The samba school “Rosa do Povo” won the Access Group championship at the 2026 Curitiba Carnival, turning its debut into a high-impact result. Beyond competition, the parade delivered a clear message of solidarity with Gaza and Palestine, embedding that position directly into its samba-enredo and aligning artistic performance with an explicit socio-political stance.

Its inaugural a samba-enredo, “A Rose Is Born in the Curitiba of All Peoples”, Palestine was not a small detail in the presentation, it was one of the emotional centers of the samba theme. Gaza and the Palestinian people were portrayed as symbols of strength, survival, and dignity in the face of violence. 

The support for Gaza and Palestine was made explicit through visual and lyrical elements. Performers wore the Palestinian keffiyeh, and the costumes incorporated the colors of the Palestinian flag into the school’s visual identity. The lyrics referenced Palestine directly, including the line “If the bombs pursue, we play drums,” linking percussion to cultural resistance and framing art as a counter-force to violence. Ancestry and collective memory were presented as instruments of resilience, positioned as forms of symbolic counter-attack against erasure.

Another recurring phrase, “From the garbage dump, a flower was born,” reinforced a narrative of regeneration under conditions shaped by prolonged Israeli occupation in Palestine. The metaphor pointed to the material and environmental degradation associated with decades of military control, blockade, land confiscation, and recurrent destruction, particularly in Gaza, where infrastructure, housing, water systems, and agricultural land have been repeatedly damaged. 

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