Loteria Commentary
Content Warning: missing and murdered women and suicide.
For more information about missing and murdered Indigenous women, check out https://www.nativehope.org/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-mmiw
SPOILERS AHEAD!
“There is something curious about the Loteria cards, their numbering system, their design, their history. So much is known, yet so much remains muddled. The pictures are iconic, including that of El Corazon, El Borracho, and La Sirena. These pictures have stepped off their cards, and into the hands of products and marketing— plastered on T-shirts painted on restaurant walls and more. The images, and their corresponding numbers, hold power. There’s a mystical design here that I cannot explain, but that I accept, because I’ve seen what the cards can do for me. The cards can be used simply as a game, or with caution to divine.”
Cynthia Pelayo’s collection of 54 bite-sized horror stories— one for every card in the loteria deck— make terrifying different Latin American beliefs, cultures, folklore, history, and fears to explore the connective tissue between generations, including the promises, the revenge, the curses, the monsters, the shared responsibility, and the idea of justice. Most consisting of only a few pages, Pelayo plays with the flavors of her short stories to find unique ways to disturb us. Goblins, ghosts and ghost hunters, murderers, ghouls, and other frightening creatures. We encounter them all.
Loteria is a Mexican game of chance, like bingo. But the cards can also be shuffled and pulled randomly to understand the past, contextualize the present, and divine the future. Rather than randomly, Pelayo presents us with each and every card in order. Our goal is not to complete a board, like in bingo— just to read the stories. By supplying stories for each card in order, Pelayo thereby cements a permanence, which makes it feel like we are in on the game somehow. Like the dealer is revealing each card to us in private before the game even starts, telling us each one’s horror with a whispered excitement as one would a confidant. Even though the stories’ brevity can feel as though we are being kept at an arm’s length, the reading experience is an intimate one.
At first, I really struggled reading this book. The stories felt too short: I’d finally get my bearings in a new setting and concept, then the story would end and I’d have to regain my footing again immediately in the next one. Though I loved the idea of 2-3 page horror stories, in practice, I stumbled to embrace a structure so new to me. My reading slowed and I had to return numerous times, not wanting to give up on it. And I’m glad I didn’t. When I finally hit my stride, I connected with many of the stories.
I learned so much from this book. In “La Bota”, I learned that Puerto Rico has a large Palestinian community. I learned in “Las Jaras” that Japanese Brazilians are the largest group of Japanese outside of Japan in the world. In “El Arpa”, I learned of the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, which was a group of expatriates from Europe, mostly Ireland, who were brought to the U.S to fight with the Americans, but they defected and instead fought with Mexico against the United States. But above all of this, I learned— or, rather, was reminded— how persistent violence against women is not just in America, but also in Latin America.
The stories often reference missing and murdered Indigenous women, femicide surrounding our characters and breathing down our necks while some other horror is unfolding in front of us. Serial killers run rampant through the pages, but, unlike the movies, these killers aren’t often defeated by their would-be victims, or even caught. The murder of women is so ubiquitous as to be an epidemic, something above just one man, taking on a life of its own— a monstrous, lurking thing that stalks us throughout the book. I appreciate Pelayo wielding horror to talk about the reality of missing and murdered women, an ignored and dismissed brutality.
In “La Botella”, a dead woman is discovered on the side of the road in the remote Pacific Northwest. “A single crow plume lay beneath her cheek.” But it doesn’t appear that she was hit by a car. “There were no visible signs of trauma. It was as if she had fallen there, on the ground, into a red pool from somewhere up above.” In the story, our murdered woman was once a crow, and, in her death is replaced by the protagonist. “The vial now dangled from my neck and as I flapped my crow wings and flew across the great, dark sky I knew it was time to head south, to bring the warmth and light again.” This beautiful explanation for a woman’s tragic death offers a soothing balm to the viscous burn of femicide. Through transformation, we encounter something divine. Like many fables, this one is horrifying yet one of the most gorgeous tales I’ve ever heard.
One of the other stories that sticks with me the most is “El Violoncello”, one I consider to be controversial, but because we discuss suicide often on this website, I feel I must include it. A young woman has terminal cancer and without family, friends, or any kind of support, decides to die by suicide. She travels to an ossuary (a church made of bones), where she encounters a strange being who enlists her in collecting crystal skulls from various ossuaries around the world, accruing them for his malicious purposes. I won’t spoil the ending, but overall the story calls into question the view of suicide as a sin against God.
“It’s believed that you are the property of God and destroying his property is asserting your dominion over what is God’s. So, if you break something that’s not yours the owner typically will get pissed, but I didn’t care.”
My larger problem with this version of suicide is not that it is sinful, rather, that it shouldn’t be the best available option for people who just need support. Communal, familial, and systemic support. We should not be existing in cruel health care systems that push people to the edge, where they must choose between groceries and medicine, between living on the brink or dying. None of us should be in that position and, sometimes when assisted suicide is positioned as a solution, it feels less like choosing your end and more like being forced into it. That shouldn’t be the world we live in, but, for many of us, it is, regardless.
In that world, where violence against women is tolerated and even encouraged, we watch a woman take her death into her own hands, to go out in a way that’s meaningful to her. It isn’t empowerment I feel, because this is a tragic response to our societies and systems which don’t care about women or those who are sick or disabled. Rather, I sense some defiance against violence, against pain, which is compelling and interesting. Suicide can be a vehicle for dignity amidst vile cruelty.
None of this is to glorify or idealize suicide. That would discount its severity and the devastation it wreaks upon the living and the dead. Suicide is never simple and reasons vary. No one’s reason is better or worse than another’s. All suicides are equally tragic and awful. This must be made clear.
Pelayo is fearless in writing about femicide and suicide alike, even when it’s controversial and even when it’s terrifying. She doesn’t manipulate gore to frighten us, rather, she shows us the world and that’s enough.
For readers who are hungry for bite-sized horror centering Latin American characters, settings, and folklore, Pelayo’s Loteria is what you’re looking for.