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For those who don’t remember or who weren’t born at the time of the first version of “Vale Tudo”, a national contest was held with cash prizes for anyone who got the most iconic question in Brazilian television drama right: who killed it? The winner was a 14-year-old teenager from Minas Gerais, Laura Boaventura, who won around R$110,000 at the time, but part of the prize was blocked by the Collor Plan. THE LeoDias portal explain it to you now.
The idea for the draw came from the Caldos Maggi brand and offered 5 million Cruzados (equivalent to less than 1 real today) to the viewer who answered the question correctly. The teenager got her guess right: Leila had murdered the villain.
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In a recent interview with the portal O Tempo, Laura recalled how the game transformed her life and that of her family: “I watched the soap opera with my grandfather and we kept trying to guess. I wrote three letters with Leila’s name and prayed every day to win the prize and help my mother”, she said.
Someone heard the Minas Gerais woman’s prayers and the family got their hands on the money to pay for school, pay off debts and buy a videocassette recorder, a consumer dream at the time. But in just over a year, part of the prize that had been saved in savings was blocked by the confiscation of the Collor Plan, in 1990. Despite what happened, the woman said she has no regrets: “Helping my mother and seeing her joy was the best of all.”
Laura’s case became one of the most curious stories on Brazilian television, a period in which soap operas, luck and politics mixed in the popular imagination. Decades later, the mystery of Odete Roitman’s death is once again on the lips of those who follow the remake by Manoela Dias and will be revealed on October 17th, the last chapter of the soap opera. And you, do you already have a guess?
Collor Plan
The confiscation of savings that Laura’s family suffered was part of Fernando Collor de Mello’s economic package, which, the day after his inauguration as president of the republic, on March 15, 1990, he edited. A three-day bank holiday was declared, and when banks reopened, people lined up at the doors of branches, which did not have money available to cover customer withdrawals.
In the post-redemocratization era, withdrawals from savings accounts or current accounts were limited to 50 thousand new escudos. The package determined the blockade for 18 months, with correction and interest of six percent per year.
Before this plan, the country suffered from hyperinflation, with supermarkets marking prices until the early hours of the morning, so much so that the value of products almost doubled from one month to the next.
