Carnival industry transforms Brazil shantytown

updated 11:39 a.m. ET Jan. 16, 2008

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Tourists in the know have begun flowing in to Brazil to see preparations for the Feb. 3-4 Carnival parade, but the real work has been in full swing for six months already, transforming Rio's humble shantytowns into riots of color and song.

In the Mangueira shantytown, a grim collection of hovels tumbling along the steep slopes behind Rio's mountaintop Christ the Redeemer statue, drug dealers toting automatic weapons have melted behind a sea of beer vendors, T-shirt hawkers and makeshift barbecue stands, all set up to greet hordes of visitors who wouldn't dare set foot in the slum any other time of year.

They come to watch rehearsals by Mangueira, one of Rio de Janeiro's most traditional samba groups, known here as schools.

Each year, the group spends over $1 million to mount a single 80-minute-long carnival parade featuring 4,500 drummers and dancers in the Sambadrome stadium.

And as the carnival parade date approaches, the group's colors of pink and green cover the shantytown's narrow alleys and exposed brick dwellings. Elaborate glitter-encrusted costumes hang in the windows, and little children, covered in glitter, run around banging on tambourines.

"It's one big factory," explains Max Lopes, Mangueira's carnival designer. "The community plays a big part because of all their love for the school. Everyone's part of the team."

Carnival is a big business in Rio de Janeiro's shantytowns, which are home to the city's 12 top-tier schools and the dozens of others that parade in samba's second and third divisions.

Each year, the schools employ thousands of seamstresses, painters, designers and musicians along with small armies of muscle-bound men to push around the huge floats.

"It totally transforms the community, everybody is working, rehearsing until carnival time. It gives work to unemployed people like me," said Luiz Henrique Barbosa, spends 10 hours a day six days a week making pom-poms for the costumes. "After carnival everything is just dead for six months."

Some of the more skilled artisans actually find work after carnival building sets and doing costumes for Brazil's popular telenovelas. Less skilled workers have to fend for themselves.

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"For me it's total 18 to 20 hours days. It's so intense I need to take the rest of the year off," said Aurea Carvalho, 33, who has worked constructing carnival costumes known as "fantasias" for the past 12 years.

Carvalho employs 11 seamstresses, and a night shift was being added in order to have 100 costumes ready in time for the parade.

"It's a big mess, but it's a delicious mess. We talk into the night and get up to date on all the gossip," she says.

Carvalho's costumes will sell for $400 each and provide the buyer with right to dance in the Samba parade, which looks like a lot of fun but is actually a hard-fought competition. A single costume flaw can doom a school's chances of victory as each group tries to wow a panel of judges and become carnival champion.

If you go ... MANGUEIRA SAMBA SCHOOL Open rehearsals every Saturday night starting at 10 p.m. and continuing until dawn at headquarters at Rua Visconde de Niteroi, 1.072 - Mangueira. Most taxi drivers know how to get there and there are taxis waiting to take tourists back. CITY OF SAMBA Located at Rua Rivadavia Correa no. 60, in the Gamboa district behind the city center. It is advisable to take a taxi there since the neighborhood is somewhat dodgy. COSTUMES Mangueira and other samba schools sell costumes through their Web sites. Mangueira can be found at mangueira.com.br. Other tops schools can be found at beija-flor.com.br, salgueiro.com.br and gresportela.com.br. A longer list and general information in English can be found at riodejaneiro-turismo.com.br/pt. VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS A volunteer work program brings tourists to work on the floats at the City of Samba. Details at i-to-i.com/south-america (type "carnival" into the search box). Source: The Associated Press

Winning brings little more than bragging rights, and yet in the poor communities residents throw themselves into carnival preparations as if nothing else matters.

With such high stakes, the carnival industry is becoming more professional every year. More of the complicated tasks such as lighting and special effects are now farmed out to private companies.

And while many samba schools have been funded by criminals who run Rio's hugely popular illegal numbers games, Brazilian corporations increasingly bankroll the samba schools. Costumes and rehearsal tickets pay for the rest.

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