International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 15

International Journal on Criminology
to take part was able to do so. The Bicheiros, territorial chiefs who controlled their
fiefdoms with an iron fist, only emerged at the beginning of the 1950s. Between
1910 and 1950, it was not only shopkeepers but also entrepreneurs who were involved
in the entertainment market. The latter were responsible for the relationship
between the bicho and the cinema. This close link with popular culture would
always remain a feature of the animal game. 20 We will see later that a similar link
also exists between the Bicheiros and the Rio Carnival.
According to the historian Alice Gonzaga, in those days the animal game
provided a source of funds for film production. 21 Gonzaga asserts that the producers
Paschoal Segreto, Jácomo Staffa and José Labanca financed their principal
business—film—with the revenues from ticket sales. While for Segreto, the bicho
remained a secondary activity, the game itself became the main business of the
Labancas, who became Rio’s first Bicheiro family.
The illegal nature of the animal game alarmed investors unwilling to be
associated with a criminal activity, and from the 1940s onwards the lottery passed
into the hands of individuals who became specialists, modernizing and organizing
the operation of the underground lottery. As time passed, territorial disputes
became more frequent: these were the first indications of what would become the
organized crime associated with the animal game.
The Animal Game’s Transition into Organized Crime
Studies written about the animal game, a familiar element in Brazilian popular
culture, focus mainly on its social and folkloric aspects. Evidence of the criminal
aspect only becomes apparent in crime reports and Brazilian legal proceedings.
Yet from the beginning of the 1950s, the bicho and its promoters would become
the basis for organized crime in Rio, foreshadowing other criminal operations,
such as the control of drug trafficking in the favelas.
From the 1940s and 1950s onwards, the structure of the animal game
gradually strengthened, with the emergence of “animal houses”
(shops selling bicho tickets, still an illegal activity) and “fortresses”
(where the cash from sales was brought and accounts were filed).
Fortresses also served as the regional godfathers’ headquarters.
20 According to Tizuko Morchida Kishimoto: “The study by DaMatta and Sóarez (1999) on the
history of the game’s creation emphasizes its duality: with a simple draw rewarding the luckiest,
this game of chance gradually came to be associated with a complex system managed by
“bankers,”—who could be described as the animal game’s financiers—while for the players it
was associated with notions related to the interpretation of dreams, the divinatory arts, and
numerology.” [Our translation]. Tizuko Morchida Kishimoto, “Jogo do bicho: un jeu de hasard
au cœur de l´économie carioca” in Sciences du jeu [online] 3, July 22, 2015, accessed February
11, 2018, http://journals.openedition.org/sdj/377
21 Alice Gonzaga, Palàcios e poeiras: 100 anos de cinemas no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro:
Record/Funarte, 1996), 36. Cited in Magalhães, “Ganhou Leva...,” 84.
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