The year’s Rio carnival — a world-famous pageant of feathers, bare-breasted beauties and intoxicating drum beats in Brazil’s most picturesque city — has been overshadowed by murder and speculation of mafia links.
Marcello da Cunha Freire, the vice-president of the popular Salgueiro samba school, was shot in the street on Tuesday night. He died in hospital yesterday, despite initial reports that he was recovering. The multimillion-pound extravaganza begins in six weeks.
Mr Freire had just left a meeting at a rival samba school, the Mangueira, when a gunman on a motorbike shot him in the arm, leg and stomach. Mr Freire was the assistant of Chiquinho da Mangueiro, a local politician and head of the samba school, situated in the favela of Mangueiro.
Every year,