With A Card Game, The Portuguese Get Back At Their Creditors
In a typical cafe in downtown Lisbon, old men play cards or dominoes over cups of milky coffee or cold glasses of vinho verde — and commiserate about the economy.
And one of their favorite ways to do this is through a new card game that's all the rage in Lisbon these days, called Vem A a Troika, or Here Comes the Troika. It's a satirical cross between Monopoly and Old Maid, in which players try to stash away savings in offshore accounts, win elections — and avoid the dreaded troika card.
The game is based on Portugal's painful experience with the troika. Two years ago, Europe rescued Portugal's failing economy with more than $100 billion in bailout loans.
Inspectors from Portugal's creditors — the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, a.k.a the troika — arrive back in Lisbon on Monday to assess the country's progress — which doesn't look all that good.
The Portuguese economy is still shrinking, and the government has indicated it may not fulfill its deficit goals. In order to try to pay back its bailout loans, Lisbon has hiked taxes. For some Portuguese, their tax burden has doubled. Unemployment is pushing a record 17 percent. Poverty is on the rise.
And so is opposition to the troika.
"Basically, the troika card ends the game," says Carlos Mesquita, a 49-year-old engineer who invented the game with some friends late last year. "You don't necessarily lose [when the troika card is played, but] it's a way to finish the game. And then you just count your points to see who won."
Players win points by forming alliances with corrupt leaders, making shady financial deals and winning the support of influential interest groups.
Picking On Portuguese Power-Brokers
The action takes place in the barely fictionalized country of Portugalandia, and each of the more than 100 cards in the deck is decorated with intricate caricatures of figures that closely resemble real-life Portuguese politicians and power-brokers.
"Well, we have fewer lawsuits here than you have in the U.S.," Mesquita jokes. "We're protected from libel because we're depicting a fictionalized country, with characters that bear some resemblance to real people."
The game does require a certain level of education, to understand its puns and satire.
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