Cuban culture was celebrated at this year’s Rio carnival in February as one of the top carnival groups paraded with a theme about Afro Cuban spirituality.
The 4000 plus members of the ‘Paraiso do Tuiuti’ samba school created a parade with elaborate costumes and huge floats, singing and dancing to a specially composed carnival samba song which expressed their theme ‘Lonã Ifa Lukumi’.
The parade, on the Tuesday night of carnival, filled the ‘sambodromo’ stadium in Rio de Janeiro as thousands of carnival fans sang along and danced as they passed by. The parade featured many of the Cuban ‘orichas’, the ‘saints’ who have roots in West Africa, who crucially are also celebrated in Brazil. The parade made clear the link between Afro Brazilian and Afro Cuban culture and many floats featured the Cuban flag.
The huge 350-strong drumming group which provided the rhythms for the dancers also featured Cuban drums and percussion as a homage to the island.
As their song stated:
“the branches of the Caribbean grew together
With the green and yellow of Brazil”
This is the first time a top Brazilian samba school has chosen Cuba as its theme, a timely reminder that community and solidarity is strong across Latin America.
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