The History of Lotería and How Apple’s Short Film ‘¡Suerte!’ Celebrates Mexican Lore
Apple’s new short film “¡Suerte!” follows Mexican-American singer-songwriter Iván Cornejo, 20, as he travels to his ancestral land in search of musical inspiration. While there, he is confronted by a horde of unlikely characters: the devil, a fish, a mermaid, a skeleton and a frog. Cornejo’s dreamland is actually a game of Mexican Lotería come to life, where each card’s character helps the 20-year-old find the corazón in his songwriting.
The 12-minute film is impressive. Not just because it features Cornejo’s new song “Intercambio Injusto”— a banger— and not just because it was fully shot on an iPhone, showing how democratic present-day filmmaking can be. The movie is a notable celebration of Latinidad while making no pomp and circumstance of where Cornejo grew up, what language he mostly speaks, or where the film is set. Cornejo, born in Riverside, CA to Mexican parents, is neither aquí ni allá, living comfortably in English and Spanish, within and across the border.
“¡Suerte!” may be set in Mexico, but it equally traverses the singer’s dreamscape. Let’s call it Loteríaland. As the film’s Mexican-American directors Pasqual Gutiérrez y RJ Sánchez (otherwise known as Cliqua) put it, “It’s crazy to see these ideas that we came up with actually happening.” As in… a hotel elevator that takes Cornejo underwater to sing with a mermaid (played by María Zardoya from The Marías) as his fish bestie nods along.
Throughout the movie, characters like Luis Felipe Tovar’s “El Diablito” and Zardoya’s “La Sirena” present challenges, apoyo, and musical interludes. Meanwhile, “El Pescado” becomes the (decidedly silent) best friend troupe we didn’t know we needed. Cornejo eventually finds his heart in an unlikely place, getting by with a little help from his friends— the Lotería characters that made up many of our childhoods.
But where does Mexican Lotería come from? The bingo-esque game was created by a French immigrant in Mexico named Don Clemente Jacques in the 1920s. However, the game’s origins can be traced far before then, finding roots in 15th century upper-class Italy where it was called “II Gioco del Lotto d’Italia.” Spanish colonizers eventually brought the card game to Mexico, paving the way for Jacques’ now-ubiquitous “Lotería El Gallo.”
Interestingly, while many historians trace Lotería back to Europe, the Arizona State Museum paints a different picture. Much before the Spanish conquista, the Aztecs already played a similar game named Patolli, or “beans” in Nahuatl. Similarly, the game involved moving pieces— typically beans— across a 52-square board. Some accounts allege that players would bet their entire livelihoods, including their freedom. And yes, just like Lotería, it was all about suerte.
Before Jacques’ version came along, people often made their own Lotería cards at home. Still, no matter what characters are on the cards, the game’s rules are consistent. Players receive a tabla with 16 images that match a deck of 54 cards. The chosen “Cantor” shuffles the cards and calls them out while players mark their boards’ matches with pinto beans, stones, or coins. Winner takes all once they get four matches in a row, column, or square.
The best part, though? The great Cantores will serenade players with a line of poetry relating to each character from the deck— and will typically do so before announcing the card name.
Sometimes, people will still refer to Lotería as “Mexican Bingo”— but in that case, maybe bingo is “American Lotería.” When it comes to its magnitude, the game is ingrained in the streets, lore, and social fabric of México and beyond. Just like in “¡Suerte!,” Lotería’s characters— La Sirena, El Sapo, or even El Pescado— are figures we can rely on. They’re always present, much like our ancestors our abuela will never let us forget. And as the movie proves, you can speak to both if you ever need un guía to push you along your path.
As Dr. John Morán Gonzalez, director of UT Austin’s Center for Mexican American Studies, told Texas Standard: Lotería characters are a “constellation of kind of both everyday objects, but [also] popular folklore.” The cards’ icons are both magic and mundane, and in a way just like us: ni de aquí, ni de allá. Living in our chosen fantasy world as 200-percenters. Welcome to Loteríaland.
