The Break They Were Looking For : Made in Family Workshops, Pinatas Rapidly Gain Popularity in <i> El Norte</i>

Catarino Cristobal emerges from beneath a garish canopy of Santa Clauses, Christmas trees and oversized wedding cakes to explain, that, well, pinata-making is a pretty good business, especially during thS. holiday season. But no one ever became a millionaire at it.

“We just earn enough to live,” says Cristobal, an enterprising father of seven who supplements his income by selling fresh fruit and helotes, Mexican-style corn on-the-cob--from street carts. “It’s nice because my children can work here with me,” adds Cristobal, one of the many Purepecha Indians who have migrated from their island homes in Mexico’s Lake Patzcuaro as pollution has thinned the lake’s fish population, stripping inhabitants of their livelihood.

Cristobal’s cluttered workshop/home, in a former dance hall near Tijuana’s Red Zone district, is one of the dozens of cooperative-like family operations here where pinateros-- pinata-makers--have been especially busy in recent weeks crafting colorful Christmastime likenesses.

Hectic Scene in the Pinata Factory

In another shop directly behind, men, women and children--all Purepechas--labor to complete a huge order of star figures for a U. S. fast-food concern amid a surreal clutter of pinatas and partial pinatas; hundreds of pieces hanging from the ceiling like game birds from the rafters of a hunting lodge. During busy periods, the workers cook, eat and sleep in the midst of the Dickensian tableau.

The modest facilities are the first steps in a pinata chain that leads to supermarkets, stationery stores, fast-food concerns and specialty boutiques north of the border.

Once a largely Mexican custom, the use of pinatas--hollow figures filled with candies or other treats and bashed open by enthusiastic children--is now widely popular in much of the United States, although use is still most prevalent in border states such as California and Texas.

Like Mexican food and beer, pinatas appear to have become an “in” ethnic item, prized from Los Angeles to New York as inexpensive (generally less than $10 each), bright and somewhat exotic party fodder, conversation pieces and decor items. Hundreds of thousands are imported into the United States annually from Mexico, mostly from cottage-industry family workshops like Cristobal’s Tijuana facility, although no one knows the number or the total value with anything approaching certainty.

In the weeks preceding holiday seasons, vans, pickups, station wagons and tractor-trailers loaded with all sizes and shapes of bright pinatas can be seen heading north at border crossings from San Diego to Brownsville, Tex. (While designed for candy, it’s not unusual for U. S. border inspectors to find pinatas stuffed with drugs and other contraband.) A network of distributors and importers, many with family contacts in Mexico, move the pinatas nationwide.

‘Tremendous Growth’

“We’ve seen a tremendous growth in the past year,” says William Spiking, vice president of La Sorpresa Imports, an El Paso, Tex., firm that runs a pinata assembly-plant in neighboring Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. His facility produces more than 1,000 figures daily for import into the United States and subsequent sales nationwide.

“Traditionally, we looked at candy stores (as clients), but, in the last few years, there has been a lot more interest in children’s parties, and even adult parties,” says Spiking, who notes that pinatas combine two childhood passions: smashing things and candy. “With the exception of ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey,’ ” says Spiking, “there really aren’t many other children’s party games that are commercially produced.”

Although long common in Latino neighborhoods--Christmas, Cinco de Mayo and other holidays traditionally bring out the pinatas in the shops of East Los Angeles and similar communities--the ornaments have spread in popularity well beyond the barrios and the border. Pinatas of all sizes and shapes are now on sale at a variety of outlets.

“It’s not really an ethnic item for us,” said Wade Anderson, a buyer with Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago, which sells pinatas in its candy departments nationwide, prices starting at $7.99 each. “We sell them as well in middle-income neighborhoods as we do in the inner city.”

‘Real Popular’

“They’re real popular,” says Virginia Coello, owner of Pinata Time, a 2-year-old party-goods store on Manhattan’s Lower East Side where the figures retail for $12 to $15. “I think everyone’s heard of them.”

Latino sales do remain big, kindled by residents’ youthful memories.

PinataLand, specializing in high-quality pinatas produced by Mexican and Central American artisans in Los Angeles, has been doing a brisk business since opening in May on South Alvarado Street in Los Angeles. “I thought there was a need,” explains the owner, Catalina Esquivel, a native of Guadalajara. “Every time I wanted a pinata, I had to go all over to find something nice.”

Tianguis, a Southern California ethnic grocery chain that is a subsidiary of Vons, carries pinatas year-round. Among the items on sale: A pinata tiani, an imaginary parrot that is the chain’s mascot. (A Tijuana artisan fashioned the bird after a drawing.)

“You go into our store any time of day, and you’ll find pinatas,” attests Ron Fujishige, director of the non-perishable division at Tianguis.

Pinatas have even begun to take their place in American pop culture. Gary Larson, The Far Side cartoonist, devoted a panel to the phenomenon last year. A caveman is seen clubbing a sack filled with rocks. The caption: “Early Pinatas.”

Fanned in part by exposure on Sesame Street and other programs, pinata parties--during which excited youths, sometimes blindfolded, take turns batting the hanging figure in a frenetic effort to pry loose the sweets or other contents--have become almost de rigueur at children’s birthday parties, in both Latino and non-Latino households.

That fact has caused some trepidation. Many parents express dismay at the “survival of the fittest” aspect of the get-togethers: Strong boys tend to end up with most of the goodies, shoving aside smaller and less aggressive rivals in a Darwinian frenzy.

‘Disgusting Sight’

“It can be kind of a disgusting sight, actually,” allows Deborah Macdonald, a San Diego resident who has a master’s degree in child development. “It can bring out the worst in humanity.”

In response, she, like a number of other parents, has changed the rules. At a recent pinata party for her 4-year-old, Macdonald stuffed the figure with Mexican coins, one for each child in attendance. The coins were later exchanged for bags of candies, one for each participant. Such an approach, she argues, can render the process therapeutic, allowing children to funnel their aggressions without having to dominate their peers.

“There is certainly a fascination at hitting something beautiful and having adults allow you to destroy it,” Macdonald says.

A Mexican psychoanalyst, Santiago Ramirez, has offered a more Freudian explanation for the pinata phenomenon. The pinata, Ramirez postulated in a book on the Mexican psyche published in the early 1970s, symbolizes children’s pregnant mothers, and the destruction of the figures allows resentful children to vent hostility against their mothers and their future siblings.

That may be a bit grandiose for something like pinatas. But it is a fact that the figures have been known to trigger unintentional discussions of the birds and the bees. Mexican pinata-makers use scrap newsprint, often from the United States, to add firmness to the figures’ cardboard skeletons. On more than one occasion, lewd photographs from U. S. magazines have been found amid a pinata’s shredded innards, much to the chagrin of parents who watch in horror as their children dive for lascivious photos along with the candy bars.

“I’ve had women at shows ask me, ‘Are your pinatas made out of dirty magazines?’ ” recalls Spiking, who said his company does not use smutty paper.

Keyed to the Season

Such incidents, however, do not seem to have adversely affected the reputation of pinatas, which are produced in Mexico on a seasonal basis: pumpkins and witches for Halloween, hearts for Valentine’s Day, leprechauns on St. Patrick’s Day. Production must be timed correctly, or you’re liable to be stuck with a load of Santa Clauses on Dec. 26. Complicating matters is the fact that the shelf life is limited; the crepe paper used to make the figures tends to fade. Consequently, most producers and distributors have completed their Christmas orders by mid-December and are thinking ahead.

“We’re already hot and heavy into our Easter production,” says Spiking, who likes to call his line the “Cadillac” of the pinata industry. “We do a boy chick, a girl chick, a sitting rabbit, an Easter egg. . . . “

Pan American Imports, a distributor in Ontario, was recently clearing out its inventory of Santa Clauses, reindeer, Christmas trees, candy canes and snowmen. “We tell our stores, ‘Order your Christmas pinatas and get ‘em in by Dec. 15,’ because after that I won’t ship ‘em any more,” says David Macias, company sales manager.

Children are not alone in their fascination for pinatas. Smugglers find the figures’ hollow interiors ideal for their commerce.

Variety of Contraband

“All kinds of things are hidden in them,” says Bobbie Cassidy, a U. S. Customs Service official in San Diego. “Anything that’ll fit in ‘em--dope, liquor, steroids, birds, switch-blade knives, fruit. . . . “

The most unusual discovery? “Once we found two illegal aliens lying under a load of pinatas.”

Unauthorized imitation is another complication. Traders cannot legally import copies of characters such as Snoopy, Mickey Mouse, the California Raisin and dozens of others--all of them widely available as pinatas in Tijuana--without permission from the holders of the copyright or trademark. It’s a constant problem with the plethora of characters produced by pinateros and other artisans south of the border who cater to the tourist crowd, and who are more than willing to reproduce any image for a price, the more kitschy the better.

“In plaster of Paris, Spuds McKenzie has been a big problem,” Cassidy said. “He’s copyrighted, he’s protected, and Customs enforces that. But people keep trying to bring him across the border.”

Such happenings are a very recent occurrence in the lengthy history of pinatas, which are believed to have been brought to Mexico by the Spaniards four centuries ago, although the custom’s exact origins are obscure. One apocryphal theory holds that Marco Polo discovered the idea in China and brought it back to Italy, whence it made its way to Spain. (The word pinata is said to have derived from a Spanish word for a cluster of flowers or fruits.)

At first, according to some accounts, pinatas were reserved for Lent. The smashing of the figure was said to represent Christian faith destroying Satan. Another theory is that the Spaniards used pinatas as a kind of “classic come-along,” in the words of one pinata dealer, to attract Indians to the church.

Birthday Party Custom

Whatever its genesis, the practice has long been well-established in Mexico, where pinatas are customary at birthday parties and other celebrations, including the so-called posadas on the nights before Christmas.

Traditionally, pinatas were in the shape of five-pointed stars. A papier-mache mold encased a clay pot, which held the candies, cookies, nuts, trinkets and other gifts. The mold was decorated with colorful paper.

Today, obviously, the variety of pinatas has greatly expanded. And clay pots have been largely replaced with cardboard interiors--a safer, albeit less attractive evolution. (Some Guatemalan versions utilize bamboo.)

The process of actually constructing pinatas has changed little, although staplers are in wide use and an assembly-line style and pace predominates. It is a laborious and monotonous trade, reserved for some of the city’s poorest residents, often recent migrants from the Mexican interior who have few alternatives. The state prison here was contemplating beginning a pinata-producing industry for inmates some years ago, but the idea was shelved.

There is little time, or inclination, for creativity in pinata-manufacturing. Competition is intense among pinateros, who quickly rip off the new figures that do well in the numerous street sales. All merchants here are extremely secretive about the names of their U. S. customers.

“If there’s work and you’re fast, you can earn a decent salary,” says Marcos Zarate, a 27-year-old who was found on a recent afternoon, fashioning pinata stars in a back yard near downtown, as scrawny chickens walked amid the debris of half-finished figures. He says the workshop owner pays him 25 cents a figure; he is capable of producing up to 50 a day, for daily earnings of $12.50--a respectable salary here, but one totally dependent on the highly seasonal U. S. market.

In the workshop behind Catalino Cristobal’s shop in Tijuana, as elsewhere, the pinateros begin with cardboard boxes, which are cut into shapes to fit specific pinatas. Once the cardboard forms are shaped and stapled, newsprint is applied for stiffening, using a simple paste made with flour. Strips of colored crepe are then pasted on the exterior, usually by women. Wholesale purchasers pay about $1.50 each; the figures may retail for up to $8 or more in the United States.

“This is the only work we could find,” explains Seferino Aparicio, a 40-year-old father of 10 who was shaping pinatas along with many of his children in the dusky amber light of the workshop. “We have to do something,” he adds with a shrug, explaining that he has only been in Tijuana six months and hopes to return soon to his island home on Lake Patzcuaro. “I miss it there,” he says, returning to his labor.