This year marks the full come back of world’s biggest carnival, after Rio de janeiro in Brazil hosted grand carnival with epic street parties known as “blocos” that usually swarm the iconic beach city this time of year.
“To people from Rio, street carnival is everything that’s good in life,” beamed Da Silva, as she paraded through the hillside neighborhood of Santa Teresa in a bloco known as “Ceu na Terra” — Heaven on Earth.
It was just after sunrise on a Saturday morning, but the beer was already flowing as revelers bounced to the beats of the bloco’s brass band, decked out in sequins, body paint, sparkly hot pants and masks — the costume-ball kind, not the Covid kind.
“Street carnival brings together people from all walks of life — everyone playing, everyone happy,” said Da Silva, 58, who plays a traditional percussion instrument known as the “ganza” in the bloco band.
Rio authorized around 400 blocos this year. They have been flooding the streets ahead of the main carnival event: the city’s samba school parade competition, scheduled for Sunday and Monday nights.
Many revelers are also celebrating because it is the first carnival since the election loss of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right conservative whose critics accuse him of authoritarian tendencies and attacking numerous causes close to the carnival community’s heart, from diversity to gay rights to the arts.
Some revelers poked fun at the ex-army captain, whose slogan was “Brazil above all, God above everyone.”
“We’re for ‘carnival atop all, booze inside everyone,'” said 44-year-old teacher Amelia Crespo, who was sporting the Brazilian football team’s yellow jersey, a national symbol that Bolsonaro supporters attempted to claim as their own.
“This is a moment of rebirth,” said Pericles Monteiro, a founder of Ceu na Terra and conductor of its 200-member band.
“We were feeling suffocated on every level: as a cultural group, as citizens, as people dealing with a health crisis that caused so many deaths,” said Monteiro
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