Illegal gambling in Brazil
Betting zoo
The surprising longevity of the “animal game”
May 5th 2012 | SÃO PAULO | from the print edition
IN 1888 João Batista, Baron of Drummond, opened a zoo in Rio de Janeiro. To pull in business he printed animals on the tickets and ran up a flag displaying one at the end of each day. A ticket printed with the right beast paid out 20 times its price. Soon, locals started to place side bets without bothering to visit. By the mid-1890s, says Amy Chazkel, a historian, the jogo do bicho (animal game) “had escaped from the zoo”.
Since then the jogo do bicho has survived the closure of Drummond's zoo, hostility from churchmen, prohibition and competition from rival state lotteries. Today'sbicheiros, or bookmakers, use the last two digits of winning state lottery numbers to pick their prize animals, with each of the 25 creatures linked to four numbers from 00 to 99. The animals stalk punters' sleep: dreaming of a naked woman means a horse; death means the elephant. “It's hard to dream only of numbers,” says Roberto DaMatta, an anthropologist. He credits the game's success to the way it “unleashed the animals that Freud tried to lock up.”
Apart from the animals, the jogo do bicho and the numbers rackets of the United States in the early-20th century share many features, says Matthew Vaz of the City University of New York. Both survived being made illegal by buying off corrupt police. Both became entwined with other illegal activities like prostitution, money laundering and murder. Both made some economic sense for poor people attracted by daily play, small stakes, and frequent modest but helpful payouts. “If you're poor, it's hard to put money aside,” says Mr Vaz. “But if you can find a quarter a day, you'll win a useful sum every now and then, though you'll probably lose overall.”
The jogo do bicho has lasted much longer than its American counterparts. Government clumsiness is partly to blame: in 1967 a military president banned new state lotteries to favour the federal game, and some governors decided that tolerating local bicheiros and taking a cut of their illicit profits was better than earning nothing at all from the business. And the United States had better law enforcement: a 1984 New York City ordinance allowed police to padlock gambling dens and stopped landlords from turning a blind eye.
But perhaps the biggest reason for the animal game's longevity is its link with another Brazilian institution: Carnival. During the 1950s the bicheiros started to give to samba schools to buy social acceptance. “By the 1980s, samba and Carnival were their day job,” says Mr Vaz. Since then crackdowns have led to the threat that Carnival will be called off—and to law enforcers backing down.
from the print edition | The Americas
