[Aztlan] pi=?iso-8859-1?Q?=F1atas=2C_?=anyone?

[Mario E. Aguilar]

I would venture to suggest that like "tlaxcalli"  that became 
tortilla.... piñata, there was another word that was used.

piñata might come from the fact that the originals looked like pine 
cones....  like piña for matzahtli   (or is it mahtzatli???) I can't 
remember right now :-(

-- 
I live for reasoned, enlightened spirituality:

"Tlacecelilli", tranquilidad, paz


Mario E. Aguilar, PhD

619.948.8861

www.mexicayotl.net
www.mexicayotl.org
www.mexicayotl.com
www.aguila-blanca.com


On 4/24/2012 9:21 AM, Jorge Pérez de Lara Elías wrote:
> Listeros,
>
> Roberto Romero's erudite and very useful information aside and stating before anything else that I know nothing about piñatas (save for the experience of having broken my fair share of them at friends' parties when I was a boy), it occurs to me that the fact that they are only present in Mexico and Central America, and not in the rest of the Americas, nor in Spain does seem to suggest strong Mesoamerican origins to the tradition, whatever that may be. I, too, had also heard that the name "piñata" came from Italian, but given the fact that piñatas are also absent from Italian tradition, would seem to question this explanation.
>
> To summarize, it would seem we are left with piñatas:
>
> a) not being of European origin;
>
> b) not extending beyond Mesoamerica and a certain Mesoamerican "area of influence".
>
> A further question to consider would be the origin of the name. Can anybody think of a Mesoamerican language it may have been derived from, in the way many names were Hispanicized by the Colonial invaders?
>
> Jorge
>
>
> On Apr 24, 2012, at 9:52 AM, Rick McCallister wrote:
>
>> Gracias por la explicación detallada. Era obvio que el artículo de Wikipedia estaban bien chueco.
>> Pregunté acerca de piñatas porque la descripición de la quebrada de la Montaña del Sustento, según Taggart, utiliza un verbo que literalmente indica "dar con palos", i.e. como batir lo frijoles, o más bien, abrir una piñata. En la versión nahuat de Puebla, Nanawatsin, el capitán de los relámpagos, abre la montaña pero sus hermanos lo dejan ahí con el rastrojo --al igual a el que bate la piñata. Pregunto, entonces, si hubo una contribución nahua a la piñata en al forma de la quebrada del ídolo de amaranta y miel, y si sustituyeron dulces por agua. Por lo que me han contado chilenos y venezolanos, la piñata sólo es una cosutmbre nativa en México y Centroamérica. Me dicen que ahora existe en otros países hispanos, pero al mismo nivel que en EEUU, como una importación entre la gente de la clase media, mientras que en México y Centroamérica, es algo que se celebra en el campo y las aldeas.
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