Miami Herald (Sunday)

Brazil’s glitzy Carnival is back in full form after pandemic

- BY MAURICIO SAVARESE AND DAVID BILLER Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO

Brazil’s Carnival is back. Glittery and outrageous costumes were prepared again. Samba songs were ringing out ‘til dawn at Rio de Janeiro’s sold-out parade grounds. Hundreds of raucous, roaming parties were flooding the streets. And working-class communitie­s were buoyed, emotionall­y and economical­ly, by the renewed revelry.

The COVID-19 pandemic last year prompted Rio to delay Carnival by two months, and watered down some of the fun, which was attended mostly by locals. Brazil’s federal government expects 46 million people to join the festivitie­s that officially began Friday and run through Feb. 22. That includes visitors to cities that make Carnival a world-famous bash, especially Rio but also Salvador,

Recife and Sao Paulo, which has recently emerged as a hotspot.

These cities have already begun letting loose.

Many Brazilian mayors, including Rio’s, were marking the start of the celebratio­ns on Friday by symbolical­ly handing the keys to their cities to their Carnival Kings. And the first street parties of the Carnival weekend kicked off, with revelers’ costumes ranging from Pope Francis to the devil himself.

“We’ve waited for so long, we deserve this catharsis,” Thiago Varella, a 38-year-old engineer wearing a Hawaiian shirt drenched by the rain, said at a bash in Sao Paulo.

Most tourists were eager to go to the street parties, known as blocos. Rio has permitted more than 600 of them, and there are more unsanction­ed blocos. The biggest blocos lure millions to the streets, including one bloco that plays Beatles songs with a Carnival rhythm for a crowd of hundreds of thousands. Such major blocos were called off last year.

“We want to see the partying, the colors, the people and ourselves enjoying Carnival,” Chilean tourist Sofia Umaña, 28, said near Copacabana beach.

The premier spectacle is at the Sambadrome. Top samba schools, which are based in Rio’s more working-class neighborho­ods, spend millions on hourlong parades with elaborate floats and costumes, said Jorge Perlingeir­o, president of Rio’s league of samba schools.

“What’s good and beautiful costs a lot; Carnival materials are expensive,”

Perlingeir­o said in in his office beside the samba schools’ warehouses. “It’s such an important party … of culture, happiness, entertainm­ent, leisure and, primarily, its commercial and social side.”

He added that this year’s Carnival will smash records at the Sambadrome, where some 100,000 staff and spectators are expected each day in the sold-out venue, plus 18,000 paraders. While President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is not expected to be among them, his wife Rosângela da Silva has said she will be at the parade.

The first lady’s attendance signals a shift from the administra­tion of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who kept his distance from the nation’s marquee cultural event.

Nearly 700,000 Brazilians died in the pandemic, the world’s second-highest national total, after the

U.S., and many blamed

Bolsonaro’s response, weakening the bid for reelection that he ultimately lost. Many at this year’s street parties are celebratin­g not just the return of Carnival, but also Bolsonaro’s defeat.

That was the case at the Heaven on Earth street party in Rio’s bohemian Santa Teresa neighborho­od on Feb. 11. Musicians pounded their drums as some revelers climbed fences to watch the scene from above the pulsing throng. Anilson Costa, a stilt-walker, already had a prime view from his elevated perch. Covered in flowers and brightly colored pom-poms, he poured a watering can labeled “LOVE” over people dancing below him.

“Seeing this crowd today is a dream, it’s very magical,” Costa said. “This is the post-pandemic Carnival, the Carnival of democracy, the Carnival of rebirth.”

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 ?? BRUNA PRADO AP ?? A reveler on stilts performs during the ‘Ceu na Terra’ Block or Heaven on Earth street Carnival party in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Saturday.
BRUNA PRADO AP A reveler on stilts performs during the ‘Ceu na Terra’ Block or Heaven on Earth street Carnival party in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Saturday.

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