Jogo do bicho

The originator of jogo do bicho was baron João Batista Viana Drummond (pt), a Brazilian-born Englishman, to whom Emperor Dom Pedro II awarded a title and the concession to the Rio de Janeiro Zoological Garden in the Vila Isabel neighborhood in the late 19th century. In 1892, as a publicity measure, Drummond encouraged visitors to guess the identity of an animal concealed behind a curtain, and paid prizes off to winners. In a few years the guessing game became a tremendously popular numbers game, with different numbers assigned to 25 animals. Bets were soon being made by people outside the zoo. Within months, government authorities made its first attempt to shut down the game, but it simply shifted to the city, an environment in which it has thrived ever since. In addition, Law 9215 of 1946 prohibited most kinds of gambling throughout Brazil. The 1941 decree and 1946 law marked the beginning of the jogo do bicho’s true criminalization. Nevertheless, the game continued to thrive in illegality. A crackdown on the game by São Paulo police in 1966 nearly paralysed the city. More than 60,000 men were idled. By that time it had grown into a US$500 million-a-year business that employed roughly 1% of Brazil's total working force. The crisis was quietly resolved in return for unspecified concessions. In Paraíba Paraíba is the only state where the game has been legalized at the state level, despite the federal law that prohibits it. The game is regulated by the State Lottery of Paraíba (LOTEP), which licenses banqueiros as lottery agents, to avoid the game's association with organized crime, as in Rio de Janeiro. The state capital, João Pessoa, has 15 authorized points. Each point pays a region-dependent monthly tax to LOTEP, depending on its business volume. The draw is made three times a day in the LOTEP building and released by the official state radio. ==Criminal charges and political connections==

On 22 November 1991, the state's Attorney General Antônio Carlos Biscaia, filed a complaint and a request for imprisonment against the 14 members of Rio's Jogo do Bicho cúpula (central commission), whom he accuses of forming a gang that acted with the aim of guaranteeing and expanding its business not only in the illegal lottery, but also in drug trafficking. The investigation was launched in January 1986 and listed more than 60 murders related to their criminal enterprise. The bicheiros – Castor de Andrade, and his son Paulinho de Andrade; Ailton Guimarães Jorge, aka Capitão Guimarães; Anísio Abraão David; Luizinho Drummond; Antônio Petrus Kalil, aka Turcão, and his brother José Petrus Kalil, aka Zinho; Waldemiro Garcia, aka Miro, and his son Waldemir Paes Garcia, aka Maninho; Carlos Teixeira Martins, aka Carlinhos Maracanã; Raul Capitão; José Caruzzo Escafura, aka Piruinha; Haroldo Rodrigues Nunes, aka Haroldo Saens Pena; and Emil Pinheiro – were subsequently arrested for criminal association and forming armed gangs. In May 1993, judge Denise Frossard convicted them to six years of prison for criminal association. Formally, 53 deaths were attributed to the group. They were sentenced to six years each, the maximum sentence for racketeering. The sentence, however, was modified by the Supreme Federal Court (STF), which reduced the penalty by half. Through appeals, lawyers managed to exclude the offence of formation of an armed gang. Antonio Petrus Kalil, Anísio Abraão David and Capitão Guimarães, at the time president of the Independent League of Samba Schools of Rio de Janeiro, were again arrested on April 12, 2007, together with 24 people, for alleged involvement with illegal numbers games, bingo parlors and the distribution of slot machines. Raids by the Federal Police have uncovered big payoffs to judges, police officers, prosecutors and lawyers from the bosses who run the game. Mounds of documents have been seized and US$6 million in cash has been confiscated. The possibility of legalisation has been often been argued, but no practical decision ever made. ==Structure==

Since its early inception the game has preserved a hierarchy: operators (banqueiros), managers (gerentes) and dealers (vendedores). This same hierarchy was later reproduced in the organisation of drug-trafficking and other types of organised crime in Brazil. Bets are taken at pontos (points-of-sale) where dealers collect money and keep record of the bets. The bets (and the money) are sent to the central operator (banca), where the draw is done. 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, easily identified by their sunglasses, cigars and/or typical floral or printed shirts. Neither the pontos nor the bancas need a fixed operational centre. Most pontos are simple stools or wooden boxes on which the dealers sit through the day. Drawings are usually held at 2 PM in local bicho headquarters, and the winning numbers are immediately dispatched by taxi and bicycle and scribbled in chalk on designated walls and lampposts. Phone lines become so clogged after each drawing that telephone company executives call it "the bicho hour." To prevent quebra da banca, a system named Paratodos ("for all") is used for bicheiros to redistribute bets to other, often more powerful banqueiros who have territorial control over the city or area. == Description ==

Animals The name of the game arises from the mnemonic association of the drawn numbers with a random selection of 25 animals: Superstition Over the decades, superstitious theory has evolved around selecting the proper animal, much of it involving dreams. Horse, for example, can be indicated by a dream of a horse, or by dreams of wheat or milk or naked women. 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. When the Rio papers published the picture of a derailed locomotive in the 1960s, 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. Bets and prizes Each of the 25 animals is assigned a sequence of four consecutive numbers between 1 and 100. The most common way to play is to bet one real on an animal, but one can also choose a combination of numbers and numerals designated by an animal. The traditional types of prizes are as follows: • Cabeça ("head"): A bet on four numbers between 00 and 99, represented by an animal; chance of success 1 in 25. • Dezena ("ten"): A bet on a number from 00 to 99; chance of success 1 in 100. • Centena ("hundred"): A bet on a number from 000 to 999; chance of success 1 in 1,000. • Milhar ("thousand"): A bet on a number from 0000 to 9999; chance of success 1 in 10,000. • Terno de dezena ("three tens"): Where multiple numbers are drawn, a bet on three numbers between 00 and 99, chance of success 1 in 161,700; highest payout where available. If the last two numerals in either the daily state lottery draw or the Loteria popular ("popular lottery") form one of the four numbers associated with an animal, a bicheiro will pay out 15 reais for a bet of 1 real. ==Cultural impact==

Despite its illegality, the game has left significant cultural influences in Brazilian society, even among people that have never played it. is responsible for the strong association of the number 24 with homosexuality in Brazil. In the game, 24 is the number given to the deer ( in Portuguese), an animal that has long been pejoratively associated with gay men (insulted as ). The jersey number 24 is heavily avoided by male Brazilian athletes, with rare exceptions. Football players, for example, usually reject this number for their jerseys, and may express dissatisfaction when obligated to wear a 24 jersey due to fixed number rules in international competitions. In 2022, only 4 teams in the use the jersey 24: América-MG, Internacional de Porto Alegre, Santos FC and Sport Club Corinthians Paulista. In the Copa América 2019, hosted by Brazil, its national team was the only one not displaying the number. The taboo was broken during the 2022 FIFA World Cup, when Gleison Bremer wore number 24 in Brazil's match against Cameroon. The new FIFA rules allowed up to 26 players numbered sequentially. 24 is also used in politics, as many LGBT candidates include 24 in their campaign numbers, to be easily associated with LGBT movement causes. For the same reason, the number is seldom used by heterosexual politicians, whether or not they have an anti-LGBT agenda. In the Brazilian Senate, for example, although there are 81 Senators, no one currently has a cabinet numbered 24, nor a car plate numbered SF-0024 (the Senators' plate options go from SF-0001 to SF-0095, and any available number can be freely chosen). Another legacy of is the use of meaning upset. In 1964, before a football match between Portuguesa (RJ) and Vasco da Gama, the manager of Portuguesa, a much weaker team, was asked if he could defeat Vasco. Gentil Cardoso, the manager, commented that beating Vasco would be like drawing a zebra in Jogo do Bicho. As there is no zebra in the game, his sentence expressed an impossibility. However, Portuguesa did win that game (by 2-1), and since then the term is used in Brazil for upsets. Another football team with the rooster as its mascot is Clube Atlético Mineiro, whose supporters expected 2013 to be the "year of the rooster", also because the rooster is the 13th animal. Atlético Mineiro won their first Libertadores Cup in 2013, confirming the expectation for an important title in that year. ==See also==