Cacareco: The Rhinoceros That Won an Election

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In 1955, voters in Jaboatao, an industrial town in Brazil, were so fed up with their municipal government and its officials, that they elected a goat to the city council as a protest vote. Four years later, voters in a far bigger city, Sao Paulo, expressed their disgust with their government and officials by electing a far bigger beast, a rhinoceros.

Fed Up Voters Turn to a Rhino Candidate

Voters in Brazil’s biggest city were disgusted with their poor governance in 1959. Corruption in Sao Paulo was widespread and brazenly out in the open. The streets were pot-holed or unpaved, garbage went uncollected, and the sewers overflowed. To make matters worse, inflation was on the rise, and supplies of basic foodstuffs such as meat and beans were running low. As elections loomed that October, voters were presented with a crowded field of 540 candidates competing for 45 seats on Sao Paulo’s city council.

Unfortunately, while the candidate field had plenty of quantity, it was greatly lacking in quality. The options mostly ranged from the uninspiring to the outright criminal. Aghast at having to choose between bad, worse, and outright horrific, some students decided: “Better elect a rhinoceros than an ass”. Their candidate of choice was a five-year-old old female black rhinoceros named Cacareco. A local celebrity, she was on loan from Rio de Janeiro’s zoo to the recently inaugurated Sao Paulo zoo. So the students printed and distributed 200,000 write-in ballots with her name on them.

The Rhino That Charged to First Place

Counting the votes, including Cacareco write in ballots. Pinterest

In an election marked by widespread absenteeism – see, dismal choices above – Cacareco not only won, she won big time. The rhinoceros charged to first place, and secured a landslide victory. She got more than 100,000 votes, or about 15% of the total cast. That was 5000 more votes than the entire candidate slate of the party that got the most votes in that year’s municipal elections. Indeed, the rhinoceros broke records and earned the highest ever total votes secured by any city council candidate up to that date.

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As The New York Times reported, Cacareco “earned one of the highest totals for a local candidate in Brazil’s recent history”. A sore loser leader of one of the parties trounced by Cacareco 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 and depressed by the fact that he lost to a four footed beast, that he committed suicide.

The Honorable Cacareco

Cacareco’s electoral triumph was more than just a strange and funny event. At the time, it caused significant concern and hand wringing in Brazil’s intellectual and political circles. Plenty saw it as a sign of such widespread discontent, that the country might be on the verge of revolution. In the meantime, the Sao Paulo zoo’s director asked the municipal government to pay the rhinoceros’ salary as an elected member of the city council. Unfortunately, the fix was in, and election officials nullified Cacareco’s ballots.

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Perhaps because she was only five-years-old, and was thus too young to legally run for office? Or perhaps because she did not meet the residency requirements? She had only lived in Sao Paulo for a few months, and was returned to Rio de Janeiro on October 1^st, 1959, a few days before the election. Cacareco passed away in 1962. In 1984, her remains were returned to the city where she won an election. They can be seen on exhibit today at Sao Paulo University’s Museum of Veterinary Anatomy.