Carnival industry transforms Brazil shantytown

Mangueira itself has long been plagued by rumors their parade was funded by drug money, a suspicion that appeared to be gain credence after police said Jan. 10 that they were searching for Francisco Paulo Testas Monteiro, the composer of the carnival song for this year's parade, in connection with drug trafficking.

Earlier in the week, police raided the Mangueira shantytown arresting four suspects in the raid and seizing a ton of marijuana. Mangueira has denied any connection to the drug trade.

Tourists can see floats being built at the City of Samba, a $50 million center opened by the city in 2006, with workshops for all the top-tier schools.

But most of the costumes are still produced in shantytown communities, where the "wing presidents" are responsible for their construction and sales.

"We do it out of love. But you need more than just love, because we can't risk looking amateur," explains wing president Amarildo Wanzerler, who doubles as a high-school teacher for prison inmates. "The carnival designer launches the idea and we have to run after it."

This year's design required Wanzerler to come up with 4,500 pom-poms, 3,000 plastic jewels, 3,000 feet of plastic gold chain, 2,000 feet each of green and white cloth, 1,000 feet of gold lame, 30 half-gallon cans of shoemaker's glue, and 220 pounds of glue sticks.

And topping Wanzerler's shopping list was 55 pounds of feathers — a mere pittance by carnival standards.

"It keeps getting more expensive because it's all done by hand, you can't knock off costumes like these with a machine," he says pointing to an elaborate pom-pom-lined headdress and winglike shoulders sprouting a gilded angel on one side.

At the City of Samba, hundreds of workers are busy building and painting huge floats featuring a herd of wild elephants, three-headed dragons and even a miniature recreation of the Mangueira shantytown.

In a corner, three English women who don't speak Portuguese work quietly with their glue guns alongside the shantytown residents as part of a volunteer for work abroad program.

"I've learned they use a lot of glue!" said Fiona Montgomery, 22, "There's so much detail that goes into everything, all this detail that you don't even notice. It's amazing, all this work is for something that's only going to be used for one single day."

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