'Double happiness' as Rio carnival returns

Shaking the ground to the beat of their drums, Rio de Janeiro's famed carnival parades returned Sunday in a swirl of glitter, sequins and samba, the festival's first full-on edition since Covid-19 and Brazil's bitterly divisive elections.

The world's biggest carnival, which officially started Friday, hit peak party level as Rio's top samba schools opened their annual parade competition in the giant avenue-turned-stadium known as the "Sambadrome."

Rio is ready to party, after two pandemic-disrupted carnivals and October's polarising presidential election, in which veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ousted incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, an ultra-conservative carnival critic accused of authoritarian tendencies.

The iconic beach city cancelled carnival in 2021 because of the pandemic and held a reduced version last year, banning the epic street parties known as "blocos" and postponing the parades by two months because of a surge of Covid-19, which has claimed nearly 700,000 lives in Brazil.

In the parade competition, the city's top 12 samba schools vie for the title of champions with dazzling floats, thundering music and thousands of singers, drummers and dancers in revealing jewel-encrusted and feather-covered costumes.

The parades were often politically charged during the Bolsonaro years, with thinly veiled criticism of the far-right government over issues such as racism, religious intolerance, environmental destruction and Brazil's disastrous management of Covid-19.