Navigating the Meanings of Terror in Modern Brazil

Thousands of unmanned hot air balloons cross the skies of’s major cities every year, terrorizing urban elites who see them as destruction from the skies.  Tightly knit and secretive groups exist whose sole purpose is to create a public aerial art form consisting of balões, the Portuguese name of the balloons made of intricate paper designs and propelled by fire. The activity of making and launching balões evolved from small balões made for folkloric religious festivals celebrated yearly in June, to the 1970s when the balões reached a golden age and became an activity in their own right.  As balões took new proportions and flew higher and longer distances, they started overtaking the urban airspace, traversing the vast oceans of urban poor peripheries and landing in the islands of elite populations.  Subalterns, pushed out to the peripheries and marginalized by police violence and state neglect, continue to make their art which now serves as counterterrorism, a response and release from the violence unleashed by elites and the state.  This has sparked aggressive campaigns by police and media to portray these subaltern artists as terrorists and arsonists.  This paper analyzes the world of baloeiros, the makers of balões, and elite perceptions of them as terrorists based on oral history interviews, print and TV media, popular literature, and balografias (compilations of a baloeiro’s work).  These sources clarify how elites perceive baloeiros as anti-modern and dangerous elements for pursuing their art, creating an understanding of the baloeiro’s world that has culminated in the criminalization of balões.