My mom and all the adults in my family—who while I was growing up constantly told me that we pochos were not as mentally or physically tough, hardworking, or virtuous as they who had grown up in Mexico (”…these hands have been working since I was four years old!”)—hated cardboard piñatas. They said they were fake piñatas, just like everything made in the United States. Perhaps just as Chicanos were fake Mexicans. Only clay-pot piñatas were real, they said, like handmade tortillas and lard in the beans and Mexican kids who manufactured their own kites and slingshots out of whatever they could lay their hands on.

So I’ve always had this weird relationship with piñatas, both identifying with them and resenting them at the same time.