Feb 19, 2023
BY: Tanvi SharmaWith a swirl of glitter, sequins and samba, Rio de Janeiro kicked off its famed carnival parades.
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The climax of the festival's first full-on edition since Covid-19 and Brazil's bitterly divisive elections.
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The world's biggest carnival, which officially opened on Friday, will hit peak party level at the all-night parade competition on Sunday and Monday.
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Brazil's federal government expects 46 million people to join the festivities that officially began on february 17 and will end on february 22.
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Glittery and outrageous costumes were prepared and samba songs were ringing out 'til dawn at Rio de Janeiro's sold-out parade grounds.
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City's top 12 samba schools will vie to become the champions with dazzling floats, thundering music and thousands of singers, drummers and dancers in skimpy, feather-covered costumes.
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Hundreds of raucous, roaming parties were flooding the streets. And working-class communities were buoyed, emotionally and economically, by the renewed revelry.
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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.
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Various cities make the Carnival a world-famous bash. Especially Rio but also Salvador, Recife and metropolitan Sao Paulo, which has recently emerged as a hotspot.
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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.
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The first street parties of the Carnival weekend kicked off, with revellers' costumes ranging from Pope Francis to the devil himself.
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Most tourists were eager to go to street parties, known as blocks. Rio has permitted more than 600 of them, and there are more unsanctioned blocos.
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As Rio de Janeiro kicked off its Carnival on Saturday, about 100 dogs barked and wagged their tails to the tune of samba music as they paraded in front of pet lovers in a canine costume competition.
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Dog costumes ranged from fairies, and superheroes to clowns and cartoon characters.
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The 'Blocao' - a mixture of 'bloco' which refers to Carnival street parties and 'Cao,' or dog in Portuguese.
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Marco Antonio Vieira, the organizer of Blocao, said he has no intention of humanizing pets with the pet parade and the contest that picks the top five best-dressed dogs.
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"Some people have worked on their dog costumes for three months," Vieira said (festival attendee). "There's nothing but happy people here."
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Rio cancelled the carnival in 2021, and held a reduced version last year, banning the epic street parties known as "blocos" and postponing the parades by two months because of the pandemic, which has claimed nearly 700,000 lives in Brazil.
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This year shares some of the spirits of the 1919 edition, which took place right after Spanish influenza killed tens of thousands of Brazilians, but was no longer a significant threat.
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