Today, I started teaching a new Basic 1 English course at IFIE. It was a good class, only four students confirmed so far. Three of them are in their teens, one has already finished college and is waiting for commencement ceremony. I admire these kids who continue investing in their education despite all the difficulties.
Every time I teach a new course and talk about the inevitable cultural comparisons that go beyond mere linguistic differences, I run into things that make me add more elements of comparison. This time: Street Lottery. These crowded meetings have become the new weekend entertainment and, according to what some players told me, the new GoFundMe strategy for people to raise money for different causes. I was told the money collected from today's lottery would go help cover the expenses of the youth basketball teams that train in the Bermudez Square court.
People pay $1 for each card and can play as many hands or rounds as they plan for the day. Prizes vary each hand and there is usually a juicy final prize (in some places even motorcycles or $1,000 pool).
The prize I heard being announced for the first hand was $20. You can get prizes like a bag with different food items, frozen chickens, meat, etc.
I walk through this square every day and I had never seen so many people here. This picture (the left side of the square facing the basketball court) shows just half of the people I saw today at noon (and the lottery was just starting).
When I saw the crowd I thought there was some basketball tournament going on. Then I saw all the lottery cards and the food and the drinks. People attend these lotteries as if it were a homecoming game. They can spend hours playing.
This is what it looks like at night. Just a few days ago, I was planning to go out just to document the fad. I just can't stand crowded places, less so under our current circumstances. However, this will be one more episode of our cultural accommodations to economic crises worth recording.
There have already been cases of violence, assault, attempt of fraud (that have ended in near-lynching reactions), but the local governments in each city have found ways to tax these activities and will let them go regardless of all the risks (covid, robberies, or any other) because this will be profitable for government officials, and, more importantly, keep people entertained for a while, oblivious to all the political crap that keeps erasing their future and cementing their dependence on random luck!
