On Sept. 21, Delta’s Pride Center hosted its second-year annual event “Loteria with the Pride Center”
This is the only event they will be having for Latino/Hispanic Heritage Month.
The monthly celebration started on Sep.15 and will continue until Oct.15.
A few other events that Delta has hosted so far are: “Pachanga Presente” on Sept.14 in the Quad by the Koi Pond where students, staff, and anyone who wanted to join this celebration had the chance to dress in traditional clothes and bring their flag to represent the Latin countries.
Another celebration was “Paletas con Profes” on Sept. 20, where students had the chance to get a free popsicle stick and ask questions to the professors about support for their educational journey in Puente Latinx Center in Shima 133.
On Oct.5 they had Aztec dancers in the President’s Patio for Indigenous People’s Day Celebration.
Loteria is a popular Mexican bingo that is often played at parties.
For example, just like Bingo, in Loteria, the winning person normally will shout “Lotería!”
To win you also need to fill in the entire card or some like to play when only filling one role going up or down depending on the way it is being played. The card normally holds a total of 16 cubes to fill in.
The Pride Center has found success using a new version of Loteria called “La Gen Z” instead of the original “Loteria Don Clemente.”
This new version features cards like “La Activist” “El Toxic”, “La Spiritual,” “La Tiktok Tongue,” and many more Gen Z trendy names.
“It was something we did last year and it was successful. We also used “La Gen-Z Loteria” last year because it is relevant to the students that we serve,” said Jasmin Arroyo, Pride Center student program specialist.
Students and staff were welcome to participate and play a three-round of “Loteria” and win some prizes and required all players to fill up their entire card to win.
The event had pizza, Boba milk tea mochi, and chocolate cupcakes for the guests to eat, and started with a short slide show on the type of resources the Pride Center provides for Delta students and staff of the LGBTQ community.
A few of these resources are pride scholars, one-on-one advice, free school supplies, textbooks, field trips & events, and recommendation letters.
The first-round winner was Sophomore Delta student Rey Valdez, and the second winner was another sophomore Delta student Kevin Roche.
Delta kept it traditional when using beans to cover every cube in the card but also had beads for those who wanted to use that instead.
Valdez enjoys playing this new version of Loteria, and also talks about as a Latinx it is great that Delta does hold events for this type of month-long celebration but for other cultures too.
“I played Loteria when I was younger so I played the original so this was a whole new version to me. I like both but I think this Genz Loteria was more fun because it has funny names from our generation. I think it is the fact that Delta holds events for these different types of months and different cultures is what I like about Delta,” said Valdez.
