020T173000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR