By Beatrice Labonne

The 2009 Rio de Janeiro carnival will certainly be a much tamer affair than the 2008 version. Last year the samba parade was marred in cultural controversy and political provocation . Actually only the Cariocas, the inhabitants of Rio, were delighted by the ensuing brouhaha. For the tourists from other parts of Brazil or abroad, it was carnival as usual: fun, sweat, booze, girls, samba music and creative extravaganza. They came to Rio to enjoy the unsurpassed show of Latin America and didn’t bother with the ins and outs of carnival culture.

The 2009 carnival will be different in other ways too: It has become one of the casualties of the financial crisis; the samba schools will have to make do without the generosity of their usual corporate sponsors. Even the city of Rio, which over the years had heavily invested in the carnival, has pulled out. Known for his politically-motivated largesse, Hugo Chavez, the president of oil-rich Venezuela has not endowed any samba school this year. He has obviously more pressing financial needs at home. Though money is still flowing to some of the samba schools; the carnival is known as a big-crime money Laundromat. But that is another story.

This year only France has come forward as an official sponsor to celebrate the beginning of the year of “France in Brazil”. One of the major league schools O Grande Rio will march down the sambodrome singing Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. The sambodrome is a purposely built stadium for the samba schools to parade. The French government is leaving nothing to chance. For the occasion, it is flying 32 show girls from the Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris. The girls will bring the can can to the sambodrome; they will lift up their skirts and kick high their legs on top of the Gay Paris float.

As in the art world, generous financial contributions are no guarantee of success. Last year was a case in point. The majority of the heavily subsidized samba schools did poorly in the samba school ranking. One was even downgraded to the minor samba league in spite of having been anointed by the mayor of Rio to illustrate the 200-year anniversary of the coming of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil. The school had nonetheless done its homework and had very creatively illustrated this historic landmark. A touch of irreverence didn’t hurt history: the 18th century mad queen of Portugal had been impersonated by another queen, a drag queen of great contemporary repute.

Exception to the rule was in 2006 when Hugo Chavez’ sponsored samba school won first place in the major league competition. The theme of the samba song, known as the enredo praised Latin America in Portoñol, a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese. Portoñol is the third largest spoken language in Latin America after Spanish and Portuguese!