CENTRO CULTURAL DE LA RAZA DRAWS ON OLD TRADITIONS
Each year, as the holiday season nears, there is a wide array of holiday cheer that cuts across diverse cultural and religious traditions. You will find traditional Christian nativity scenes, larger-than-life, lit Christmas trees in City Hall plazas and malls alike, Hanukkah menorahs and public displays of Kwanzaa celebrations. Dive deeper into the barrios and other communities with highdensity Latino populations, and you will stumble upon entire posadas or celebrations that include recurring reenactments over nine days chronicling Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter in advance of Jesus’ birth. The most dedicated will also feature piñata action for the kids and a warm (usually spiked) fruit ponche or punch for the adults.
While all of the above highlight the different ways people celebrate the season, Centro Cultural de la Raza’s Winter Posada draws from a much older tradition than the introduction of Christianity to this continent. Instead, the Centro’s posada draws from an earlier Mesoamerican (Nahuatl/Aztec) ceremonial tradition known as Panquetzaliztli or the raising of the flags that was originally meant to honor the winter solstice as the birthday of Huitzilopochtli. The myth of Huitzilopochtli, whose name translates to hummingbird in the south/left (a reference to the sun’s most southerly position before the winter solstice and the heart’s position in one’s body), references his emergence at birth as a grown warrior who battles and defeats both his 400 siblings (stars) and sister Coyolxauhqui (the moon). This is a metaphor for the waning strength of the sun, whose strong-willed heart overcomes adversity to grow strong once again.
Through this ceremony, ritual offerings of amaranth and maguey honey were provided to help nurture the strength of Huitzilopochtli during the winter, and whereas autumn was seen as a period of the weakening of the sun (less sunlight with each passing day). Such offerings would in turn strengthen the sun as it makes its return to a stronger energy form (the start of longer daylight hours). Panquetzaliztli revolved around the winter solstice, so when Spaniards invaded Mexico, their evangelizing efforts coalesced around trying to reconfigure preexisting ritual festivities to match the newly dominant Christian worldview. Nevertheless, elements of preexisting ceremonies, practices and knowledge systems persevered, often camouflaged within the practices of Catholicism itself. Such is the case with the posadas.
Towards that end, instead of manger scenes and processions representing the search for shelter, the Centro Cultural de la Raza celebrated last winter with an exhibit and series of workshops titled “Tzoalli: Dulzuras de la Vida — Sweetness(es) of Life.” Tzoalli is a specific reference to the amaranth and maguey honey base of the offerings that are made during the time of welcoming the winter solstice. The art exhibit that accompanied the theme and workshops spoke to the continuity of Indigenous
Elements of ritual festivities and ceremonies that predated Spain’s invasion of Mexico remain today.
cultural practices, most notably through staple foods such as the maize, amaranth and chocolate — the latter word derived from the Nahuatl “xocolatl,” which makes it perhaps the most used Nahuatl word around the world.
This year, we continued in the spirit of unearthing the lasting continuities of a Mesoamerican cultural practices and lifeways in the continent as Centro Cultural de la Raza’s annual posada fundraiser coincided with a new exhibit honoring Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous cultural foodways. This year, we honor the 51 years of florecimiento or flowering at Balboa Park as a Xicano, Mexican, Indigenous and Latina/o/ x-serving community cultural center.
From the start of our humble cultural center inside a converted water tank at Balboa Park, our space has always been a vision- and action-oriented space that has sought to highlight the fundamentally Indigenous cultural ways of those various peoples we have come to know or label as Mexican, Central American or Latina/o/x.
This year’s posada coincided with an exhibit “Siembra: Cultura, Arte, Conciencia — The Sowing: Culture, Art and Conscience,” a family-friendly event in honor of our Indigenous foodways and reconnection with the land that included the art exhibit, a film screening and a live panel discussion with local farmers, seed keepers, community cooks, birthkeepers (traditional midwifes and doulas), and food justice advocates. In turn, the posada honored all the seeds — literal and figurative — that have been planted throughout the year, and acknowledged all the harvests reaped over 51 years of continuing work in the creating, promoting, preserving and educating about Chicana/o, Mexican, Indigenous, and Latina/o/x arts and culture.
As you celebrate the holidays, we invite you to remember the seasons and the land, acknowledge the solstice and prepare for the sowing of new seeds of culture, conscience, autonomy and liberation!