An exquisitely researched and endlessly fascinating long article tells the history of Brazil's centuries-old baloeiro craft, whereby painstakingly handmade paper balloons are lofted trailing ladders of pyrotechnics and long banners, powered by melted-down candle-stubs from churches and graveyards, cheered on by sometimes violent gangs who labor over them for months before releasing them.
The 1990s saw a great increase in the ambition of baloeiros, as new techniques allowed for the creation of ever-larger creations, even as the practice itself became a moral panic in Brazil, with police crackdowns and hysterical news stories.
There is one thing balloonists like almost as much as making balloons—talking about them. Despite the fact that launching balloons is now a federal crime, there are myriad publications and resources about balloons. Some traditional balloon magazines have existed since the early 1980s. There are photographers specializing strictly in balloons—balógrafos—who sell balloon photo books and launch footage DVDs, available anywhere from street stalls to the internet. Searching for "balão" on YouTube will bring up endless hours of footage. Sometimes these balógrafos are even hired to create balografias (yes, a balloon bibliography) of a team's entire history of launches, much like a family might commission a genealogy. Balloon teams are indeed much like families, and often consist of actual blood families and their closest friends and in-laws.
I stated above that despite the prohibition there are lots of materials on balloons out there. But one might rejoin that it is precisely because of this repression that baloeiros are so fond of commemorating their history. The balloons do indeed have a long history, and it seems that proving their deep connections in Brazilian culture and religion serves as a legitimizing force, as arguments for their wholesomeness, and their legalization.
The most commonly made association is with the festas juninas, the annual parties celebrating St Anthony, St Peter, and St John. These festivities hail from medieval Portugal, where they supplanted or hybridized with pagan celebrations of the summer solstice. A central feature of these celebrations, a huge bonfire, is a holdover from their pre-Christian past. But in early modern Portugal, the parties also came to include something that baloeiros claim Marco Polo imported from China—balloons. The celebration, as imported to Brazil in colonial times, already included these elements.
An Art of Air and Fire: Brazil's Renegade Balloonists [Felipe Fernandes Cruz/The Appendix]
(via Metafilter)
