Pre-Lenten bash in Rio tied to vice

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – With all the bared flesh and Las Vegas-style flash, Brazilian carnival seems like the kind of fun that just might be illegal – and in some ways it is.

The annual pre-Lenten bash that got under way Friday owes much of its splendor to illegal gambling.

It’s long been an open secret that Rio’s annual samba parade – the centerpiece of carnival celebrations – is largely funded by the kingpins of an illegal numbers game known here as the “jogo do bicho,” Portuguese for animal game.

This year, the link between the jogo do bicho and carnival is more open than ever.

One top samba group, Salgueiro, will pay homage to two prominent bicheiros, as the numbers bosses are known. A float with a huge TV screen will display images of Miro and Maninho, the father and son bicheiros who funded the group until their deaths last year.

“Miro always supported us and now we are repaying his confidence in us,” said Celino Dias, president of Salgueiro’s composers group.

The link between the animal game and carnival is also driven home nightly on a popular TV soap opera, “Senhora do Destino” – “Woman of Destiny” – which features Brazilian movie star Jose Wilker in the role of the fictionalized bicheiro Giovanni Improtta.

In the show, Improtta is the big boss of the samba group – a fact that shocks hardly anyone here.

“Everyone knows that the bicheiros always financed carnival. It was their way of giving themselves a legitimacy in society,” says Roberto da Matta, a sociologist and author of books on carnival and the animal game. “The jogo do bicho is the carnivalization of capitalism.”

Several times a day, the lottery picks a series of numbers, which in the past corresponded to animals. Players can bet any amount and prompt cash payment for winners is a question of honor for the bicheiros.

The enormous popularity of the game in Rio’s poor neighborhoods makes bicheiros seem like community benefactors.

Still, the bicheiros have a darker side. Over the past decade, more than 100 killings can be traced to the animal game.

Maninho, one of the bicheiros to be honored by Salgueiro, was killed last year in an execution-style slaying outside a health club. His father died of an illness later that year.

But officials insist the bicheiros’ influence is a thing of the past.

“The financing arrangement for samba groups today gives them absolute financial independence. The presence of so-called ‘patrons’ of one group or another no longer has anything to do with the financial functioning of the groups,” said Rio Mayor Cesar Maia.

That might come as a surprise to the government of Denmark, which was embarrassed to learn of the close ties between the numbers game and the Imperatriz Leopoldinense samba group, which Denmark gave $189,000 to help finance this year’s parade theme celebrating the bicentennial of native son Hans Christian Andersen.

When a Danish newspaper revealed in October that bicheiro boss Luiz Pacheco Drummond, Imperatriz’s honorary president, had served a six-year prison sentence and had links to organized crime, Denmark withdrew its official support.

While it was too late for Denmark to get the money back or change the parade’s theme, Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary, along with the country’s minister of culture canceled their plans to attend celebrations in Rio.

Few here are likely to notice their absence.

When the mayor handed the key to the city to the Rei Momo, or carnival king, on Friday, samba drums pounded and the party officially opened for an entire nation of 182 million.

Carnival is celebrated in different ways across Brazil. In the northeastern city of Salvador, revelers crowd the streets to dance behind giant sound trucks with bands on top playing axe music, a samba style with a heavy Caribbean influence.

In Recife and Olinda farther north, revelers dance to super-fast frevo rhythms and the heavily African maracatu.

The main spectacle takes place in Rio’s Sambadrome stadium, where the city’s 14 top groups will mount million-dollar parades today and Monday night. Each group features thousands of dancers, hundreds of drummers and a slew of elaborately decorated floats.

The spectacle is televised live across the nation, with fans cheering their favorite group with the same enthusiasm they normally reserve for soccer teams.