Samba dancers to rev up Rio carnival
Nearly 800,000 Brazilian and foreign tourists were expected join Rio’s six million residents in the celebrations, whose climax comes on Sunday and Monday with the city’s top samba schools putting on their extravagant processions led by sexy dancing queens.
Extra security has been deployed to reassure visitors and locals alike—and to attempt to roll back Rio’s deserved reputation for street crime ahead of its hosting of football matches in the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.
The official launch of Rio’s Carnival was given by “King Momo”, an honorary figure elected before the partying on the basis of his sizeable girth and jolly nature.
“I give the keys to the city to your majesty,” Mayor Eduardo Paes told the symbolic sovereign in a ceremony at the town hall.
“I declare the magnificent Carnival of Rio open!” King Momo replied, as he quick-stepped into a nifty samba dance accompanied by a couple of sequined Carnival queens. Billed as “The Biggest Party of Earth”, Rio’s Carnival is a magnet for partiers and jetsetters, who rub shoulders with the city’s exuberant residents, rich and poor alike.
Hotels are 95 per cent booked, the regional hoteliers’ association said.
That underlined both the popularity of the event—and the amount of hotel construction the city badly needs in the next couple of years to accommodate the many more tourists expected to attend the World Cup and the Olympics.
Brazil is already well behind in its preparations for the former, which in turn is worrying for the latter.
With Brazilian authorities all too aware of the reputation for violence Rio has, police reinforcements have been sent out across the state. Around 50,000 officers have been deployed. Some trained by the United States’ FBI will be posted at the Sambodrome, the stadium in Rio that is the venue for the samba school parades.
In addition, officials have installed some 30 new surveillance cameras around the city, each able to monitor a distance of up to 2 km.
Authorities also hope that their strategy of chasing drug gangs out of some of the lawless slums that striate the city, and setting up neighbourhood police units to maintain control, will pay dividends.
The parades on Sunday and Monday are a competition, watched as assiduously as any football game in this soccer-mad country.