SAO PAULO — For many years, they’ve scrounged for meals on streets throughout the nation — undesired, deserted and ignored.
However immediately, the caramel-colored mutts of Brazil are having a serious second. The “vira-lata caramelo” (actually: caramel trashcan-tipper) is being exalted in memes, movies, petitions, an upcoming Netflix movie, a Carnival parade and draft laws to honor it as a part of Brazilian tradition. Caramelos’ newfound cachet speaks to the worth of resilience in Brazil — a melting pot of 213 million folks recognized for weathering onerous knocks with a smile — and inverts its supposed “mongrel complex.”
A scene from Netflix’s “Caramelo” shot in October featured a beige pet sitting beside a river in Sao Paulo watching picture-perfect households go with their impeccable purebreds — a golden retriever, a miniature collie and a Doberman. On the director of pictures’s sign, a supply boy cycled previous and the plucky mutt gave chase, following the scent of pizza and looking for a method to get by.
“The caramelo ended up changing into the good image of Brazil, a logo for the folks,” Diego Freitas, the movie’s director and co-writer, mentioned after the day’s taking pictures. “Netflix was delicate to what’s taking place with the zeitgeist. The caramelo is the spirit of our time.”
The caramelo craze began on-line round 2019. Folks posted the tongue-in-cheek phrase, “This represents Brazil greater than soccer or samba,” together with images of distinctively Brazilian phenomena, together with caramelos galore. Social media accounts paid tribute to the caramelos’ antics: One invaded a dance present and relieved itself on stage; one other performed useless whereas receiving chest compressions for a CPR coaching video. On-line retailers began hawking caramelo-shaped throw pillows.
A petition to interchange the macaw on Brazil’s 10-reais ($1.65) invoice garnered 50,000 signatures in 2019.
“The caramelo has established itself as a landmark of the Brazilian folks, being properly beloved and acquired in all states of the nation, being a wonderful consultant of our tradition,” it proclaimed. “Subsequently it deserves point out on our foreign money.”
The following 12 months, one other petition to emblazon the medium-sized canine on the 200-reais word acquired triple the help.
Many cite kindness because the caramelos’ secret appeal, however extra typically say it is that they are savvy survivors.
Working example is a caramelo within the northeastern metropolis Joao Pessoa. Final 12 months, Khelson Silva, 59, left the fitness center with a good friend and located the stray ready. It took Silva’s good friend’s finger gingerly between its enamel and led them for 3 blocks.
“He acquired to my constructing, walked straight into the storage, went up the elevator and proper into the home,” mentioned Silva, who discovered this caramelo, now named Persistent José, had tried related gambits earlier than. “It was him who selected us. He knew the place we lived.”
Author Nelson Rodrigues coined the now-infamous time period “mongrel advanced” after the nationwide soccer group’s humiliating World Cup defeat in 1950, aiming to encapsulate what he perceived as Brazil’s sense of inferiority in comparison with different nations. At this time, many see Brazil’s numerous roots — immigrants, enslaved Africans and Indigenous people — as a supply of satisfaction.
Tina Castro, an English instructor in Rio de Janeiro, equates proudly owning a caramelo with loving the “loopy combination” of Brazil and its folks.
“It comes from a marginal place, like Brazil. It has a historical past of survival and marginalization,” mentioned Castro, 32. “We worth the caramelo in the best way we worth our nation, as it’s.”
“Caramelos will dominate the world!” has turn out to be a jokey rallying cry on-line, and international allies are lending a hand. After touring Brazil in November, singer Bruno Mars posed with a caramelo in his viral farewell video. Employees of the British mission to Brazil overwhelmingly voted in July to christen their new digital mascot, a Welsh Corgi, “Lord Caramelo.”
The price range for Netflix’s “Caramelo” is a part of 1 billion reais ($164 million) spent from 2023-24 on Brazilian productions to seize eyeballs in one of many world’s largest video streaming markets. Netflix hasn’t set a launch date.
“The film is a giant wager for Netflix, a superproduction,” Netflix Brasil’s press workplace informed The Related Press. “It’s the primary Brazilian movie with a canine as a protagonist, and it couldn’t be some other than the caramelo, a nationwide icon.”
Others catapulting the caramelo into the highlight embody Rio’s Sao Clemente samba college. At its three-story workshop downtown on Nov. 28, seamstresses churned out strips of sheer yellow cloth for dozens of towering caramelo costumes. Every will characteristic an enormous foam head within the college’s 2025 Carnival parade, whose theme is animal abandonment and abuse.
“It’s our starlet,” gushed workshop director Roberto Gomes. “The caramelo is the attractive, likeable little canine — not the purebred. It’s the cutie, that canine that’s all the time humorous, all the time in our hearts.”
A couple of blocks away, Lt. Col. Sidnei Robson Pazini says Brazilians are merely rediscovering long-lost devotion. He directs the Rio army police’s museum and archive, and says the “most iconic, most emblematic” piece — greater than the muskets, cannon or portray value virtually $1 million — is a taxidermied caramelo that is about 150 years outdated.
The canine typically visited a Rio police battalion for meals — incomes the identify Bruto — then joined officers transport off to warfare in Paraguay, regardless of efforts to cease him boarding. Bruto alerted troops to approaching enemies, signaled the place troopers wanted rescue and, after surviving a gunshot, returned to Rio a hero. When he died, police took up a set to have him stuffed, with a silver collar bearing the phrases “Fidelity, Love and Constancy.”
Avenue canine nonetheless discover succor inside police battalions. One in Rio adopted a caramelo in 2018 and gave him the rank of corporal. At a ceremony in July, he was promoted to sergeant.
Amid this caramelo hype, one may suppose Brazilians can be jostling to undertake their very own. However volunteers at two shelters informed the AP they nonetheless get handed over for smaller, fluffier or whiter canine.
The Indefesos shelter in Rio had 217 canine on Dec. 12 — about half caramelos. One clambers over a 6-foot wall to welcome guests, his favourite ball in his mouth.
Every time Indefesos receives a litter with caramelos, volunteers scramble to put up Instagram photos. Caramelo puppies are inevitably picked final.
“It is absurd. We rush as a result of we all know that animal, when it grows up, won’t ever have the possibility for a house,” mentioned Rosana Guerra, the nonprofit’s president. “They find yourself staying, ready for adoption that by no means comes.”
Within the Netflix movie, the stray scampers into the hectic lifetime of a career-driven chef and helps him discover which means within the current. Freitas, the director, mentioned he goals for it to the touch Brazilians’ hearts and rework caramelo affinity into motion.
The pet that pursued the supply boy that grey October day had been present in a field beside a freeway with its 9 siblings. 4 play the younger model of the movie’s 1-year-old star that was additionally a stray. Since filming wrapped Nov. 26, six of the movie’s once-homeless canines had been adopted by crew members and others.
“It’s a narrative that I hope is worthy of the canine, as a result of they’re unbelievable,” Freitas mentioned, along with his personal caramelo — the movie’s inspiration — at his toes. “They modify our lives.”
