E/CN.4/1996/72/Add.1 page 11 C. Miscegenation and multiracial democracy 33. Official pronouncements refer to "the uniqueness of the Brazilian people" and emphasize the biological and cultural mix that is reflected in particular in the participation of large numbers of Brazilians of all origins in the Afro-Brazilian religions practised in the terreiros (candomblé, macumba, umbanda) and in the carnival. 9/ The Brazilian authorities prefer to speak of skin colour rather than race, by using the words branco, pardo and preto. They are fairly reluctant to tackle the racial question head-on, either because it is problematical and embarrassing or because they feel that the question does not arise. Miscegenation has created so many gradations of skin colour that it has become difficult to classify the Brazilian population according to race and to estimate precisely the size of the various ethnic and racial groups in the population. 34. The word pardo, which denotes people of mixed parentage as a group and refers to the colour of most of the population, characterizes the interbreeding among the three original races (Indian, Black and White) and excludes all terms referring to miscegenation from the official classifications: Mulato: White-Black interbreeding; Mameluco or Caboclo: White-Indian interbreeding; Cafuso: Indian-Black interbreeding. 35. In other words, the authorities have made a deliberate effort over time to replace the idea of race by that of colour. This was an attempt to resolve the racial issue, since the races had no recognition as such but merged to form a unique people of a hundred subtle tones over whom racial prejudice had no hold. This is why the annual Carnival in Rio de Janeiro with its splendid colours is regarded as expressing the Brazilian authorities’ idea of national harmony better than any integrationist pronouncement. In its 1995 Carnival song, the Viraduro Samba School echoed this idea by referring to the amazement of French painter Jean-Baptiste Debret when he discovered Brazil in 1815 in the company of a French artistic mission: "Quel bonheur! Je suis venu de France à l’invitation du Roi porteur de mon art et j’ai été surpris de découvrir un paradis enchanteur, où Indiens, Blancs et Noirs vivent en parfaite harmonie raciale, mettant ainsi en évidence la nature profonde de ce pays tropical" [What bliss! I came from France at the invitation of the King bearing my art and surprised was I to discover an enchanted paradise, where Indians, Whites and Blacks live in perfect racial harmony, living proof of the true nature of this tropical land". 10/