Peggy Bulger: Hi everyone. Glad to see you all out tonight. Come on and get a seat everyone. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Peggy Bulger, Director of the American Folklife Center, and on behalf of the entire Center staff I'd like to welcome you to a special presentation of our Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series. And the Botkin Lecture Series provides a platform for us to bring in professional folklorists and ethnographers working both in the academy and in the public sector to present their findings from ongoing research, and it's been a wonderful series. We also record these series, as you can see, for the collections, and this is something that's kind of a acquisitions project in the making, if you will. We're trying to compliment our concert series that has been going on for many years, to be able to have these lectures from scholars available for many years to come here at the library. Today, I have the honor to introduce Dr. Norma Cantś, who is a professor of English at the University of Texas, San Antonio. She's also a fiction writer and a poet; many of you may not know that. I see a lot of folklorists in the crowd and, of course, we all know her as a folklorist. She edits the book series, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, Borderlands Culture & Tradition for Texas A & M University Press and she's the author of the award winning Can’cula: Snapshots of a Girlhood En La Frontera. She's also Co-Editor of Chicana Traditions Continuity and Change, and she's currently -- when she's not here lecturing to us, she's finishing two novels at once, Caba–uelas and Champś, or Hair Matters, and she's also preparing an ethnography of the Matachines de la Santa Cruz, a religious dance drama from Laredo, Texas. And Norma's from Laredo originally. Today, Norma will be discussing another aspect of her research, namely her work on coming of age celebrations for young women in Latina communities. And I know when I was a folklorist in Florida I first went to Miami and one of my first field experiences was to attend a Cuban Quincea–era and I was just blown away; you know, I was stunned for days. But it's very special to have Norma give this lecture, too, because it gives us the opportunity -- and many of us are on the Board of the American Folklife Center, but we want to thank her for eight years of service on the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center. [ applause ] And, so join me in welcoming Norma again for giving the lecture. Thank you. [ applause ] Norma Cantś: Thank you, Peggy. Muy buenas tardes. Good evening. It really is a pleasure to be here and to see so many friends out there in the audience, even an ex-student from Laredo -- from San Antonio, sorry. It really was an honor when Peggy asked -- invited me to do the Botkin lecture, for various reasons. And one is that I remember when I was a board member when we were discussing initiating the lecture series and how we felt there was a need to bring people who were out in the field doing work. I never imagined that the person being brought in would be me [ laughs ], so it really is special. And I also want to thank the staff who helped me with the technical stuff to get the PowerPoint up right now, but also in the process, Tia and Steve for getting the flyer out and everything else. Whenever anything happens at the Library -- and there's five things going on right now -- it takes a lot of people to get it up and running, so thanks to all of you. I'd like to begin by honoring all of the spirits of this place, this place that is the center, the heartbeat of our country, where things happen that impact not just our country but the world. And today is a very momentous day when such things are happening, so I just wanted to acknowledge that. [ laughter ] The way I got into folklore is really fascinating. I come from Laredo, Texas; it's a border community. We live folklore, as we all do. We didn't call it that. And I went to my very first folklore meeting of the Texas Folklore Society as an undergraduate to help a professor who asked if I would help. I didn't know what to expect. It was a shock. It was like the old -- this is in the early '70s; it was like a hootenanny kind of experience [ laughs ], but it hooked me. I didn't know people could study such things. I didn't know you could make a career out of doing things like that. And so I started collecting and working in 1975. One of the first publications was a collection of children's folklore in Laredo that that same professor kind of pushed me to do. So I've been working in the field for many, many years but I've never really gotten any papers that say I'm a folklorist, so I tell people I'm a non-documented folklorist. [ laughs ] But, as a graduate student my Ph.D. dissertation was on a folk play, La Pastorella, so I've always kept that there. And this work that I'm presenting tonight has been an ongoing project, it gets pushed from the back burner to the front repeatedly as I'm doing other things like writing novels and grading papers and everything else. And it's a work that chronicles or documents the coming of age rituals, but also other life marker changes for women. And currently I'm also going to baby showers and wedding showers and looking at other ways that women celebrate and mark different stages of their lives. So today is the Quincea–era that I'm talking about. I want to define the term because it's a word that in many communities, non-Chicano communities, it's not used. They use "Quince A–os", "Mis Quince", or "El Quince". We use "Quincea–era", and it's a noun. It both refers to the celebration itself but also to the young woman being honored. And the images are going to be off, but here's some more key terms. The chambel‡n is the honoree's escort, and there he is. And usually the young woman selects a family member, a cousin or an older brother, or maybe a good friend, not necessarily a boyfriend. I'm not sure why, except maybe the parents don't really look favorably on that because it looks too much like a wedding otherwise. And there's always that taboo; they don't want the celebration to be like a wedding. The damas are the young women who accompany the honoree, can be anywhere up to fourteen, so that you have with the honoree 15, or fewer. And the bottom picture has I think fewer than 14 because the young woman said that she didn't want to do that; she only wanted her very close friends and there were like 12. When I had -- one of the traditional things that happens is for 15. One of the more recent transformations of the tradition is the 50th birthday party for people turning fifty. And when I had my Cincuenta–era I had 49 madrinas. [ laughter ] Actually I had 52 because two people kept -- three people kept saying they wanted to be on there so I added them. But it was kind of playing with that tradition and I wasn't the first, there were other women doing it, so I just kind of jumped on the bandwagon as a scholar studying the tradition, and being a participant in one I wanted to kind of push and see what I could do. The origin is debatable; we have all kinds of different traditions that we think it comes from, mostly European: court presentation, cotillions, coming out parties. And the reason it's 15 is in Mexico during the colonial period, and even up through contemporary times, the age of 15 is when the young woman was considered of age to be married. That was a legal age for marriage and so that's why you use 15. The other, I think, really important is the indigenous origin, and coming of age rituals exist in almost all cultures in one way or another. When my students tell me, "Oh but we don't have that," my non-Hispanic students, I say, "Well you have high school proms, don't you?" And in a way they are rituals of coming of age. We also have initiation rights and there's a Yaki [ spelled phonetically ] ceremony that my friend Inesta Lamantes [ spelled phonetically ] studies, and it's a coming of age ceremony that occurs at the onset of menses. So there are rituals that are kind of combined until -- that one is younger, usually the young women are 11, 12, or even younger, whenever it happens. And it's a celebration; it's a women-only celebration. So, the Quincea–era is not necessarily a women-only celebration, it includes men, and in fact one of the most recent transformations, aside from the Cincuenta–era, is that boys are now having Cincuenta–eros as well. The essential elements of the celebration? I'll begin with the church. There's usually a mass, although initially, and I traced it back to about the 1930s and '40s -- we didn't have a mass then; it was only a rosary, again because otherwise it would be too much like a wedding. And then there's a religious medal. The most recent celebration I attended, this was of couple of weeks ago, it was not a mass but it was a Catholic service and the priest came from St. Edward's University in Austin to San Antonio to a German dance hall where the celebration was held, and he read the regular liturgy he would have read at a mass, but he of course adapted it, and the young woman also read a prayer and you'll see that later. The madrina of the religious medal -- there's a sponsor. In this case it's my sister, Maricella, who is the sponsor for my niece, her niece as well, Clarissa. And the religious medal is usually La Virgen de Guadalupe, and there's a very special bond that exists with La Virgen de Guadalupe in Chicano communities, and it gets translated in this ritual in three ways. One is the medal, another is, usually at the church the young woman offers some flowers to the Virgen, it's part of the ceremony, and the third is there's usually a prayer for the Virgen that the young woman is taught. The celebration itself goes on also, of course, in the dance hall, or the party, it's not just religious. And the dance is a choreographed dance. I wish I had the clip -- I have some clips -- because they're very elaborate. What I have instead is a cake, because the cake also occurs or is part of that celebration at the dance hall. And there's also a ceremony with shoes and I'll talk more about them in a little while, and a first -- it should be a last doll not a first doll. The symbolic attire and accessories: the young woman -- here you see Clarissa, and she's holding, if you see, a libro and a rosaria, there's a rosary and a book. She's wearing the diadema, she's wearing the earrings. She doesn't have the medal yet because that was the other picture, and she's wearing a nosegay. So, the dress itself -- and I'll talk more about it in a little bit. The headpiece can be a tiara or a diadema. Diadema is usually the one with the flowers; the tiara is the one with all of the encrusted rhinestones and things. There's usually madrinas, who are sponsors, for the earrings, the ring, the religious medal, the libro, rosario, and the shoes. The shoes are changed from flats to heels at some point during the ceremony, usually at the dance hall. There are sponsors for all kinds of things and this is one way that I see the community establishing that social glue, that bond, between the parents and the intimate aunts and uncles of the honoree, but also extended family so that you have a lot of cousins, and even the whole community, neighbors, coworkers of the parents being asked to sponsor elements like maybe the engraved cake server set or the champagne glasses or the Quincea–era doll or the scepter, invitations, choreography; all of this costs and it costs a lot, so the more people that can help the better. The religious aspects -- and this is the one that I attended a couple of weeks ago and I was telling you the priest came from Austin -- he's blessing a watch. I had never seen that, this is a first. Usually it's jewelry, the religious medal that he blesses. This time it was a watch and then after he poured the water on it he said, "I hope it's waterproof" -- [ laughter ] -- and started wiping it. And also the young woman read a prayer that she had wrote herself, and I had never seen that either and this is an innovation. Probably -- her father works with me at the University and he was telling me that she wasn't sure she wanted one, but in typical fashion of a 15-year-old, she wanted the party, but she didn't really want the mass, and then she didn't want all 15 damas, 14 damas, she wanted only her close friends. Another interesting aspect is she didn't invite any of the boys to be partners to the young women and she didn't have a chambel‡n, so it was a little different from the ones -- the more traditional ones. The social aspect includes of course a catered festive meal, not often catered; sometimes the family prepares the meal. For my Cincuenta–era I had my extended family bringing in all the food, you know, tamales, champurrado, all of that. My birthday is in January, so it was around that time of year. Also, at the reception usually there's family portraits that are taken with -- in this case, with the grandparents and the parents. Sometimes it's a whole -- everybody who's in attendance gets in the picture and there's all kinds of little children. There's no invitation for a Quincea–era that says, "No children allowed", because it is a family event. The invitation -- and I'm sorry this is -- oh, you can see it a little better than I can up here actually. This looks almost exactly like my Quincea–era invitation from -- well I won't tell you -- it was a long time ago -- [ laughter ] -- 45 years ago, because it has the damas and it's got it in Spanish, "Miss Quince A–os". There's also the limo, and if you've seen the movie there's a whole thing made about the young woman wanting a hummer for her limo. It's very traditional -- the picture on the -- this one over here is before -- this is when she just arrived. But this one is after she's leaving, and what they do is all of the damas and everybody gets in there. When they arrive it's usually just the parents and the young woman, but then all the young people get in there and they parade through town honking and shouting and, you know, just coming out the windows or the sky things -- what are they called on the car, on the limo? Where do you get the products and the things you need? Well, at a flea market. In San Antonio you can find almost anything in the flea market, including -- these are the cojines up here, these are ramos, there are some diademas, and this is not part of the Quincea–era. It was just hanging there; it's a baptismal outfit for a little boy. But you can almost get anything. The cojines, the pillow, is an important part, and I'm not sure -- this is part of going to the mass. Like for example, Stephanita who had the party two weeks ago, she didn't have one because she didn't have a mass so she didn't need a cojine to kneel at. And often they don't really kneel because they're too decorated, they have all kinds of beadwork and stuff, so it's not comfortable. But they almost always have a madrina de cojine, and it's usually a young girl who comes in with the cojines. The guest book or photo album is also elaborately decorated. These are actually pictures from the Net; you can buy all of this stuff from various Web sites. If you just Google "Quincea–era" you get all the Web sites that sell all of this stuff. But you can also -- some people have them made. The madrina will commission a seamstress or someone to prepare the guest book and decorate it with beadwork or with other kinds of embroidery, and it's usually set at the entrance of the sal—n with a very fancy pen with a feather and a quill kind of -- imitation quill kind of thing, especially -- well I'll talk more about the theme Quincea–eras. Capias are not traditional for Chicana Quincea–eras, but they are in Puerto Rican Quincea–eras, and they usually have the date and the name. A friend of mine who is Puerto Rican and had her Cincuenta–era -- she had them made for her Cincuenta–era, and like I said, it wasn't part of our tradition, so I had never seen it except in Puerto Rico. It may also exist in Central American tradition but I haven't seen it in the Texas ones. The traditional dress in Texas is a little different. Ours are white; they almost look like bridal gowns. The difference, as you can tell, the young woman doesn't have a veil, she just has the tiara. And there's a ramo, and they almost look like bridal gowns because they're white. In Mexico the tradition is light pastel colors, pink, lavender, light blue, although a couple of weeks ago when I went to the flea market and I was talking to one of the women who sells the dresses there, she was telling me that nowadays a lot of the immigrant women from Mexico who are having Quincea–eras don't wear the white, they don't wear the pastel. They're asking her for darker colors, including black, and she was shocked that they would want black, but she says it's the new tradition; it's the new fashion if you will. I saw one in Matehuala about ten years ago that was a print, and I had never seen one. They're all usually solid colors. So that's one of the main differences, and I don't know exactly how much freedom the young women have because sometimes it's the mother that has -- vicariously is experiencing her Quincea–era because she didn't have one because they were very poor or something, so now she wants one for her daughter, and so often the daughter has to kind of go ahead and agree to what the mother wants. The ramo, or bouquet, is carried -- or this is a corona, sorry. There's one that's a ramo and a corona. And Eva Castellanos, who is a National Heritage Award winner from Oregon, is a master at this and she handcrafts the corona with -- it looks very similar to the bridal corona except that she uses wax-dipped flowers; she dips them in wax to create them, they're handmade. This is a more traditional eBay or Internet purchase, where they're not as traditionally made. The corona or diadema -- and this is a stand at the flea market where you have -- see the -- the -- well let me show you this one, where the 15 shows, and that's very typical. And I have a picture -- I wasn't able to get a good copy; it's from a newspaper -- the corona is about a foot high, it's like this, and it's all encrusted, it's got the 15, but I can't imagine how that young woman wore that, but in the picture in the paper it looked really good. The most common theme, not surprisingly, is Cinderella, and the carriage is typical. This was a joint -- there were two Quincea–eras. Some churches are now asking all of the Quincea–eras from that parish to get together and do it once a month, so they have one mass a month for all of the birthdays 15-year-olds for that one month. In some cases, one priest told me he wanted to do it once a year because it's really taxing on the church to be offering these Quincea–eras sometimes up to six or eight times a weekend, starting on Friday afternoon and Friday evening, then Saturday, then Sunday. So they kind of wanted to cut on some of that. Going with the theme of the Cinderella, this is a table centerpiece and here's another one that could also serve as a cake topper. Some of these are made in China and there's a balloon thing. There's even -- at Wal-Mart I bought a doll Quincea–era made in Taiwan, so this is glass on the bottom. Some of these centerpieces can get very expensive, but a lot of times people recycle things. And I don't have a photograph -- I have the actual item and I didn't bring it -- where they've used plastic cups and inverted them and that becomes the base, and then they use wire, you know, just pipe cleaners and things, to create the centerpieces and they're really beautiful. There's also a toast -- now these are 15-year-olds; they're not supposed to be drinking, right? So, usually they have apple cider or some non-alcoholic bubbly stuff that they drink. There's a madrina or a padrino for the brindis, and that person is supposed to buy the cups. They sometimes have something like this, and this is also from -- you can barely see it, but there's a spot for the bottle behind this and then you have -- there's all of the glasses; do you see them hanging here? There's the stem, there's the bottom, and it's hanging upside down. And so you have for all of the court -- the damas and their chambel‡nes is called the court. That's why we -- I and other scholars -- think that it is a European origin, because many of the words, chambel‡n, dama -- dama means lady -- come from -- the vocabulary comes from that court tradition in Europe. The brindis padrino often gets up there and toasts. This is my brother-in-law giving the toast for my niece. And everybody, the chambel‡nes and the damas raise their cup and drink. But, again, this was some kind of fake champagne; it wasn't alcoholic. The cake is another big important thing and the madrina de cake -- I have been a madrina because I go to these all the time, people ask me to be madrina. And usually they won't ask me to be madrina de brindis, for example -- usually that's a couple or a man -- but they'll ask me to be madrina de cake. That's a very typical one for a single woman to madrinar. And the cake topper is a big important thing. How do you select it? It usually matches the dress in some way and the theme color. I haven't talked about the -- these are two kinds of cakes, one is a very fancy one with all of the little dolls here and it's got several tiers, and there's a fancy one up here. The dress here looks exactly like the one that the young woman was wearing. Well, this is a very plain cake and you don't have the same. Another unusual thing is that the damas are wearing brown; it's not a pastel color, and so that was also unusual. And here's the madrina de cake standing right here. She was the one who made the cake in this case. The last doll is also a tradition that has varied variants all over. In Matehuala I saw -- that same Quincea–era I was telling you about -- it was a Barbie doll, and it was a blonde Barbie doll dressed in identical costume as the young woman, so it was very interesting. Usually, you can -- the people who create the dolls try to match the dress, but not often. These are things from the Internet that you can just buy and they have a whole theme, you can buy the whole line, your dress, the doll, the shoes, everything to match. It gets very expensive. The idea of the last doll, again, is a marker because the young woman is leaving her childhood behind and becoming an adult and so she gets her last doll. The shoes and the scepter. At some point in the ceremony the young woman will change from flats to shoes that look like this. And most 15-year-olds can't walk on these heels, but they practice for weeks and months before; I know I did. And even then I couldn't walk on them. It takes practice, so they do, and pretty soon in the dance the shoes are off and they're dancing barefoot. The scepter is something that is not often found, but definitely in the Cinderella theme the young woman will carry a scepter and there will be a madrina that will be the one who gives her that. At the dance usually she will dance with her grandfather if the grandfather is still there, the father, and the chambel‡n. And if you notice here, she's dancing in the middle after the father's dance and with the chambel‡n, and then there's -- the whole court is all around her. And it's a choreographed dance and some women have made it a profession to choreograph dances for Quincea–eras and they earn quite a bit of money. They do it after school when the kids are away and they can come to the practices. And it is amazing to me how you can get 14-, 15-, 16-year-olds who usually don't want to do anything like this come to the practice, because otherwise they can't participate and rent a tuxedo and show up and do all this adult stuff. It's amazing. I mean when you see them here they're all wearing these tuxedos and then you see them the next day at school and they're all in their baggy pants and their cholo outfits. The meal itself. They're set up -- this was the one where, if you notice, there are no young boys sitting with them. It's just the young women, so it was a little different from the other one. The products derived from and for the Quincea–era? Well, music, and it's another industry that -- there's groups that specialize in providing the music for the Quincea–eras. Depends on how much money you have; you can get a -- what do you call it? -- a music machine that does the music, or you can get a live band to come with mariachis at midnight, you know, almost like a wedding with all of that. The Quincea–era herself often selects music that is appropriate either for the theme -- And what I'm talking about when I say theme is that sometimes you have country/western as a theme and so the dance would not be the waltz, it would be the Texas two-step or Cotton-Eyed Joe or something like that. On the other hand, if you have a Hawaiian theme there could be a hula and -- as much of a hula as a Chicana community in south Texas could do. [ laughter ] You also could have a theme that is like moonlight or moonbeams or something, and it's almost like prom night? You know how proms have themes? It's that same idea and I think that's where it comes from, that's where the prom blends into the Quincea–era, so you have these themes occurring and the music is integral to that. The other thing that happens is that now you have manuals for how to conduct a Quincea–era. And the Church was desperate because it is not a religious ceremony, there is no liturgy in the Catholic church for Quincea–eras or in the Baptist or Methodist or Unitarian or all of the ones that have now adopted Quincea–eras for their Latino communities, so they designed their own liturgy, basically. That priest in Austin told me that he was just so desperate for it that he just invented it. But there is a manual that tells you, you know, six months before, rent the hall, or a year before, get the music, and all of that. Kind of like for brides when you plan your wedding, that same kind of thing. You also have magazines that have evolved, Quince Girl is one of them, and now we even have a TV show that has -- the Sweet Sixteen one? I don't know if you've seen it on one of the cable networks. There's a sixteen show, but they cover Quincea–eras, so that was kind of an unusual thing for me to see as well. And you have children's books. Here's Dora the Explorer with her cousin's Quincea–era. [ laughter ] It happens a lot, actually. There's a young adult novel, Sweet 15, by Diane Bertrand-Gonzales also. And what happens, and I'm very happy to see this, is sometimes the parents will buy the book for all of the court, for the young women who are the damas, so that they have -- and of course promoting reading, so I'm all for that. The other thing is sometimes there will be a poem recited at the event and it's not anything -- it's kind of unpredictable, it depends. It used to be much more traditional at weddings and at Quincea–eras for some older person to get up and recite a poem from memory, a declamaci—n, they call it, or declamar. That's -- I haven't seen that as often anymore, partly because some of those older folks have died on and the tradition has not been passed on. The poems were almost always in Spanish and a lot of the young people don't speak Spanish, they're English-speaking monolinguals in some cases, so there are other things that are coming in like a magazine or books. There are artists in Chicano communities that have taken the Quincea–era -- and I apologize for the quality -- I don't think this is a really good rendition of Carmen Lomas Garza's painting called "La Quincea–era". And this is outside the church, everybody's kind of hanging out, and I wish you could see the detail that she uses. Like in most of her work, there's all kinds, there's the little kids and then there's older people, there's all kinds of folks kind of preparing to go inside to celebrate the Quincea–era. And the other rendition is in a mural and that's the one that's on the flyer, by the artist Theresa Powers. And I'm going to go ahead and just mention the movie, I don't know if any of you have seen it; I heard from somebody locally here in DC that it was only here like for a week and then it was gone. It's a really interesting movie. They got the folklore right as far as I could tell. There's a place where somebody's choreographing the dance and they're talking about whose -- but I have some issues with some of the other content of the film that was problematic for me. It takes place in Echo Park in California and deals with the gentrification, urban removal of people and things, so it was really fascinating. If you haven't seen it you might want to watch it and see what I'm talking about. What kind of conclusions do I draw? Well, it is a life marker ceremony between childhood and adulthood. Like all life marker ceremonies, I think it undergoes change as the culture, as the community needs to change, and it shifts things, elements in it. But it has a really strong role in a social group. The shift from girl to woman, de ni–a a se–orita, is the main purpose of it. And in fact in many communities -- and I've seen this happen even in my own family -- the young woman becomes a young woman and not a girl and starts being more responsible and has more responsibilities. It used to be, when I did it way back when, that now you could wear lipstick and you could shave your legs and all kinds of things like that marked adult women. Now, of course, young women do that earlier, but there are still things that they perceive are allowable as you get passed your Quincea–era. The other funny thing is that even if you don't have a Quincea–era because you turned 15, you might get a ring as a marker, you know. Your parents can't afford the full-fledged party but you'll get a piece of jewelry, the medal, something. Or, if your parents are really wealthy, you either get a car or a trip to Europe or a party that sometimes they have a choice of what do you want. In the '70s, '60s, '70s a lot of young women would choose not to have the party; they would rather have a car. That's still there, but I've seen more and more of the young women still want the party. One of my nieces said no, she didn't want the party. She wanted the car. So, then my sister found in her drawer a list of madrinas, damas, and she said hmmm, but she said she didn't want this, and she was already planning it, so it's a kind of conundrum. You don't really want it because it's cursi, it's your -- you know, your parents' thing. But on the other hand you really do want it. So that happens quite a bit. And I think it is something that signals for the young girl an appreciation of who she is to the community, because it really is a communal celebration. You couldn't have a Quincea–era with just, you know, five people, or just with your immediate family, your parents and your siblings. It has to be a community. And it signals that change in status because it also signals a responsibility to that community; you're no longer alone in your family, you're a member of the adult community. And sometimes it also coincides with confirmation. In many churches confirmation comes right after, so that also signals another marker. It persists as a social glue, I think, and as a cultural marker because it fulfills that need to belong. And especially with people who have been de-territorialized through immigration, when they come to Atlantic City -- where I saw a van that said, "Cakes, Quincea–eras" -- it's because they need that connection to their home community, to their home culture. Many immigrant groups -- or girls go back to their hometown to have their Quincea–era, and sometimes they'll have two, one for the family back in Mexico and one for their friends and family here. And, the other thing that people ask is that why would people spend all that money to do this? And you have to understand that the money part is not really the important part. The important thing is the people, that establishing that community with others, with your compadres, because then all those madrinas and padrinos become your compadres and comadres and they are responsible for that child as well as the baptismal sponsors. [ end of transcript ]