BRAZIL: Gamblers’ End

Brazil’s huge gambling industry had thought itself safe when roulette-hating Eduardo Gomes lost out for President last December. But the managers reckoned without the winner—plodding Eurico Gaspar Dutra—and his confessor, Dom Jaime de Barros Cardinal Camara. Last week, President Dutra decreed the end of licensed casino gambling, Brazil’s most profitable business.

Rio’s brilliant night life was forthwith blacked out. Three million-dollar establishments in the capital—the Urea, Atlantico and Copacabana—shut down.

In gay Petropolis the fabulous, $13,000,000 Quitandinha (“little fruit stand”), most advertised spa and hotel in South America, faced failure. Suave Joaquim Rolla, Brazil’s gambling king and owner of the place, walked in on Treasury Minister Carlos Luz and announced: “Well, I am giving you Quitandinha.”

Brazilians sought in vain for ulterior motives in Dutra’s decree. In a country with vastly more money than goods, casino profits had skyrocketed in the last two years to fantastic heights. The Government take in taxes had risen to the dangerous point where casinos were providing a fifth to a tenth of its $600,000,000 income. Rio papers all took the view that the President’s action would place the country on a sounder financial footing.

But Dutra had not closed either horse races or the national lottery, which ranked in revenue just behind the casinos. And Brazilians rushed to play the decree number, 9215, on the illegal jógo do bicho, or animal game (TIME, Oct. 29, 1945), which is bigger business than all three.