Once you start reading about piñatas, it all gets very complicated. Maybe they originated in China. Maybe they were common in 14th-century Europe. Maybe they already existed in meso-America when Spanish colonizers arrived.
And maybe it’s best just to think of them as good party fun, and an integral part of Mexican culture, wherever they started. So put your blindfold on, take up a bat, and take your chances at breaking it and collecting some of the shower of candy and toys that spills out.
Or, if you were in Albuquerque recently, and visiting the National Hispanic Cultural Center, which hosted a large exhibit of them, with the subtitle “Sure to be a Smash Hit. We were there and wandered through room after room of coloful pinatas of all sorts, ranging from cartoon characters, witches and animals to the frankly political, such as these.
Pigs were popular…
And there was even space for a low-rider piñata, paired with another low-rider made by slicing an actual Cadillac in longitudinal thirds!
