It Was Funny When a Rhino Ran for Office…
The voters of Jaboatao, a Brazilian industrial town eleven hundred miles north of Rio de Janeiro, were disgusted with their municipal officials in 1955. To express their disdain for the incumbents, they elected a goat named Fragrant to the city council. Four years later, in 1959, the voters of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city, did them one better. As befit their status as the country’s biggest metropolis, they elected a much bigger quadruped: a rhinoceros. Sao Paulo’s voters were fed up that year. Corruption was rampant, garbage went uncollected, sewers overflowed, inflation was on the rise, even as supplies of basic foodstuffs such as meat and beans dwindled.
Sao Paulo’s voters faced a choice of a crowded field of 540 candidates, who competed for 45 seats on the city council. Few inspired confidence, and many were corrupt or outright criminal. Faced with such dismal options, some local students thought it would be funny to nominate a five-year-old female black rhinoceros as a candidate. As they put it: “Better elect a rhinoceros than an ass“. Named Cacareco, the new politician was a local celebrity on loan from Rio de Janeiro’s zoo to the recently inaugurated one at Sao Paulo. So the students printed and distributed 200,000 ballots with her name on them. It was just a funny gesture – but she actually won.