Brazil’s Fighting Kites Are a Part of Its Culture. But Some Want Them Banned to Save Lives

Two groups of men stood on opposite rooftops perched on a hillside overlooking Rio de Janeiro’s Ipanema beach, taunting one another. It was a macho showdown between opponents wielding unlikely weapons — kites.

On this July morning in the impoverished neighborhood, they were using taut, sharp-edged kite lines — known as “cerol” in Portuguese — to slash their opponents’ lines, ripping their kites from the sky.

Kite fighting has caused horrific injuries and even deaths, and a bill moving through Brazil’s Congress is seeking to prohibit the manufacture, sale and use of the razor-sharp lines nationwide, with violators facing one to three years in prison and a hefty fine.

The lines are already outlawed in some congested areas of Brazil, including Rio, but that didn’t appear to trouble the men jousting with their kites above Ipanema; indeed, some of those flouting the law were police officers. A couple of them called kites their therapy.

“That’s the logic of kite flying: cutting another person’s line,” said Alexander Mattoso da Silva, a military police officer with bulging, tattooed biceps. He goes by “Jarro” and in 2014 he traveled to France to test his mettle at an international kite festival, where he won the kite-fighting competition.

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Kites have a long history in Brazil and are particularly popular in Rio’s favelas, the poor neighborhoods often clinging to the mountains overlooking and surrounding the city, where a cottage industry uses bamboo and tissue paper to produce kites.

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While kite-fighting competitions are held safely in designated areas in countries like France and Chile, in Brazil, its widespread, unregulated use has caused numerous accidents over the years.

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In Brazil, kites are ubiquitous, with kite flying even recognized as a cultural and historical heritage by legislation passed by Rio’s municipal assembly in 2021. Some say kites were brought to Brazil by the country’s Portuguese colonizers. But others note they were used in Africa, and that the legendary Palmares community of runaway slaves in the northeast deployed them to warn of danger.

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State laws regarding cutting lines differ across Brazil. Rio confines legal use to a few areas, known as “kitedromes,” located far from homes, roads and highways, while other states have blanket bans.

Rio’s military police said 10 people were detained between January and July for breaking the city’s kite line law. Last week, Rio’s municipal guard seized eight reels left behind by a group of fleeing kite-fighters at Recreio dos Bandeirantes beach, a popular site for the sport, it said in an email.

But many say authorities tend to turn a blind eye.

“Often, the police don’t even stop criminals. Imagine someone flying a kite,” said Carlos Magno, president of Rio’s association of kite fliers.

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