"No place on Earth does Carnival like Rio!": a feminist critique of racial democracy through the analysis of transnational tourism

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Date

2018-02-22

Department

Towson University. Department of Women's and Gender Studies

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Abstract

Embedded with strong nationalist values, the Brazilian State perpetuated the idea of being a racial democracy. Considering the many ethnic groups that had been living in the country before the Portuguese colonization and since then, the racial democracy promoted the idea that they all had been equally important to the foundation of Brazil; therefore, racism would not exist in the Brazilian society. However, this ideology is more a myth than reality. By focusing on queer and heterosexual sex tourism during Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro (the world's most famous celebration of carnival), the goal of this research is to show how racial democracy has worked to sexualize and racialize bodies in ways that have turned them into a commodity used to boost the tourism industry.