Brazilian Carnival Queen Fired for Being 'Too Black'

A Brazilian former carnival queen has hit out at the country’s biggest television network Globo for dethroning her for being “too black.”

Each year Rio de Janeiro’s famous carnival, which recently came to close, draws millions of revellers. It is also the time that Globo plucks a young woman from obscurity to be Globeleza carnival queen and the star of the whole event.

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But the fairytale took a dark turn in 2013. The public voted for Black Brazilian Nayara Justino to be crowned Globeleza. But she was later, inexplicably, sacked and replaced by a much lighter-skinned woman.

The Guardian has released a documentary about the 27-year-old, in which Justino claims that she was dethroned for being “too black.”

The beauty competition was begun in 1993, and has been dominated by women with fair skin.

The winner can look forward to massive, overnight fame, which, Justino says in the documentary, she always dreamed of.

“Brazilian TV’s carnival queen has always been light-skinned. But that didn’t stop me from applying when Globo held the first public competition to find a new carnival queen in 2013,” Justino says in the documentary.

However, when videos and photos of her as the new Globeleza circulated, her moment of glory would be cut short.

"Lots of people were talking about the color of her skin because she was Black and there had never been a black Globeleza before," Rayla Souza, a friend of Justino, says in the documentary.

"People came on my Facebook page, calling me 'monkey' and 'darkie,'" Justino says, reliving the ugly online backlash.

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"It was the racism that hurt me most of all. And the racism wasn't just from white people, it came from Black people, too," Justino says.

And just days after the Internet abuse, Globo sacked her from the coveting role, replacing her with a light-skinned woman who was not voted in by the public.

When asked by the Guardian why Justino’s contract was terminated, Globo responded, “Globo does not base its contracts on skin colour. Actors are chosen according to their artistic fitness for the role. The same criteria applies to the choice of Globeleza, where artistic merit prevails.”

The young woman told Huffington Post that in terms of race relations in Brazil, “We’ve still got a long way ahead.”

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