A home in 2010

The second fall of Imperio has left me more disillusioned than ever with Grupo Especial, and more convinced than ever that Grupo A is where the real Carnaval of the people lives: the Carnaval that is about community, about honest people working as hard as they can to put on the best show that they can. Every year that I go to Rio, I seem to develop a stronger and stronger respect for one or another magnificent Grupo A escola that is mysteriously trapped in Grupo A - often an escola that, despite regularly winning Grupo A, is always immediately sent back down again. It's one of Grupo Especial's little pacts with the judges: The Grupo A winner one year is always the escola that immediately gets demoted the next year. They're called the "yo-yo escolas".

What that means is, those yo-yo escolas are basically first-class, truly GREAT, escolas that might have fantastic baterias, great designs, great songs, great parade flow, thousands of dedicated people... but they don't have a lot of money. Which means they cannot afford the bribes to get the Liesa judges to take them seriously. They also can't afford to make truly huge million-dollar floats and $10,000 costumes. Instead they have to settle for ever so slightly smaller, but magnificent, $900,000 floats, and ever so slightly smaller, but totally gorgeous, $9000 costumes... but that little difference sinks them in the end.

It's entirely about the money.

Sao Clemente, Estacio de Sa, Uniao da Ilha. And now Imperio Serrano, which till two years ago was one of the original golden children of Grupo Especial, one of the originals, with a bateria that is consistently voted best in all of Rio (meaning, of course, best in the world). But long ago Imperio committed the cardinal sin of deciding to remain an honest escola.

All worked up about it, I sent Vitor a slightly incoherent email - my Portuguese has been getting worse and worse this year - that probably read something like:

****

I saw the parades on TV, and all mine friends, sambistas all, from englands and United States, we all believed that Mocidade or the Mangueira go down this year and, honestly, what happened to Imperio it awfully be a ROBBERY! Honestly! Truth! I no believe in Grupo Especial none more. All I know is I will me be so proud to parade with Imperio in 2010, in Grupo Especial or Grupo A or whatever wherever. If Imperio is parading in Antarctica, I go to Antarctica! kisses, Kathleen

****

... but somehow he made sense of all that and sent me back a kind email saying that my email had cheered him up. (Maybe the grammar made him laugh.) And he also added, mournfully, "It was a whole year's work...."

Whatever the hell happens to my job here, I have a home in Império Serrano in 2010. And honestly, that's where I most want to be. I have to also state here that I still have a very soft spot for Mocidade too. But Imperio's trials and tribulations have really caught my heart... Or as they say in Rio, "I am Império."