Revellers and police gear up for Rio carnival

By Helen Clegg
BBC News, Rio de Janeiro

The Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro is gearing up for its biggest event of the year, carnival, amid fears of increasing violence.

The street parties have already started

Much of the recent trouble has been confined to the "favelas" or shantytown areas of the city, although there have been a number of attacks on tourists in the last few months.

Earlier this year, British visitors were robbed while travelling on a coach from the city's international airport to Copacabana.

According to carnival organisers Riotur, about 700,000 people travel to Rio for one of the world's biggest parties. Nearly a third of those are from abroad.

Rio's Tourist Police are deploying an extra 2,000 officers, working solely for carnival. They are responsible for patrolling various areas of the city where tourists are concentrated.

Samba

Although carnival does not officially start until Friday, hundreds of people have already been gathering in various locations around the city for "blocos" or street parties.

Here they dance samba and drink caipirinhas until the early hours.

Officially, there are 137 blocos, but many say the real number is closer to 300.

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So far, according to Rio's Tourist Police, few problems have been reported.

As well as the "blocos", hundreds of people will flood into Rio's Sambodrome, a huge stadium where, over a week, the best samba schools will parade in colourful costumes, head-dresses and tiny sparkling bikinis.

There are 13 premier samba schools in Rio, each with around 4,000 members, as well as other smaller schools. Most are situated in the city's favelas.

They rehearse for several months before carnival, where they aim to have the best music, costumes and dancing and be named the best samba group.

The samba schools are not immune to the violence that happens in the favelas. Recently the vice-president of Salgueiro, one of the city's biggest schools, was shot dead in his car.

Undeterred

As well as an increase in police, several health posts are located across the city. An estimated 120 health professionals work during carnival, including doctors and ambulance staff.

Extra police have been deployed in Rio this year

Thousands of workers strive to keep the streets clean - nearly 450 tons of rubbish was collected at last year's carnival.

The Tourist Police are currently working the Secretary of Tourism to ensure brochures and leaflets giving advice are available to tourists at various points in the city.

"We only see tourists after the problem has happened... we are trying to make sure people have information even before they even get off the plane," says Rio Tourist Police officer Fernando Veloso.

The number of tourist attacks in January this year was much lower than last year, he says. But the threat of muggings and robberies is ever present.

"The problem that we have is with small robberies and we can never solve this with police, never... This is a reflection of the poverty of the people," officer Veloso says.

The violence does not seem to have deterred the tourists.

"I've felt fine... pretty typical of travelling to a big city," says Lucas Pitz, 26, from Chicago.

Kristen Newell, 25, from the US state of Kansas says: "I got a lot of talks before coming here, my family were worried... but there hasn't been any problems at all. I'm pretty excited!"

One British woman in her 70s says: "I'm nervous, because I've heard of lots of muggings.

"But I've wanted to come to carnival all my life and I am looking forward to it."