The story
Carnaval de Rivera in Rivera
Carnaval de Rivera is the seasonal carnival of Rivera, the Uruguayan city that forms a single urban conurbation with Brazil's Santana do Livramento, giving its murga and comparsa street festivities a distinctly binational character shaped by the open border running directly through the middle of the twin cities.
Few Uruguayan cities have a relationship with carnival quite like Rivera's, because Rivera is not simply a border city but part of a genuinely fused urban area: it sits directly against Santana do Livramento in Brazil, with the two cities separated in places only by a street rather than any real barrier.