Morocco x Portugal already made Brazil dance well before Vinicius Junior existed

Vinicius Junior was born in July 2000. Four months earlier, a green and white crowd was dancing the samba, singing: “Dom Sebastião dies there in Quibir, the domain is Spanish, Spanish!”

In Qatar, as long as it was possible, Vini danced. And the Portuguese, now, are preparing for a new duel with the Moroccans, expecting a different result from that recorded “over there in Quibir”.

If the concept “it’s not just football” is repeated with some frequency in the most popular sport –to attest that humanity within the game and around it can even leave it in the background–, this is even more evident in the World Cup . An event that brings together multiple cultures, friendly nations and others not so much, accompanied also by those who usually don’t care about the ball. There’s even football.

For this reason, Vinicius Junior’s movements on the pitch –or at the steakhouse– were not just those of a player. They can be seen as the whole expression of a people. That’s why there’s so much discussion around the ginga of the skilful boy from São Gonçalo, who swings his body in front of the defenders to deceive them, then swings his body in celebration of the ball in the net to provoke them. Is it disrespect?

It’s not just football either, Morocco vs Portugal this Saturday (10th), for the quarterfinals of the World Cup. The sporting encounter between nations, geographically close, evoked old battles, such as Alcácer-Quibir – where Dom Sebastião went wrong, in 1578, a setback remembered by Camisa Verde e Branco 422 years later.

Sebastião was the young king of Portugal who –as has been reported several times in recent days, over a football match– led a wild crusade in North Africa, trying to expand the territories of his kingdom and those of Christianity.

Lost.

The defeat had profound consequences –even at the bottom of the sea, by all accounts– in the history of Brazil, then a Portuguese colony. Dejected Sebastião in Quibir, Portugal was eventually without a king and ended up being dominated by Spain. What made Brazil Spanish itself.

In the period of the euphemistic “Iberian Union”, which lasted until 1640, Brazil assumed a more relevant geopolitical role and expanded its territory – after all, if it was “all ours”, the limits of South America established between Portuguese and Spanish did not need to be respected by the pioneers. Portugal was orphaned, waiting for the return of the king to recover its sovereignty.

It was reacquired, without Sebastião, by what would become the Bragança dynasty. But Brazil likes to receive myths, reframe them and call them its own. Dom Sebastião is no longer a priority myth for Portugal, again independent. And it took on new colors overseas, where it still exerts a notable and undeniable cultural influence.

The (only relatively) obscure circumstances of the king’s death warranted the reading that he was in some hidden place. First, physically. Then more spiritually. It is not surprising where he found his home.

“If Sebastião does not die and does not return to Portugal, the only possible explanation is that he really became enchanted in Africa, arriving in Brazil, who knows, infiltrated on a slave ship. worlds, ensure their immortality and fight in other battles”, describes researcher Lívia Penedo Jacob, in the article “Dom Sebastião, o rei do Brasil”, from 2021.

What is Sebastião in Brazil does not fit in this text. Sebastianism –that is, the wait for the enchanted king to return– runs through the country’s history so widely that it plays a truly relevant role in movements such as Canudos, by Sebastianist Antônio Conselheiro. And he also helped elect Jair Bolsonaro.

There are countless popular Brazilian manifestations that have an umbilical connection with Dom Sebastião. Boi-Bumbá, for example, has a lot to do with the enchanted, with the hidden. Some tragedies, such as the Pedra Bonita massacre in Pernambuco in the 19th century, are more or less connected with waiting for the lost savior in Quibir.

An irresistible mix for samba schools and their carnival dancers.

The recurrence with which Dom Sebastião appeared on the catwalk is impressive, even before there was the current and most famous catwalk. In 1974 – ten years before the inauguration of the sambadrome on Avenida Marquês de Sapucaí, in Rio de Janeiro–, an allegory with a huge bull passed along Avenida Antônio Carlos, leaving the signature of Joãosinho Trinta on the asphalt.

In the text “Salgueiro dazzled”, the Sheet reported several highlights in the school parade, which would be the champion. “The allegorical floats were not left behind. One of the most sensational was a giant crowned black bull, which, in the black legends of Maranhão, is the reincarnation of the king of Portugal, D. Sebastião, killed in the battle of Alcácer-Quibir, by the moors”, described the newspaper, in the February 26 edition.

Since then, there have been many reappearances. In some cases, like Salgueiro from 1974, Sebastião was part of a plot. In others, it was the plot itself.

It was like this in São Paulo, in 1999, in the champion Gaviões da Fiel. “Your sword rises against evil”, sang the alvinegros, comparing their determination to that of the inconsequential king: “I am a hawk, I have determination, I will fight, to conquer my ideal”.

Signed by Roberto Szaniecki, the parade –which began with a duel of seven against seven in the front committee, Moors x Christians (with Alexandre Frota, right behind, on standby)– was an excellent and almost useless attempt to summarize the sebastianism.

“The search for the myth continues, and has spread throughout Northeast Brazil. Canudos, Rodeador mountains. Pedra Bonita, how much suffering and pain! Praia dos Lençóis, in Maranhão, comes to relive the legend of the resurrection. From the beginning of our history, the sacrifice of the bull became a tradition. And today, under the illuminated sky, the star of the enchanted black bull shines.”

In what is probably the most widespread legend surrounding Dom Sebastião, it is said that he found shelter in Maranhão, in the form of a crowned black bull that appears on the night of a full moon. If the bull has the star on its forehead pierced by a sword, it will once again take the form of the dead king at the age of 24. And his army will emerge from the waters of the Maranhão sheets.

“At the bottom of the sea, there is a castle that belongs to King Sebastião. That’s good!”, sang Jamelão, with his powerful voice, in the 1996 Mangueira parade, signed by Oswaldo Jardim. “Lie down in a cotton hammock and fall asleep in the beliefs of Maranhão.”

In 2008, it was Mocidade’s turn to throw themselves into a tropical version of the prophecy of the fifth empire. If Father Antônio Vieira believed that Portugal would be the fifth and last great empire, successor to the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans, the carnival artist Cid Carvalho asked: why not in Brazil, under the regency of Dom Sebastião?

“In the tropical lands of my Brazil –the heritage, the pain–, the myth has resurfaced”, sang the people of Padre Miguel, when the word myth did not cause so much discord. The parade recounted the entire trajectory of Sebastião, celebrated at birth as “the desired king”, the name of the first float. The apex was the eighth allegory: “The Fifth Empire of Brazil – the Kingdom of Dom Sebastião”.

In one of his most recent appearances at Sapucaí, Sebastião was given a new task: to save a namesake, São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro. It was up to Paraíso do Tuiuti, in 2020, in the plot “O Santo e o Rei: Encantarias de Sebastião”, to promote the meeting.

The saint arrowed –patron saint of Rio and of Tuiuti itself– and the king were greeted in the presentation conceived by João Vitor Araújo. From which sprang “the true king”. “It’s the people, master of themselves, finally disenchanted. That, in the king’s bravery, awakened by himself, will pull the arrows from the patron saint’s chest”, described the carnival designer, in the text that guided the parade.

There are many other examples. When he is not in the sheets of Maranhão, Dom Sebastião is on the avenue.

“In fact, this relationship that the samba schools built with the myth of Sebastianism is very interesting”, he tells Sheet Fábio Fabato, co-author of “For Everything to Start on Thursday – the Enredo dos Enredos”.

For the writer, who helped to develop recent Mocidade plots, the wealth of references linked to the hidden king is irresistible to anyone who participates in Carnaval.

“The samba schools are a derivation of several influences. There are Portuguese Catholic processions, a certain French aura, also Italian, with Commedia dell’Arte, and African drumming. So, it is a great mixture of formations that leads to the parade from a samba school. It’s a big Catholic parade with African knowledge. And the legend of sebastianismo has all these crossings of Portuguese, African, Moorish references. I mean, you have all the influences that form, in a certain way, the carioca carnival condensed in one legend only,” he says.

In addition to this plurality, Sebastião offers redemption.

“Carnival is the transformation of people’s lives. They wear a kind of costume, right? from Brazil”, says Fabato.

“Sebastianism, in itself, is the will of a people to have a redeemer, a messiah, a savior. And Carnival is very much in this perspective. It is the great savior of people, either because of the question of madness, of inversion. Because it is the celebration party, it’s a party that dignifies us in terms of identity. So, I think they are mirrors. It’s as if Sebastianism were a simulacrum of what Carnival is”, observes the author.

This weekend, the Portuguese and Moroccans will face each other again – in Doha, not in Alcácer-Quibir. Whoever survives will be closer to the coronation in Qatar. Whoever loses will be able to seek shelter in the Maranhão sheets.