María de Lourdes Ortiz Zacarías quickly cuts hundreds of strips of newspaper and colored crepe paper needed to make a piñata, while Norteño music on the radio soothes and measures the pieces by feel.
“The measurement is already in my hands,” says Ortiz Zacarías with a laugh.
She has been doing this since she was a child in the family business together with her late mother, who learned the craft from her father. Piñatas have not been displaced by more modern customs and her family is now in its fourth generation of using them.
Ortiz Zacarías calls it “my legacy, handed down from my parents and grandparents.”
Business is stable all year round, mainly with birthday parties, but things really pick up around Christmas. Because piñatas are interwoven with Christian traditions in Mexico.
These days there are tons of designs based on everything from Disney characters to political figures. However, the most traditional piñata style is a ball with seven pointed cones, which has a religious origin.
Each cone represents one of the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, anger, envy and pride. Hitting the papier-mâché ball with a stick is a symbolic blow against sin, with the added benefit of releasing the candy inside.
Piñatas were not originally filled with candy and were not primarily made of paper. Grandparents in Mexico can remember a few decades ago when piñatas were paper-covered clay pots filled with pieces of sugar cane, fruit and peanuts. The treats were very well received, although falling parts of the clay pot posed a certain danger.
But the tradition goes back even further. Some say piñatas can be traced back to China, where papermaking originated.
In Mexico they were apparently brought by the Spanish conquerors, but could also reflect pre-Hispanic traditions.
Spanish chronicler Juan de Grijalva wrote that piñatas were used by Augustinian monks in a monastery in the town of Acolman, north of Mexico City, in the early 16th century. The monks received written permission from Pope Sixtus V to hold an end-of-year mass as part of the celebration of the birth of Christ.
But around the same time, the indigenous population was already celebrating a holiday in honor of the war god Huitzilopochtli. And in these rituals they used something similar to piñatas.
The pre-Hispanic rite consisted of filling clay vessels with precious cacao seeds – the substance from which chocolate is made – and then ceremoniously breaking the jars.
“This was the collision of two worlds,” said Walther Boelsterly, director of the Museum of Folk Art in Mexico City. “The piñata and celebration were used as a mechanism to convert the local population to Catholicism.”
Piñatas are also used in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, mainly at children's parties.
The piñata doesn't stand still. Popular characters this year range from Barbie to Spider-Man. Ortiz Zacarías' family creates a few new designs most of the year, but around Christmas they return to the seven-point style because of its long-standing association with the holiday.
The family founded their business in Acolman, where Ortiz Zacarías' mother, Romana Zacarías Camacho, was known as the “Queen of Piñatas” before her death.
Ortiz Zacarías' 18-year-old son, Jairo Alberto Hernández Ortiz, is the fourth generation to take over the centuries-old craft.
“This is a family tradition that has great sentimental value to me,” he said.
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