Ball 87. Warm stones under their feet, paper flags overhead, and a table of families with cards and little piles of dried beans. By one account, picture cards like these began to be printed in large numbers in Mexico around this time, and the game went from fairground to kitchen table.
The caller — a tall woman who said to call her Riddla — never said the name of a card. “That would be too easy,” she said. She described it instead, in a little verse, and the players had to work out which picture she meant.
“Every card is a secret,” Riddla told Ama. “Your job is to give it away slowly.”