‘It’s all so cheerless’: Rio mourns loss of carnival’s noise and passion |

 

 

"There’s sorrow. There’s emptiness. There’s longing,” Mariano said, showing off a 23-page sketchbook filled with designs for flamboyant, feather-dusted costumes that would no longer be made, not this year at least.

“And that’s to say nothing of all those people who are financially dependent on this – the prop makers, the seamstresses, the carpenters, the cleaners, the security guards, the guy who sells them all food.”

Marcus Paulo, the carnavalesco who conceives Rocinha’s kaleidoscopic costumes and floats, said he had never seen his seaside hometown so out of sorts.

“Everything’s just so cheerless. It’s like we aren’t in Rio but in some other awful dimension, at another moment in time,” the 44-year-old said, mournfully."

read newstory by Tom Phillips 

 ‘It’s all so cheerless’: Rio mourns loss of carnival’s noise and passion | Rio de Janeiro | The Guardian