The Cuban Charada: Numbers and What They Mean

What exactly is the Cuban charada, and where did it come from?

The Cuban charada is a symbol system that pairs a number from 1 to 100 with an image — an animal, an object, a person, or even a feeling. It descends from the Chinese charada brought over by Cantonese contract laborers starting in 1847, which Cuba later expanded toward a full hundred entries, layering in African heritage and local invention along the way.

Between 1847 and the 1870s, well over 100,000 Chinese workers arrived on the island under coercive, semi-indentured contracts — most bound for the sugar mills. They brought a 36-number charada with them, and that imported core became the cultural bedrock Cuba kept building on for the next century, until the list reached a hundred numbers, each one carrying its own scrap of history, trade, or superstition.

What number is the cat in the Cuban charada?

In the Cuban charada, the cat lands primarily on number 4 — one of the original 36 numbers inherited from the Chinese charada, and one of the most consistently cited figures in the whole oral tradition. Some family variants also attach secondary cats to other numbers, which just underscores that this was never one fixed, closed text.

Four is the cat, plain and simple.

What are the charada's most commonly cited numbers, and what do they mean?

No serious source publishes an identical, 'official' table of all 100 numbers today, because the charada traveled by word of mouth for generations and shifts from family to family. What does exist is a well-documented core of correspondences — concentrated mostly in the first 36 numbers — listed below as cultural reference, not a definitive chart.

This isn't exhaustive or definitive — it mainly covers the first 36 numbers inherited from the Chinese charada, the entries that hold up most consistently across sources and families. Regional and family variants exist for nearly every one of these, and from 37 to 100, the Cuban-added half, variation gets heavier still, so presenting that stretch as one single 'official' table would simply be inaccurate.

• 1 – Horse
• 2 – Butterfly
• 3 – Sailor
• 4 – Cat
• 5 – Nun
• 6 – Turtle (jicotea)
• 7 – Snail
• 8 – Death (also pumpkin)
• 9 – Elephant
• 10 – Big fish
• 11 – Rooster
• 12 – Big dog
• 13 – Peacock
• 14 – Cemetery at night
• 15 – Small dog
• 16 – Bull
• 17 – San Lázaro / moon
• 18 – Small fish
• 19 – Worm
• 20 – Woman
• 21 – Parrot
• 22 – Toad
• 23 – Steamship
• 24 – Bird
• 25 – Cockroach
• 29 – Deer
• 32 – Pig

If you dream about water, what number is that in the charada?

Water is one of the more disputed symbols in the whole system: different sources and different families place it on different numbers in the upper half of the list, alongside near-rivals like the lottery ticket or the watermelon, with no single agreed-upon figure. It's a clean example of why the charada functions as family cábala rather than a fixed catalog.

Is the charada the same thing as la bolita, and can you still legally play it?

The charada is the dictionary of meanings; la bolita was the underground numbers lottery that used that dictionary so people could pick their numbers. Cuba moved to shut down gambling operations including la bolita around 1959, and like any unlicensed numbers lottery, running or playing it remains illegal today both on the island and under US state gambling laws, including Florida's — this is cultural background, not legal advice.

The dictionary survived; the lottery it fed did not, legally.

Why do the numbers change so much depending on the family or the neighborhood?

Because the charada never had a central authority fixing one official text — it spread by word of mouth, mixing with santería, espiritismo, and neighborhood stories for over a century. Every barrio and every abuela adjusted a few meanings, so two Cuban sources can disagree on the same number without either one being 'wrong.'

There's no single charada — there are a hundred family charadas.

Does the charada have anything to do with the actual odds of a number hitting?

None at all. The charada is a cultural and mnemonic system, not a mathematical one: in any genuinely random draw from 1 to 100, every number carries exactly a 1-in-100 chance, whether it symbolizes a cat, a death, or a butterfly. Mixing up cábala with probability is the root of nearly every lottery superstition out there.