This chapter examines the participation of Madureira's residents in the 1933 elections for the Constituent Assembly and the 1934 elections for the National Assembly. Following the victory of the Constitutionalist movement, Vargas was compelled to embark on an electoral process that remained largely controlled by the traditional oligarchic parties. Beginning in 1933, however, he sought to circumvent the electoral machines established by these oligarchies. The 1932 Electoral Code, which introduced the secret ballot, extended suffrage to literate women and men over the age of eighteen, and established an electoral judiciary to combat fraud, fundamentally reshaped the rules of political competition. In Rio de Janeiro, where a formal multiparty system had already existed, Pedro Ernesto sought to rally as many local political leaders as possible in order to build a party capable of winning control of the Federal District. The political actors from Madureira who took part in this process used this favorable balance of forces to advance their own agenda: feminism, secularism, the right to education, social rights, and anti-racism. The cultural, religious, and artistic organizations of Serrinha emerged as autonomous spaces through which local groups could organize politically. Trade unionists and carnival leaders such as Antenor dos Santos and Mano Eloy directly confronted the legacy of slavery, not by advocating a color-blind society, but by defending the rights and social condition of the descendants of enslaved people. Although the progressive forces of the subúrbio soon faced a determined offensive from Rio de Janeiro's Catholic Church, they nevertheless succeeded in reshaping the political landscape around the issues they championed.