Tourism and Culture: Carnival in the City of Maceió-Al (Brazil)

Abstract

Carnival is celebrated in a peculiar way in the city of Maceio, in the State of Alagoas (Brazil), by presenting greater involvement of local society in the weekend before the official date consecrated to the festival in the calendar. The “Previa”, as it is called, is consolidated in each edition, even if government actions seek to develop a broader Carnival agenda, which includes the official dates for such festivities. As such, the aim of this investigation was to historically rescue the dynamics between the city and Carnival, in their transversalities with culture and tourism. The investigation strategy of the research, the focus of this article is qualitative-exploratory in nature, and data collection was based on bibliographic and documentary research and interviews. The study to understand the peculiarities of the empirical object covers the 19th, 20th and early decades of the 21st centuries. At each historical moment it questions the articulation of the carnival festivities with the city itself, culture and tourism. The data obtained makes it possible to characterize four cycles in the Carnival of Maceió, periods that may overlap: (a) from 1850 to 1930, a time when the spontaneous manifestations of the entrudo gained organicity, involving especially Afro-descendants and, simultaneously, the prevalence of racism among the white elites; (b) from 1930 to 1990, marked by the distancing from the historical centre leading to the spatial segregation; (c) from 1993 to 2005, added to the spatial segregation, the temporary segregation associated to the Prévias; (d) after 2005, when the festival expanded, but was not necessarily coupled with social inclusion.