Voters Elect a Rhinoceros in a Landslide
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. And 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 45 seats of Sao Paulo’s City Council.
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.
On election day, not only did Cacareco win, she charged to first place and won in a landslide, garnering over 100,000 votes, amounting to 15% of the total cast. As The New York Times reported, Cacareco “earned one of the highest totals for a local candidate in Brazil’s recent history“. It was actually the highest ever total won by any city council candidate up to that date.
A sore loser party leader complained bitterly: “A ridiculous vote for a ridiculous rhinoceros. Nowhere, and never before, have 100,000 literate adult voters cast their ballots for a silent, absent, and nut brained quadruped“. One of the failed candidates was so humiliated that he lost to a beast, that he committed suicide. Cacareco’s victory caused significant concern and hand wringing in Brazil’s intellectual and political circles, as some worried it indicated the country was on the verge of revolt. In the meantime, the Sao Paulo zoo’s director asked the city to pay Cacareco’s City Councilman salary. However, the fix was in, and election officials nullified her ballots.
