Obama, creativity star as Rio Carnival defies crisis
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The 10 million extra government-provided condoms are poised, final touches being put on huge floats depicting Queen Cleopatra and Can-can dancers, and the Barack Obama masks are flying off the shelves.
Brazil's annual Carnival, the pre-Lenten festival of hedonism that possesses Rio de Janeiro and much of the country, is ready to take off this weekend despite the best attempts of the global economic crisis to drag it down to earth.
Creativity is the word of the year as Rio's top Samba schools grapple with a double whammy of stingy benefactors and a rise in costs of imported materials used in their floats and costumes that are at the center of the spectacle.
The number of foreign tourists is expected to fall by about 10 percent from last year, Rio officials say, and some mining towns in nearby Minas Gerais state had to cancel their parades as the global crisis hit public coffers and employment.
But Brazilian visitors to Rio are expected to make up the numbers for the crisis-hit foreigners and the spirit of debauchery and irreverence is in no danger of being dimmed.
"It'll be the same as always -- lots of sex and lots of drink!" said Leo, a 24-year-old from the Minas Gerais town of Ouro Preto, who was shopping for costumes in downtown Rio and who rushed off without giving his surname.
Violence marred the run-up to the revelry on Thursday as more than 40 tourists were held up and robbed in two separate incidents in a reminder of Rio's severe crime problems.
Seven men armed with knives, guns and grenades broke into a hostel in the district of Lapa, famous for its Samba clubs and parties, early in the morning and held some of the 34 foreign and Brazilian tourists hostage for at least an hour.
In the afternoon, 10 American and German tourists were held up as they visited tourist spots in the Sao Conrado area of the Brazilian city, police said.
The federal government said last week it would distribute an extra 10 million free condoms this month, on top of the 45 million it regularly provides to prevent the spread of AIDS.
New U.S. President Barack Obama is the most popular choice for masks this year with costume stores reporting thousands of sales, threatening perennial favorite Osama bin Laden.
Viviane Castro, a model who got her Rio Samba school disqualified last year by losing a small triangle of glitter covering her intimate parts, has no intention of being left out of the limelight this year when she parades in Sao Paulo.
"This year I will also come with few clothes, but paying homage to a big political personality who is Obama. He will be painted on my body," she told the O Globo website.
There have so far been no scandals to match one last year in which organizers barred a float depicting Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, although the Catholic Church has voiced concern over one Samba school's plan this year to depict the Inquisition.
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