Rio: Bingo.com

Vintage roleta with bichos. Source: Musem of the Policia Civil of the parallel and parapolitical state of Rio de Janeiro

Última Instância, a legal affairs news site, reports yesterday:

O TST (Tribunal Superior do Trabalho) não reconheceu vínculo empregatício de uma trabalhadora que atuava em uma “banca” do jogo do bicho, pelo fato de ser uma contravenção. Com esse entendimento, a Primeira Turma do TST reformou decisões de instâncias anteriores em ação trabalhista e declarou a nulidade do contrato de trabalho, tornando improcedentos os pedidos de uma trabalhadora de Pernambuco. Determinou, ainda, que o Ministério Público fosse informado da existência de atividade ilícita.

The Federal Labor Tribunal [roughly] refused to acknowledge a claim to a valid employer-employee relationship by a woman employed by a jogo do bicho outlet, because of the fact that the game is against the law.

Contravenção is something like misdemeanor.

Transgressão de disposições estabelecidas em regulamentos, contratos etc.

Contravenção penal …

With this ruling, the court …  revised prior decisions of the TST in finding against the validity of such a contract, turning down the appeal of a Pernambuco woman. It also ordered the existence of the illegal activity be reported to the public prosecutor.

My most vivid impression of Recife, aside from the archaeological remains of the first synagogue in the Americas (the brief Dutch colonial regime) and the Stock Exchange of Pernambuco (a colorful shambles) was the Kentucky Fried Chicken-like gambling franchise on every corner …

Jogo do bicho is essentially what we (me and Ivan Lerner) know from 1970s blaxploitation films as the numbers racket: A black-market lottery, in this case using pictures of animals to represent groupings of numbers for the benefit of illiterate players (above).

(Or think of Bumpy Johnson in the film American Gangster, who battled Dutch Schulz for the numbers monopoly in Harlem — and in later years mentored Frank Lucas the Harlem heroin king. )

And now, as CartaCapital magazine also notes this week, the bicheiros have finally addressed what a lot of forum comments have been calling for for years now: Bicho results via Internet. (Every time you enter a high-level forum of experts on combating the bicho culture — Marx, Weber, Adorno, John Stuart Mill, Ruy Barbosa, Bentham and Manuel Castells — there is always some guy saying, Anyone know where I can get results online?)

With WordPress blog templates and Google Ads.

ResultadosDoBicho.com: Play the animal that haunts your dreams.