Scottish DJ Calvin Harris returned to Brazil after 11 years on Sunday to headline a free Carnival parade in downtown São Paulo. What should have been a landmark moment became a case study in crowd-safety failure and municipal silence.
The city authorized the Ambev-backed Bloco Skol — featuring Harris, Nattan, Xand Avião, Zé Vaqueiro, and Felipe Amorim — on Rua da Consolação from 11:30 a.m., with the Acadêmicos do Baixo Augusta, which routinely draws an estimated 1.5 million people, following on the same street at 2 p.m.
The local Community Security Council had warned the corridor could not absorb two massive crowds, but the decision was taken unilaterally.
By noon the Skol block stopped moving. Nattan halted his set three times to direct paramedics toward collapsing revelers; Felipe Amorim shouted from the trio elétrico for firefighters.
Barriers buckled, ambulances could not get through, and desperate people climbed portable toilets and building gates to escape. At 2:55 p.m. the city activated a contingency plan, closing access and removing side-street barriers as escape routes.
Harris performed over an hour late; the Baixo Augusta parade was delayed two hours. Its founder, Alê Youssef, told O Estado de S. Paulo the city “doesn’t understand anything about Carnival” and called the scheduling “insane.”
Corporate carnival overwhelms public safety
Despite deploying 58,000 security personnel, 40,000 surveillance cameras, and 960 medical staff citywide, authorities have not explained why the arrangement was approved.
Mayor Nunes acknowledged an “absurd volume of people” but insisted “everything was fine.” Neither city hall, police, nor Ambev disclosed crowd figures or treatment numbers.
The chaos deepens an existing fault line. Professor Guilherme Varella of the Federal University of Bahia argues it reflects corporate sponsors overriding safety, noting Ambev’s R$29.2 million sponsorship buys exclusive beverage zones while smaller blocks — some cancelled for lack of subsidies frozen at R$25,000 since 2024 — are told by Nunes to show “entrepreneurial spirit.”
Conservatives point to logistical overstretch in a festival projecting 16.5 million revelers and R$3.4 billion in economic impact. Progressives see officials prioritizing mega-events over the grassroots blocks that rebuilt the city’s street Carnival under Haddad-era cultural policies.
Videos of collapsing barriers flooded X within minutes. Harris, who posted a Brazilian jersey with the nickname “Calvinho” on Instagram beforehand, has not commented. No schedule changes have been announced for the remaining weekends.