In a previous post I had talked a little bit about this new trend in town: the street lottery. I had been hearing stories of the wonderful prizes and overall cheerful experience. I had also heard stories of violence resulting from people trying to cheat. I had been meaning to take a closer look at the phenomenon. A couple of days ago, one of my wife's cousins (who recently returned from a failed exile in Chile) told her about this sort of itinerant lottery that was going to be set right on her street (she lives a few blocks from us). Thus, agains my best judgement, I dediced to give it a try and witness first-hand the new Venezuelan entertainment.
This is a sample of the cards or cartones. They cost $2 each (3 for $5 was the "special" of the day) and you can play the whole night with them with a chance to win something in any of the eight or nine draws of the night, including the final one for a car. Each set of eight images is considered a cartón or puñito, so every card has 6 cartones. Some of the draws or hands demand filling one or two cartones (one or two groups of six). There are more than a hundred images, so the possibilities of winning are 1 in thousands. We have never been fond of gambling, so we just went there to study the thing and have a differen saturday evening.
This was the flier for Saturday's lottery. It says it would start at 4:00 pm, but the damn thing started at 8 (that will give you an idea of how punctual we are and how massively chaotic the logistics can get).
We arrived at about 6:00 pm. We could see the crowd from blocks away.
Even though the lottery is being played around town (a different sector every weekend) we could tell by the cars that there were tons of people from other parts of town. They closed several blocks.
It was crazy. There were more people than in any holiday celebration I have ever seen (including carnival). It was as if all the celebrations cancelled because of the pandemia got together in one place at the same time. There were people selling all kinds of things. My wife's cousin has been selling sweets/deserts since she came back from Chile. Even though she prepares delicious things, she did not sell much that night. People were more into drinking and fast food.
People had carried chairs and tables from their homes (some walked dozens of blocks to get here)
There was loud music and an even louder animador (host). Actually, the guy was so vulgar, we were about to leave before the lottery started. Some people complained about his language and he said outloud that that was an adult entertainment and children should be at home sleeping (as if they would not hear his cursing anyway).
I think that half of the crowd were children. We were in the middle of the thing. I could not even get a decent picture of the stage where the sound, the lights, and the dirty-mouthed animador was. There was a guest singer who was supposed to make everyone dance, but she sang just a couple of songs while people got desperate (some had been waiting for 4 hours). There was no room for dancing anyway (at least not as we dance here). People jumped un and down, though, as you'll see in the video.
We decided to eat something before the damn thing started. 50-cent hotdogs. They were good. My wife got some more a couple of hours later.
The lottery started at about 8:30 and from then until midnight it was a party. Tension during the minutes of the actual drawing, and then joking and cheering for the winners of the different prizes. There was only one tense incident with someone who won a surprise prize (a smart phone). The woman was so far from the stage that the host did not hear when she cried "lottery!". She ran through the crowd, but the idiot kept drawing and, according to the rules if a new image is drawn after the one you won with, that is considered a "pass" and you can't claim the prize.
There was a bit of an argument, but the crowd was with the winning lady and she got her smart phone.
We were never very close to winning any of the draws (which is good becasue being close to winning and losing produces a certain rush that may get you sick). I was looking around at some people's desperation because they were "waiting" for this or that image to be drawn; they were so close! and then, they would curse the host when the image they were waiting for was drawn in the next round.
We had a good time, all things considered. We were near people we knew and even though the crowd was a lot for what we are used to (boring weekends at home), it felt good to be surrounded by people in a cheerful mode.
This is crazy; the whole lottery thing. I'm not sure what this will end up being in the long run. In the meantime, this is creating a venting mechanism for people to get out of their depressing selves and get some distraction from the daily worries. I may be a bit afraid of this creating too much of a distraction and dependence.
Gambling tends to increase in times of crises here.
Here's a short video so you can feel the vibe of the night.
After all the noise and exhilaration, people picked up their chairs and tables forming an army of giant aunts,
walking back home quietly like the night.
