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Happy to know the Hotel Florida is still there.
No famous folks for us in Bra 4, but many
stories. That is where we stayed also for meetings at the Embassy or during Carnival (our second carnival) as well as for ingress, the revolution, and egress out of country.
We lived in the favela of Tuiti in the bairro of São Cristovao across from the famous Mangueira where 3 of our members lived. We knew that there was a Revolution going on downtown Rio about possible election of a socialist president Joao Goulart. Maybe someone remembers more details. There were 2 houses of volunteers in Tuiti. I told my roommate(s) that I was staying with my people and not going downtown. We heard that the county seat ?? had already been barricaded and one of the county social workers imprisoned by the more conservative right wing governments. At that time I did not care as I was angry that they had closed down our health post, community center, and school for Literacy in Portuguese (none of this teaching poor folks English) in the favela of Arara. (Strange times, remember the right winged Oxford Movement known to us as the-----------they had a school supposedly on the island of Macinaw. These 2 weird men showed up a week before the revolution at the community center where I was showing movies. One looked like Peter Lorre and the other a bid parda who looked like his body guard or a former wrestler. Strange, to say the least. We were told to get our passports and come down NOW. Sweet Gilberto (now married to Maria) made it through the tanks by bus and came to lead us down to Hotel Florida and to safety. We heard that the women in Belo had laid down on the road to protest a revolution. We made it to downtown Rio and had to walk through the dead, fallen bodies and around the tanks. The Revolution was over and the Gov of Guanabara had won. They were celebrating and the Communist Student Center was on fire and people celebrating. We went, of course, to the Hotel Florida. We heard later that there was an aircraft carrier waiting to airlift us had the revolution turned out differently.
No time for a Carnival story.
Tchau
Carole James RJ 63-65
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