“I didn’t want people to cancel Lotería…I wanted to keep it alive, and keep the tradition going. “It just felt like it needed to be modernized and updated,” Alfaro says. But he also realized the game’s depictions of people are problematic and stereotypical.

With it came feelings of nostalgia, and happy memories of playing with his family. He says the idea for Millennial Lotería came to him when he visited his home town and pulled out his old version of Clemente’s Lotería. The version that we know today can be traced back to the early 1920s, according to Gloria Arjona, a Spanish lecturer at the California Institute of Technology who has done extensive research into the origins of each of Clemente’s designs, and recently published a book titled ¡Lotería!.Īlfaro is now based in Los Angeles, but is originally from Guatemala.

The most famous Lotería design we know today was created by Clemente, a French immigrant in Mexico who printed what he named the “Don Clemente Gallo” Lotería in his own factory. and Latin America who have redesigned the classic Lotería, which is now more than a century old, though none have come as close to popular as the Clemente version. Gonzales is now among a range of artists throughout the U.S. To keep up with sales demands, Gonzales and his wife began a partnership with a local retailer, Felíz Modern.

Gonzales says that within 24 hours of taking pre-orders for the game, the couple sold more than 800 copies online. By mid-April, Gonzales produced 31 images that he and his wife turned into “Pandemic Lotería” on their kitchen table. His clever, sometimes critical, images were met with hundreds of “likes” and comments. After publishing the “La cabRONA” illustration on Instagram on March 24, Gonzales decided to continue with the COVID-19 theme and design more Lotería cards.

Don clemente jumbo loteria