Qualla: Bezerros

Bezerros: Introduction

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emerson860, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1881, relatives of sugar plantation owners near Bezerros put on masks and went out visiting. It was a prank and nothing more, and somewhere along the way they ate angu, the cornmeal porridge that was ordinary food in the agreste. Children watching them coined a name for the masked strangers: papa-angu, the angu-eaters. The joke stuck, hardened into a habit, and eventually became an institution. Bezerros is now Terra do Papangu, one of the most visited towns in the Pernambuco interior at Carnival, its streets filled with hooded figures descended from a single nineteenth-century evening of dressing up.

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Image: Emerson860 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bezerros: Masks of Every Kind

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Prefeitura de Olinda, CC BY 2.0. There is no official papangu costume, and that is precisely why the tradition has survived. Masks get made from whatever will hold a face: papier-mâché, hollowed coité gourds, mass-produced plastic bought off a shelf. Handmade and factory-made walk the same street without embarra...

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Image: Prefeitura de Olinda | CC BY 2.0

Bezerros: Three Stories About a Name

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pedrina cleidiane da Silva Almeida, CC BY-SA 4.0. Bezerros is not certain how it got its name, and it keeps three answers ready. One credits the Bezerra family, who held the land. Another points to a spot where cattle were branded. The third is a story: a Bezerra child went missing, a promise was made to São José, the child was ...

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Image: Pedrina cleidiane da Silva Almeida | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bezerros: J. Borges Cuts a Church

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wellber Drayton, Public domain. José Francisco Borges was born in Bezerros on 4 August 1935. At twenty-one he decided to write cordel, the pamphlet verse of the northeast sold strung on a line at markets, and he did what beginners do: he hired someone else, Mestre Dila, to cut the woodblock for the cover. Then ...

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Image: Wellber Drayton | Public domain

Bezerros: Green Mountain, Dry Country

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Allan Patrick from Natal, Brasil, CC BY-SA 2.0. The town sits at 470 metres, but Serra Negra, the ecological reserve at the municipality's edge, reaches 957 — high enough to catch moisture the surrounding scrub never sees, and green because of it. The Igreja de São Francisco Xavier stands up there, and the camping ground at Sí...

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Image: Allan Patrick from Natal, Brasil | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bezerros: The Ateliers

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Everttonlira, Public domain. Borges was never the only one, and Bezerros has kept the workshops open. J. Miguel cuts woodblocks and writes cordel here as well. Lula Vassoureiro keeps an atelier. The Centro de Artesanato de Pernambuco gives the whole trade a shopfront. So a town best known for a carnival in w...

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Image: Everttonlira | Public domain