JOTERERÍA FOUNDER

My name is Antonio Castellanos. I was born June 18,1988 in Redondo Beach, California to Maria Mejia and Ramon Castellanos who migrated to Torrance California in the 1970’s from Tepatitlán de Morelos, Jalisco. I’ve been fortunate to have lived a very dual cultural life between Mexico and the USA.  As a small child I would watch Captain Planet in English and Chavo del Ocho in Spanish while my mom took me on her shifts to clean houses.  At 5 years old I switched soccer for Ballet Folklorico and danced for 10 years and attended Catholic Mass in Spanish every Sunday with my parents for 18 years.

Growing up I had the opportunity to often visit my parent’s home town of Tepa where I would spend entire summers.  These visits made me feeI like I was part of that community too. I grew up near the Tijuana-San Diego border, that allowed my family and I to visit cousins in the town of Tecate (you know, where the Tecate beer and Carla Morrison are from) It was easy to run errands in Tijuana where I also went to my first gay bar at the age of 18, Club Extasis. Throughout my upbringing I made the journey to Tepa from California many times by car, train, and plane. The first time I went without my parents I was 14 and drove down in the back of pick up truck that my uncle and grandfather were taking back to Tepa. What a trip! lol Mexico has always been familiar, close, and an important part of my life and identity. 

What was the inspiration for Joteria? On March 29, 2014, I found a bootlegged “EL CATRIN” card in my parents’ kitchen.  I thought,“wow, que joto se ve”. I took a photo of it with my phone and wrote, “EL JOTO” over the photo and posted it on Facebook. Some friends laughed and commented and that moment inspires the idea about a L.G.B.T Lotería game.

For over a year this was only an idea. It wasn’t until the summer of 2015, I was a target of constant bulling and sexual harassment at a work place because I was the only visible gay person. I quit that job because of the constant homophobia directed at me, soon there after my car broke down, and I was unable to find work for months. I found myself sitting on a bus heading to a place where I didn’t want to be.  It was at that moment that I decided to put pen to paper and started writing my ideas.  Joteria started a joke. However, after three years of development, Joteria became reality in 2017 with the launch on the first edition of the game.