Parintins Folklore Festival

Blue against red

The Festival Folclórico de Parintins centres on a contest between two boi-bumbá associations: Boi Caprichoso, whose colours are blue and white, and Boi Garantido, red and white. Each takes the bumba-meu-boi story of the death and resurrection of an ox and turns it into a themed production of toadas (songs), percussion, dance, theatre, costumes and scenery, drawing on Amazonian legends and references to Indigenous cultures. They perform in the Parintins Cultural Centre, known as the Bumbódromo, and are judged on individual and collective items under the festival’s rules.

The rivalry reaches into everyday life. During the festival, shops and even national brands adapt their colours to the two sides — blue for Caprichoso, red for Garantido — and Coca-Cola’s branding appears in blue in parts of town associated with Caprichoso.

From a church fundraiser to a national spectacle

Ox groups had performed forms of bumba-meu-boi in Parintins since the early twentieth century. The first festival was held in 1965, organised by young Catholics to raise money for the cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the town’s patron saint; Garantido and Caprichoso joined in 1966. Their first head-to-head contest came on 24 June 1967, decided by applause, and in 1970 a judging panel was introduced. The festival became known across Brazil in the 1990s, helped by the 1996 hit Tic, Tic Tac, and the boi-bumbá cultural complex of the Middle Amazon and Parintins was recognised as Brazilian cultural heritage in 2018.