When the Latin America Relief Fund holds a benefit for ABBA House at the Mask Museum (once or twice a year), you come for the good cause and stay for the sunset.

To me, the second-floor balcony offers one of the prettiest views of San Miguel de Allende. Everything seems in scale — the towering church spires, the luscious blooming flowers, the sweeping mountains on the horizon. And the sunsets.

The Mask Museum is at Calle Cuesta de San Jose #32 in Centro and is, itself, worth a visit. Officially called Another Face of Mexico, the collection of 500 ceremonial masks from all over Mexico is the culmination of 25 years of research and collecting by Bill LeVasseur.

Besides being immensely entertaining and enlightening, visiting the museum itself is a good deed. All its proceeds are donated to the Casa de Los Angeles Daycare Center in SMA.

But Thursday night, we were there for ABBA House. Since its founding in 2015 by Pastor Ignacio Rameriz, ABBA House in Celya has provided food, shelter, education, and rehabilitation for northbound migrants.

As you can imagine, a lot of that traffic has shifted southbound, and Pastor Rameriz has shifted the mission to serve as well. In fact, ABBA is in the process of building a much larger facility to meet these needs: Centro Cultural de Derechos Humanos, (Cultural Center for Human Rights), “to provide long-term housing to asylum seekers, families, amputees, and LGBTQ+ people.”

That’s what Loteria Night at the Mask Museum was all about.

The night’s sponsor, Latin American Relief Fund, has channeled its energies and fundraising skills into helping Pastor Rameriz fulfill his dream.

Loteriea is sort of like bingo, only instead of boring “B-7, I-22, O-31 … zzzzzz”, you pull up colorful picture cards and try to build rows on 4-by-4 cards. In our case, we had an even more-colorful drag queen, Christian Baumgartner, as the evening’s Loteria hostess, and the double-entendres flew as fast as the cards.

Like I said, way more fun than Bingo. But then, this is Mexico. Yes? The fun side of the wall.

I think they raised a lot of money for ABBA. I hope so. The need is so real.

Sadly, it grows more common to see young Mexicans, whole families, who grow up in the U.S. and suddenly find themselves here with no local family, no income, no resources, no future. They are shell-shocked, culture-shocked, and scared.

That’s where places like ABBA step in to help.

The message for the night was printed on a simple black and white T-shirt: “NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL.”

The T-shirt is a fundraiser, too. And I was told that the Latin American Relief Fund has plenty left.

In your size!

Contact LARF at latinamericanrelieffund@gmail.com

The message comes in English or Spanish. Frankly, the people who need to read it don’t know Spanish. That’s why I bought one in English. Or ‘Murikan, as it is called.

It will go well with my “Gulf of Mexico Est. 1550” ballcap.

So, that is my story about the sunset.

And I’m sticking to it. Even though I had lousy luck with the Loteria thing.