Rio carnival lampoons top politicians
Temer as Dracula and a giant backside mocking Rio’s mayor set the tone for samba parades
Brazil President Michel Temer as Dracula, crooked politicians, and a giant backside mocking Rio de Janeiro’s mayor set the tone for this week’s unusually politicised samba parades as the Rio carnival hits its peak.
The Sambodromo parades, running through Sunday night and would have restarted last night, were as always a lush cocktail of glamour, eccentric costumes, pounding samba anthems and sweaty, pulsating sensuality. But amid the feather headdresses, sparkly G-strings and dancers dressed as everything from trees to Chinese merchants, serious politics intruded this year.
Latin America’s biggest country is only just emerging from its worst recession on record. Violent crime in cities such as Rio is rocketing, and politics is riddled with corruption and lack of leadership ahead of October presidential elections. But neither the 13 elite samba schools competing, nor the 72,000 spectators crammed into the Sambodromo are immune to the country’s anger. One target of that anger overnight Sunday was Rio Mayor Marcelo Crivella.
A bishop in the evangelical mega-church founded by his billionaire uncle, Crivella can hardly conceal his disdain for the carnival’s excesses of the flesh ahead of the start of Roman Catholic Lent on Ash Wednesday.
Even though the carnival is a huge revenue earner for the city, Crivella has halved subsidies to the annual bash and refused so much as to attend the Sambodromo parades. In a video released just after the first parades got underway Sunday, the mayor said he was leaving to Europe.
For Paraiso do Tuiuti — one of the 13 schools vying in the epic talent contest — the mayor has declared war.
They replied by putting a large, bare and cellulite-riddled pink backside on one of their floats. Hidden under a temporary covering on the right cheek was Crivella’s name, said organiser Erick Erasmo, 40, just before the school started marching.
“There’s a heart with Crivella written on it — like you have on a tattoo,” he said.
“The bum represents the mayor for cutting our budget, for trying to end our happiness,” said another organiser, Helton Dias, 28.
Unpopular president
Centre-right President Michel Temer — said by opinion polls to be the most unpopular president Brazil has ever known — was also taking a ribbing.
Temer came to power in 2016 after leftist president Dilma Rousseff was ejected in an impeachment vote driven by Temer’s close allies. Since then, his government has been rocked by almost continuous corruption scandals, while his push for economic austerity measures has sent popular support plummeting. The Paraiso do Tuiuti school depicted him as Dracula on Sunday.
“I am a vampire who is meant to represent the president of the republic,” said history teacher Leo Morais, 39, as he sat having make-up applied for his role as the undead version of Temer.
Morais said the carnival was a chance for Brazil’s poor to be heard. “The samba schools have a social role,” he said. “They speak out for ordinary people.”
The face-off between the samba schools in the purposebuilt Sambodromo is taken every bit as seriously as the city’s other great love, football. Each school gets about an hour to parade with some 3,000 dancers, singers and drummers dressed in over-the-top costumes. Tragedies cast a shadow over Bolivia’s carnival celebrations this weekend, with a staggering 21 people killed and 72 injured, authorities said Sunday.
In the city of Oruro, famous for its carnival celebrations, a heating gas tank exploded and killed eight people and wounded another 47.
Many of the others killed were in traffic and bus accidents, officials said.
In Oruro, about 25,000 dancers take part in the pre-Lenten blowout that is Bolivia’s biggest tourist attraction and brings as many as half a million people to the sleepy town.
The pageant along the city’s cobblestones is a mixture of Spanish colonial traditions with those of the ancient indigenous Inca and Aymara peoples in a ritual seeking better farming and good health.