Vanessa Bauza

HAVANA · The dusty, dimly lit bodega hardly seems like a den of illegal activity. Havana housewives and retirees come in every morning, paying pennies for state-subsidized rations of rice and sugar dispensed from large plastic barrels. In the afternoon, men gather under the whitewashed 1920s portico to trade neighborhood gossip while teenagers squat on the curb outside playing chess until dusk.

All day, the bodega administrator dispatches his goods over the worn counter. But his most important orders are covert. Stealthily, a customer passes him a small piece of paper scribbled with numbers and folded neatly inside a peso note. It's a coded bet for bolita, the time-honored, underground Cuban lottery based on the Florida Lottery's winning numbers.

The bodeguero slips the paper into his shirt pocket. Later he adds the numbers to a list he compiles daily with all his customers' bets. At about 6 p.m. a messenger arrives, picks up the list and delivers it to a middleman known as the collector. He in turn gets it to the banquero, or banker, who controls the money and ensures his security by remaining strictly anonymous.

This hierarchical network is replicated in neighborhoods from Havana to the eastern city of Santiago.

Long lambasted as a capitalist vice associated with the mob-run casinos of pre-revolutionary Cuba, bolita, which translates as "little ball," has been illegal here for decades.

But gamblers say their beloved game endures because it's the only way for average workers who don't receive dollar remittances or hard-currency benefits to boost their paltry salaries overnight.

"I have two daughters. With what can I buy them candy, a pound of pork meat, butter? It's necessity that forces you to risk yourself and live outside the law," said the 59-year-old bodega administrator who declined to give his name for fear of being arrested or fined.

An affable man with gray-streaked hair and an easy laugh, the administrator gets about a 20 percent cut of the money his bolita customers put down, which means he can more than triple his monthly $5 salary in one day. Earnings depend on the odds gamblers place. There are several variations of the game, but payouts are generally modest, ranging from a few dollars to a sizable win of $50.

Retirees play a few pesos of their minuscule pensions, encouraged by another's good fortune. Others look upon bolita as a sort of illicit stock market. They track the numbers obsessively, playing combinations that haven't hit in weeks or months.

According to Cuba's penal code, bankers, collectors and humble listeros like the bodega administrator can be jailed for up to three years or fined. If the conviction involves corrupting a minor, the sentence can jump to eight years.

While the bodeguero is cautious, he says it's rare for the government to crack down on bolita rings or for low-level informants to turn them in.

"People can have their suspicions, but it's rare for someone to say something. The law exists, but they don't squeeze us," he said. "I've been playing since I was a child, maybe 15 years old. This is in my blood."

Until a couple of years ago, the winning Florida Lottery numbers were broadcast by Radio Marti, the federally funded Miami-based station that transmits news to Cuba. However, in a rare show of consensus with the Cuban government, Radio Marti stopped broadcasting lottery results because "promoting illegal gambling [was] outside the realm of what the [U.S.] government should be doing," said Alberto Mascaro, chief of staff at the Office of Cuban Broadcasting, which oversees Radio and TV Marti.

Cuba's boliteros now keep up with the Florida Lottery by tuning in Spanish-language TV channels like Univision and Telemundo, which are picked up by illegal satellite dishes.

If simply getting the winning bolita numbers seems an art, strategies for divining lucky sequences include the mathematical and the mystical.

One system involves adding the digits of the previous day's winning combination in a successive, pyramid-like pattern and using those calculations to come up with new lotto picks.

A more surreal strategy involves old pre-revolutionary charts that link each number between 1 and 100 with a corresponding animal, object or event. These associations, known as la charada, help bolita players choose their numbers based on such diverse things as a personal matter, like a death in the family, or an international event, like the Asian tsunami. Last October, when President Fidel Castro fell and shattered his knee, the number 1 became a popular pick. Why? Because according to the charada that's the number associated with a horse, one of Castro's more common nicknames.

Others watch for signs in their everyday lives.

"I play according to dreams or a joke," the bodeguero said. But he acknowledges that superstition and elaborate calculations go only so far in gambling.

"Everything you invent is garbage," he said, "if luck is not on your side."

Vanessa Bauzá can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com

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