National Lottery for Public Assistance

The Auxiliary Lottery for Public Works was founded, whose profits were used to finish the Chapultepec Castle and the reconstruction of the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as well as the refurbishment of the building of Veronica's Walk (now Melchor Ocampo).

[citation needed] During the war of independence, the Viceroy Félix María Calleja instituted, in 1815, two forced lotteries, one for the capital and the other for the rest of the viceroyalty, and as a way to raise funds to fight the insurgency.

[citation needed] In 1842, a decree was published which consigned the rent of the lottery to the Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos[3] and became known as the Lottery of San Carlos, which used its funding to acquire important works of art, give scholarships to students of the academy to study in Europe and bring to Mexico important teachers, among them Pelegrín Clavé for painting, Manuel Vilar for sculpting, Eugenio Landesio for landscape and Javier Cavallari for architecture; the latter, in addition to instructing his students in the classical orders of architecture, taught them basic knowledge of how to build bridges, roads and railways, because he wanted to carry out the construction of the railway.

Upon the death of Juárez (July 1872), the government of President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada granted permits for new lotteries that benefited the Lancasterian Company, one of the asylum houses for poor children and for the Hospital of San Hipólito.

[3] During the government of Porfirio Díaz, the lottery collaborated with other resources for the construction of the General Hospital, the Castañeda Manicomio, and the Morisco Kiosk that represented Mexico at an international exhibition in St. Louis, Missouri.

On 12 October 1990, in the city of Santiago de Querétaro, the Ibero-American draw was held with the participation of Argentina, Costa Rica, Spain, Dominican Republic, and México as the host country.

[citation needed] 5 January 2001 was a historic date for the National Lottery for Public Assistance because for the first time in 231 years a president of the Republic, Vicente Fox Quesada, led the celebrations of the draw.