22. The Rhinoceros That Ran For Office
In 1959, the voters of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, were fed up. Corruption was rampant, garbage went uncollected, sewers overflowed, inflation was rising, and supplies of basic foodstuffs such as meat and beans were dwindling. As elections loomed that October, they faced a choice of a crowded field of 540 candidates, ranging from the uninspiring to the outright criminal, competing for the City Council’s 45 seats.
Faced with such dismal options, some local students decided: “Better elect a rhinoceros than an ass“. Their candidate of choice was a 5-year-old female black rhinoceros named Cacareco, a local celebrity on loan from Rio de Janeiro’s zoo to the recently inaugurated Sao Paulo zoo. So the students printed and distributed 200,000 ballots with her name on them.