Obama,Creativity Star As Rio Carnival Defies Criss

Ten million extra condoms are being handed out, slum residents are putting the final touches to huge floats depicting Queen Cleopatra and Can-can dancers, and Barack Obama masks are flying off the shelves.

Brazil's Carnival, the pre-Lenten festival of hedonism that possesses Rio de Janeiro and much of the country for a few days every year, takes 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 cash-strapped benefactors and higher costs of imported materials for 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 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.

The federal government is distributing an extra 10 million free condoms for the Carnival, on top of the 60 million it regularly provides in the first two months of the year -- Brazil's summer vacation period -- 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 Samba school disqualified last year when she inadvertently bared all during a parade after losing a tiny triangle of glitter covering her crotch, 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 newspaper's 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.

TWO CITIES

Carnival in Rio -- which gets going on Friday with the handing of the city keys to Carnival King Momo, the Lord of Misrule -- is a tale of two cities.

One is in the Sambadrome where 70,000 spectators and live TV coverage (this year forsaking the Oscars) will follow the competing parades of top Samba schools, which this year feature a giant Queen Cleopatra bathing in milk among other themes.

The other is on the streets, where residents and visitors are already casting aside their sorrows and many of their morals for hard-drinking days and nights in neighborhood groups called "blocos", some of which have existed for a century.

Rio's problems of violence and crime are never far from the surface. A 14-year-old girl was reportedly killed by a stray bullet on Sunday night at the practice ground of one of the main Samba schools, and at least 13 foreign tourists were held up and robbed on Wednesday morning at their hostel in the Copacabana beach district.

Rio's official tourism agency said that despite the expected fall in foreign visitors, the overall number of visitors for Carnival was expected to rise to 719,000 from 705,000 last year. Revenues for the city were also forecast to rise slightly to $521 million from $510 million.

But the crisis is being felt in Rio's City of Samba, where thousands of workers have been laboring for months to prepare the parades. Designers have been forced to use more cheaper and recycled materials and make do without some of the pricey imported frills they have grown used to.

Eleven of the top 12 schools have no sponsors this year, leaving them to make do with the $1.7 million or so they each receive from the main Carnival association.

Making matters worse, the Brazilian currency's slump of about a third against the dollar since last year has jacked up the price of imports and the federal government withdrew funding of about $430,000 that it provided to each school last year.

Alexandre Louzada, a designer who has led Samba school Beija-Flor (Humming Bird) to two straight titles, said the lack of money could be a blessing in disguise for the parades, which have become ever more costly and commercialized in recent years.

"I even think that it is good that we rethink Carnival, because it was becoming a slave of luxury and I think creativity must have its place," he said.