Brazil's 2013 Carnival may have rocked ... but parts also stank.
鈥� A version of this post ran on the author's blog, riorealblog.com.听The views expressed are the author's own.
City officials usually announce the number of revelers just after Ash Wednesday, but [there were no results announced until Feb. 19]. A mere 900,000 tourists (up from 850,000 in 2012) were expected, 70,000 of whom were to arrive on cruise ships.
One bloco alone, Cord茫o da Bola Preta, Rio鈥檚 oldest, on Saturday drew an estimated 1.8 million people downtown for a five-hour parade, which .
There were more military police, traffic coordinators and municipal guards in the streets, more porta-potties, and more trash receptacles than ever before.听The city also, for the first time, put up protective fencing around monuments and decorative plantings on median strips.
Most of such organizing this year, including , was carried out by听, an events company that will also set up the Pope鈥檚 visit and accompanying activities this coming July. Dream Factory is run by Roberta Medina, daughter of the adman who invented the Rock in Rio festival, back in the 1980s. Two years ago, Dream Factory.
Dream Factory seems to have thought of just about everything. But 叠谤补蝉铆濒颈补鈥檚 unplanned satellite cities came to mind, as dozens of poor families moved temporarily to the South Zone to supply the revelers, sleeping in tents or on cardboard on the beach, median strips, and city sidewalks. A municipal guard told RioRealblog that the city social development secretariat, responsible for those living on the street, wasn鈥檛 working during carnival鈥� though O Dia newspaper reported that .
The Rio metro, a state concession, ran 24 hours a day instead of closing at midnight, but was unable to handle peak traffic, shutting down station entrances and . Riding a bus any day in Rio is a percussive experience, but this can be terrifying during Carnival, with chanting costumed drunks beating on the bus body, jumping turnstiles, and threatening passengers.
Never enough
And Comlurb, the city sanitation company, admitted that it sorely underestimated what people decided to discard 鈥� and thus, the number of needed trash collectors, which came to 1,070 men and women.
Urban sanitation was mentioned as a negative aspect of the Rio Carnival experience by one out of four tourists, in a survey of 1,200 carried out by the. Other complaints included hotel rates听(38 percent) and taxis (18 percent). Notably, 75 percent of those interviewed were here for the first time. They were kept company by Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, and Will Smith; last weekend for the parade of champions and a visit to a pacified favela.
Rio enjoys a certain elasticity. , are shocked by , get ripped off by taxi drivers, suffer abominable restaurant service, and cell phone hardships 鈥� and immediately make plans to move here. Actors are just two of the most recent arrivals.
Meanwhile, longtime residents of areas where the听blocos parade find little consolation in rubbing shoulders with the fancy newcomers, or in the news that , or pee-ers. For them, even one 尘颈箩茫辞 is one too stinking many.
Incipient recycling听
Informal recyclers 鈥� some of whom are the people who stay overnight on the beach 鈥� quickly pick up the aluminum cans and smash them for selling. But 鈥� note to Ambev 鈥� that still leaves the plastic wrapping and the cans .... plus all kinds of other trash.
By last Thursday, this totaled 400 tons. Multiply by three, and you get the weight of Rio鈥檚 Christ Redeemer statue. Another 170 tons were collected in the weekend prior to Carnival, and more is sure to have piled up last weekend, also part of the听产濒辞肠辞听calendar,听when the Carnival parade of champions took place.
In the case of the estimated 500听bloco听parades in different parts of the city every day of Carnival 2013, almost 30 percent more trash was collected than last year, when about five million people reveled in Rio (up from a mere 1.2 million in 2011). If per capita trash production remained the same from 2012, that means 6.5 million were thankful it didn鈥檛 rain last week 鈥� though a nice shower might have mitigated the heat 鈥� and the stench.
The cans are mostly beer empties, from the Ambev conglomerate that sponsored Rio鈥檚 street Carnival (and just bought Heinz, together with Warren Buffet)....
Trash cans on wheels, next year
According to听O Globo听newspaper,听听with sponsors and听blocos听to grow its orange army, and invest in mechanization.
The city says the street carnival sponsorship mechanism, which this year brought in $7.5 million, . 听Riotur president Antonio Pedro Figueira de Mello says the city 鈥渟aved鈥� this amount, by having Ambev and other companies chip in.
But what they don鈥檛 seem to realize is that the more beer you sell, the more bathrooms you need, so the sponsorships听can听actually be said to add to the city鈥檚 costs. And these are likely to rise every year, as more and more people discover the city鈥檚 charms 鈥� as long as that elasticity keeps on stretching.
鈥� Julia Michaels, a long-time resident of Brazil, writes the blog听, which she describes as a constructive and critical view of Rio de Janeiro鈥檚 ongoing transformation.
