INNOVATORS
MILLENNIAL LOTERÍA CREATOR
A few years ago, Alfaro was looking through cards for Lotería — the Bingo-style Mexican card game — and thought the folksy, decades-old imagery from the classic Don Clemente edition seemed outdated. Versions of the game have been around for centuries, and Alfaro, who emigrated from Guatemala and took up marketing work in Mar Vista, decided to give it a 21stcentury spin. Alfaro’s contemporary take, Millennial Lotería, launched from his Instagram account in 2018, riffed on old-fashioned cards like “La Calavera” and “El Soldado” with ironic updated titles “El Gluten” (illustrated with a skull) and “El Internship” (soldier in a helmet holding a coffee pot). Alfaro “created this project to break outdated immigrant stereotypes and to represent a new generation of Latinos in a modern world,” he writes on his website, and Millennial Lotería remains the top-selling item in the trading-card game category on Amazon today. Recently, Alfaro has been putting out other versions (Gen Z Lotería has cards like “El ASMR” and “El Apology Video”) and cutting comedy videos on TikTok at @millennialloteria.
— Matt Pearce