Carnival
festivities took over Rio de Janeiro yesterday as revellers danced and
drank at block parties, despite an extended crime wave in the city and a
spike in yellow fever cases throughout Brazil.
Over 6mn people,
including 1.5mn visitors, are expected to take to the streets of Rio for
the annual celebrations, which pit the city’s 13 best samba schools
against one another in ornate parades that can cost over $2mn a piece.
To
launch the ‘world’s biggest party’ on Friday, officials handed a
glittering key to the city to King Momo, a figurehead who presides over
the partying and who, according to legend, was expelled from Mount
Olympus before moving to Rio, the so-called “wonderful city.”
But the celebrations this year come amid escalating violence.
Gains made after police began a ‘pacification’ programme in 2008, pushing drug gangs out of favelas, have been unravelling.
An economic crisis dried up funding, and critics say the government did not make good on promised social advances for the slums.
Reports
of shootings averaged 22 per day in January 2018, up from 16 last year,
said Fogo Cruzado, a group which tracks armed violence in Rio.
In
recent days, a three-year-old girl was killed in an attempted robbery
and a thirteen-year-old boy died after being caught in crossfire between
police and traffickers as he made his way home after a soccer game.
“We
live with our hearts torn apart by so much violence,” Rio’s mayor
Marcelo Crivella said on Friday at an event inaugurating the
festivities.
“Carnival at this moment is about resurgence, about hope,” he added.
Rio
will beef up its police force to around 17,000 for the bacchanalia
after the federal government denied a request for troops to help enforce
security.
Brazil is also battling a spike in yellow fever, a viral
disease transmitted by mosquitoes in tropical regions, with 98 deaths
and 353 cases now confirmed since July, 2017.
The outbreak of the
disease, which is still a major killer in Africa but had been largely
brought under control in the Americas, has hit the states of Sao Paulo
and Minas Gerais hardest.
Rio’s state Health Secretary Luiz Antonio
Teixeira Junior has recommended that unvaccinated tourists avoid forests
and waterfalls, as a massive vaccination campaign was launched in Rio
and Sao Paulo.
Even so, festival attendees are expected to drop some
3.5bn reais ($1.1bn) on the city, with some paying over $1,000 for
tickets to watch the top samba schools shimmy down the 700m runway at
the sambadrome stadium.
Elsewhere in the city, locals and tourists
decked out in glitter and tutus will sip beer and dance to powerful
drums at over 400 more informal block parties.
Major carnival parades
and other festivities will also take place in other cities, including
Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest metropolis, and Salvador, a city in the
northeast.
Carnival festivities took over Rio de Janeiro yesterday as revellers danced and drank at block parties, despite an extended crime wave in the city and a spike in yellow fever cases throughout Brazil.