ENLARGE




Sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll made me crazy—thank God!



An Erotic Novel



How we lost the right to feel.

Go to the beach.

A Literary Love Affair

Lottery

Expendio Zaiany

Downtown, about two blocks along the curving street the Post Office is located on, Xel-Ha #7. MANAGER Miguel Sabah Grivan. From 50¢

The prizes in the Mexican national lottery sound awesome in pesos. More than a thousand billion pesos are riding on special days such as Cinco de Mayo, more than five billion in a regular drawing. A typical main prize is 600 thousand pesos, and there will be six or so in any given lottery. That's $100,000, which is not exactly Chiclets, but not in the same category as the American multimillion dollar jackpots.

The tickets are sold in series of twenty parts each bearing the same number. A whole ticket is called an entero, a twentieth, or vigiesimo, is a fracción, and will cost upwards of 50¢, depending upon the size of the main prize. If you buy the whole ticket, all the money your number hits is yours. If you buy fracciones you will receive your proportionate share. In any given lottery, tickets bearing the same final numbers as the final numbers of the winning tickets may be exchanged for new tickets.

In a drawing in which the main prize is $100,000 the maximum value of a single fracción would be $5,000. It is customary for the winner to give the seller a taste of the prize. All winnings are tax-free and payable on sight without any identification other than the winning ticket itself.

The proceeds of the national lottery go to the public health and welfare system, so your ticket not only represents a chance to win a little (or a lot), but a contribution to the well-being of the Mexican people. The lottery is run along the strictest lines of integrity and there has never been a single instance of fraud or deception in its entire history. Drawings are held about three times a week and the results are published the following day in most of the nation's newspapers and posted at all the vendors' sites.

You can buy lottery in many stores in Cancun, but we like Expendio Zaiany. Sr. Sabah speaks excellent English and will be happy to explain the details of the system to you. He also has had remarkable luck over the years, selling one main prize, several major hits and many smaller ones.