Word: salgueiro
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Satins & Silks. This week the night of glory rolls around again. And up on the hillsides, no one is better prepared than the 12,000 glory-minded people in the Salgueiro favela on the city's industrial north side. Salgueiro's samba club started planning early. Those who could read pored over history books at the national library to find a theme; sewing machines whirred through billows of satins and silks, artisans hammered away on floats, musicians thrummed their drums, and thousands of lively feet ran through dance routines over and over again...
...Salgueiro's theme this year is the tale of Dom João Fernandes de Oliveira, a Portuguese nobleman who arrived in Brazil in 1761 with a royal deed to Brazil's richest diamond mine, Tijuco, in the landlocked interior state of Minas Gerais. To Dom João's castle, Brazil's most aristocratic mothers brought their loveliest daughters. But Dom João spurned them all for a Negro slave girl named Chica da Silva. Dom João fell madly in love, bought Chica and installed her as head of his household...
Salute & Make Way. As the citizens of Salgueiro worked it out for this week's show, the story of Chica starts with six dancers dressed as colonial gentlemen, prancing down the street bearing a banner: "The Académicos of Salgueiro salute the people and the press and ask to make way to present the 1963 Carnival with their theme, Chica da Silva." Then come 20 men carrying gold-headed canes, wearing silk suits, suede shoes and derby hats. Behind them appear six groups of dancers, twirling, singing and high-stepping in gold buckles, white knee stockings and wigs...
...Salgueiro's extravaganza costs something like $140,000, more than a month's wages contributed by each member of the samba club. The money comes from savings, from stickups, from the world's oldest profession, from pay-as-you-guzzle drinking parties. But everyone contributes, and everyone wants to dance. Says Salgueiro's Carnival Director Joaquim Casemiro, known to his fellows as "Droopy Drawers": "I direct them only with a whistle. I don't need a gun or a knife. I've never had to shoot anyone yet in Salgueiro to get them...
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