Thousands flood downtown streets in Brazil for unofficial Carnival celebrations

View
comments

Thousands are taking to the streets of Rio de Janeiro to celebrate the world-famous carnival holiday, despite officials in Brazil postponing celebratory events due to the Omicron wave of coronavirus, while the rest of the world worries over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Photographs show large flocks of unmasked performers and partiers attending an unofficial street party over the weekend even though the city has banned such gatherings in public places.

Dancers outfitted in scantily clad clothing took over the ‘Samba walkway’ at the Carnival Samba School Saturday during a celebration to start the traditional festivities as drummers fill the streets with live music.

Brazilian Carnival is typically the held the Friday before Ash Wednesday, the official start of the Christian Lenten Season. This year, the public holiday will not coincide with the samba school parade and has been postponed to the last week in April. 

The city has scrapped the wild street parties, known as blocos, that are famously associated with the festivities. Rio’s carnival was completely canceled last year due to the pandemic. 

The city’s move to cancel blocos and postpone festivities has not stopped residents and global tourists from gathering together.

Businesses are hosting a large number of private events while the streets fill with colorfully outfitted partiers indulging in alcohol. 

Hospitality group HotéisRIO told Reuters that nearly 80 percent of hotel rooms were booked over the weekend.

The group expects reservations to rise to 85 percent in the coming days, citing the fact that man Brazilians have opted to take domestic vacations due to the nation’s high rate of COVID vaccinations and weak currency exchange rate. 

Locals argue the government postponing Carnival and implementing COVID-related restrictions to the event are largely ‘hypocritical’ as Rio has largely returned to a pre-pandemic level of normalcy. 

‘Everything is already happening in the city, there are parties every weekend, there are parties in the streets, so prohibiting them during carnival doesn’t make any sense,’ Grégoire Putteman, a party organizer and DJ told the news outlet on Saturday. ‘People really want to party.’ 

‘Aside from all the private parties that will take place, I think lots of blocos will spring up at the last minute, and just say, “screw it,”‘ he added. 

Another local businessman, Dani Souto who performs as DJ Chãnce Da Silva, argued the restrictions were negatively impacting the Brazilian economy. 

‘It’s sad to see,’ he said. ‘Rio de Janeiro is a city that is really dependent on the carnival, and the carnival is really dependent on Rio de Janeiro.’ 

While Brazil continues to party, other nations are standing in solidarity with Ukraine amid the ongoing invasion by Russia. 

Germans in Cologne swapped their traditional Carnival festivities for an anti-war rally on Monday that featured parade floats lampooning Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

The Cologne Carnival parade, at which clubs traditionally poke fun at Germany’s politicians with colorful floats, was canceled last week in favor of a ‘peace demonstration’ after Russia invaded Ukraine. 

Thousands of people flocked to the parade route on Monday, many wearing costumes in blue and yellow, the colors of Ukraine’s national flag, and carrying signs that read ‘Peace’ and ‘Stop Putin.’ 

Americans have rallied together to show their support for Ukraine by carrying signs and waving flags through flooded the streets outside the White House, as well as in other major US cities.

Blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian flag have illuminated skyscrapers and monuments across the U.S., including the Empire State Building, State Education Building, George Washington Masonic National Memorial, Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge and more, since Russia invaded the country last week. 

Russians have even assembled to protest with almost 6,000 people having been detained at anti-war rallies since Thursday, the OVD-Info protest monitor reported on Sunday. 

Countries have also imposed sanctions against Russia and businesses have taken steps to eliminate the use of Russian products in their establishments in an effort to show solidarity with Ukraine.

A host of bars in the UK have stopped the are showing signs of protest by stopping the sale of Russian vodka.

Hundreds of liquor stores and bars across the US and Canada have also removed Russian vodka from their shelves. 

Canada and the European Union (EU) also imposed airspace bans on Russian planes Sunday in response to the invasion. Russia responded to the sanctions by banning flights from several European countries.

Additionally, the world’s three biggest container lines temporarily suspended cargo shipments to and from Russia on Tuesday in response to Western sanctions on Moscow.

The United States, European countries and other global leaders also made the unusual move of targeting Russia’s central bank with financial sanctions and put limits on cross-border transactions by the country’s largest lenders.