Brazil: The Animal Game

For two weeks Sao Paulo had been in full crisis. More than 60,000 men were idled, the largest single industry in Latin America’s greatest industrial city was paralyzed, and the lives of most adult Paulistas were in some way affected. Government officials, police, labor leaders and representatives of the industry met round the clock in secret emergency conference. Last week the crisis was quietly resolved. In return for unspecified concessions, the police agreed to end their crackdown on jogo do bicho-the animal game-the largest permanent floating numbers game in the world.

Jogo do bicho, although illegal, has been a national institution in Brazil for decades. It is too tempting a source of kickbacks for police and politicians to really want to stamp it out (cops assigned to the bicho squad are known as “jockeys” because of the good rides they can get). Highly organized, deliciously complex and by its own lights unfailingly honest, the animal game has withstood all manner of crackdowns and shakedowns, grown into a $500 million-a-year business that employs roughly 1% of the nation’s total working force. Millions of Brazilians play it every day, and almost all have at least a nodding acquaintance with their local bicheiros. “If you see two shacks lost somewhere in the backlands,” a Brazilian diplomat once observed, “you can bet that a bicheiro lives in one of them and a steady bettor in the other.”

Death & the Elephant. Based on a 19th century lottery to boost attendance at the Rio zoo, the animal game is no ordinary numbers racket. It starts off with 25 animals, each of which is assigned four consecutive numbers (from 01-04 for the ostrich to 97-00 for the cow). Odds for a straight animal bet are 20 to 1, but few bettors stop there. They can get 70 to 1 for guessing the last two figures of the winning number, 700 to 1 for the last three figures, 6,000 to 1 for getting all four figures right. They can play their hunches backward or forward, in combinations or alone, and by paying extra and accepting lower odds, apply their bets to as many as seven separate drawings.

Inherently superstitious, Brazilians find jogo simply fascinating. They can find portents of the winning numbers in dreams, cloud formations and any number of symbolic events. The elephant has come to be associated with death, and whenever there is a fatal traffic accident involving a car with one of the elephant’s numbers (45-48) on its license plates, the betting is unusually heavy. A few years ago, when the Rio papers published the picture of a derailed locomotive, so many bet on the last four figures of its registration number that the bicheiros were forced to warn that they could not pay off at the usual odds if it won. To the surprise of practically everybody, it didn’t.

Walls & Lampposts. The mechanics of betting are a snap. All it takes is a scribbled note or a phone call to any of the thousands of bicheiros who haunt the street corners, shops and offices of every city and are easily identified by their sunglasses and cigars. Drawings are usually held at 2 p.m. in local bicho headquarters, and the winning numbers are immediately dispatched by taxi and bicycle, scribbled in chalk on designated walls and lampposts. So clogged do phone lines become after each drawing that telephone company executives call it “the bicho hour.”

There is never any question of being cheated. “We have to be honest with our customers,” says a veteran Rio animal man. “If a bicheiro tried anything funny, word would get around and he’d be out of business.” Bicho men, in fact, are often local heroes. Their odds are reasonable, they set neither maximum nor minimum limits on bets and they invariably come to the aid of needy families unable to pay for hospital bills or buy food. Besides, says Sociologist Renato Carneiro Campos, “playing the bicho is about the only hope the worker has of trying to reduce his poverty.”