RIO DE JANEIRO -- Brazil will be exactly as joyful as it wants to be, a samba-dancing, colorful troupe of thousands sold to the world with the broadest of smiles Friday night in a stark but buoyant Opening Ceremony for these Games of the XXXI Olympiad, the first on South American soil.
"Our dream is to be an Olympic city transformed by the Games!" Carlos Nuzman, president of the Rio Organizing Committee, boomed to the 78,000 spectators inside storied Maracana Stadium and the estimate global audience of 3 billion. "We will live our dream together! And we will stay together when challenges come to us!"
The challenges, of course, are anything but new, and they were raised again on this day. Police needed tear gas to stop a group of about a dozen protesters from approaching Maracana. A bus of Chinese basketball journalists was held up at the airport to avoid gang crossfire near the primary route into town. And in general, the presence of openly armed police and military on pretty much every block of the city, populated or otherwise, created at least a "nervous" air, as one observer put it.
The air was decidedly different inside:
Shots from the Opening Ceremony. - GETTY
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