• ‘United in extravagance’: Rio’s working-class carnival ball-slammers

    ‘United in extravagance’: Rio’s working-class carnival ball-slammers
    During the carnival season, groups of bate-bolas roam the streets of their neighbourhoods in elaborate costumesIn the middle of the night, dozens of masked figures burst on to a street in a blaze of colour, each clutching a stick from which hangs a rubber ball. As they prance through a crowd of raucous onlookers, they repeatedly slam the balls against the ground with a dull thud that gets lost in the crackle of fireworks overhead.These are Rio de Janeiro’s bate-bolas, or ball-slammers. In

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