Lotería
Lotería - a traditional Mexican card game - is a Spanish word for Lottery. It has originated in Europe (probably Italy) and reached Mexico through Spain. It is very similar to the American game called Bingo except in the fact that it uses images instead of numbers, which makes it more visually interesting and more fun. According to Mexican National Identity: Memory, Innuendo, and Popular Culture by William H. Beezley, the pictures can be of different people, places and things “typical of daily life” (Beezley, 2008).
As opposed to card games played in casinos for gambling, Lotería has always been considered a relaxing and fun game, which is also played indoors without the necessity to make money out of it.
According to Breezily, the images on the cards used to be painted by local artists in the 19th century. The whole game set was originally consisted of a set of cards for the dealer or announcer (who called out the description of the pictures) and boards for the players. The boards had five ranks and five columns; and every player had at least one board. The Cards used to be made by wood or cloth, and in some cases, made by paper at home.
How it is played
First of all, an announcer should be picked out from the people present. This person takes out the cards one by one from a bag and is responsible to check if the players honestly fill their tabla when it actually corresponds to the announced picture. Instead of just calling out the name of the object in the picture (like: the fish), the announcer might want to use a short poem or a funny way to describe it. (Like this, one dies by its mouth, even if it was mute in life.) In Mexico, many special phrase are assigned for each picture. According to a website called Zone Zero, some examples are "I sing for St Peter” for a rooster, "coat for the poor” for the sun, "perdition of men” for women, "oh, how ugly you are, godmother" for death, and “sweet Virgin Mary” for the devil.
Each player is given a game card or tabla. If they want, the players can have more than on tabla but if the game is being played over money, the tablas should be bought from the announcer.
The announcer starts the game by taking the first card out of the bag and announcing its object; each one of the players that has the corresponding picture on their card, covers the picture using small objects like beans or corns. The first person to fill out the whole chart (or a pre-assigned pattern like a row) on their tabla shouts “Lotería!” and is considered the winner of the game.
How it Can be Beneficial to Players
Sometimes instead of playing the regular way, the players place bets on the next card the announcer is going to draw from the bag. This way of playing Loteria is most of the time played in celebrations and carnivals.
But the benefits of Loteria are not just limited to money-related issues; It is being played for educational purposes too. As the loteria cards include different pictures of animals, objects and famous characters, they are perfect to be used in teaching history, zoology, writing, reading and social values. According to History of La Lotería, Loteria is used by bilingual teachers all over the United States as a teaching tool. In the nineteenth century, loteria cards were used to enhance the skills of storytelling. William H. Beezley says:
Drawing the pictures on the cards would also strengthen the painting abilities in people who were interested.
Different versions of Loteria have been fashioned for different educational purposes. For instance in 1930s a liturgy-based version of loteria was introduced which employed catholic objects and symbols as pictures.
Playing Lotería - and all indoor games in general - is not only an activity to pass time or make money using your chance. The game can only be played in groups, so it gathers people around each other and makes them talk and laugh over the game (something that people rarely do these days due to the advents of technology.) The game is also quite portable so if only one person in a group of friends owns the beautiful pictures and boards, they can easily bring it to a friend’s house party.
In comparison to the simple games played today (like mobile game) to pass the time and have some fun, the games that were popular in the past definitely used to be more educational and more professionally designed. Introducing our children to the games like Loteria can certainly be helpful to make sure they are entertained with something healthy and educationally beneficial.
References
Beezley, W. (2008). Mexican national identity: Memory, innuendo, and popular culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
History of La Lotería. (2012, August 25). Retrieved December 28, 2014, from http://www.teresavillegas.com/history-of-la-loteria/
Lotería mexicana. (n.d.). Retrieved December 28, 2014, from http://v1.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/l
