‘A year to build foundation’: Philly’s Mexican Indigenous communities celebrate the Mexica New Year

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

Mexican Indigenous community members from Philadelphia and surrounding areas gathered Saturday to celebrate the Mexica New Year, which marks the start of the Aztec calendar.

Fragrant smoke from burning copal, or tree resin, filled the warehouse in South Philadelphia. Participants twirled in traditional attire around an altar centered on the symbol for this year — Calli, a Nahuatl word that means house, and 13, which is a sacred number in Aztec and Mexica culture. Drummers kept the beat as children and adults formed a circle in the large room and danced facing the four cardinal directions to welcome in the new year.

Javier Santamaría said it’s the third year he, Ollin Pineda, artist César Viveros and others have collaborated to celebrate the Mexica New Year in Philadelphia. In that time, the celebration has grown.

“Para mí el hacer este tipo de celebración en Filadelfia, con la comunidad que está aquí de México y de otros lugares, es como para hacernos sentirse orgullosos y profundizar más en su raíz, sentirse como estuviéramos en México”, dijo él. 

“For me, doing this type of celebration in Philadelphia, with the community that’s here from Mexico and other places, it’s to make us feel proud and go deeper in our roots, to feel as if we were in Mexico,” he said. 

Pineda and her husband, Santamaría, are members of the Mexica and Aztec dance group Kalpulli Kamaxtle Xiuhcóatl. She said the celebrations allow her the opportunity to share the tradition with her children. She’s from the state of Mexico, in the central part of the country, where the Mexica New Year is widely celebrated.

“Nosotros como mexicanos necesitamos tener nuestras raíces en nuestro corazón”, dijo ella. “Forjar más nuestra identidad. Ya que estamos lejos de nuestro país nos provoca también una pérdida. Sin embargo, nuestra cultura nos enriquece y nos vuelve a llenar el corazón con mucha felicidad”. 

“We as Mexicans need to have our roots in our heart, to shape our identity more,” she said. “Since we’re far from our country it causes loss for us, but our culture enriches us and it allows us to fill our hearts again with joy.”

Pineda said the new year tradition is rooted in the close relationship her ancestors shared with the seasons and the land. The new calendar year reflected the start of the agricultural season in springtime.

“De hecho nuestros ancestros estaban muy ligados a todo lo que es la cosmovisión, sobretodo de los elementales de la naturaleza”, dijo ella. “Todo va relacionado. Va unido”. 

“Our ancestors were actually very connected to everything that is the cosmovision, above all the elements of nature,” she said. “Everything’s related. It goes together.” 

Adniel Avendano participated at the event as a dancer and as a vendor selling merchandise from his company, Nocheztli, which celebrates different Indigenous and pre-Hispanic cultures in Mexico.

Avendano said although he is from Oaxaca, and is more at home with Zapotec Indigenous traditions, the Mexica New Year is a way to connect with elements of another Mexican Indigenous culture that are familiar to him.

“It’s interconnected but at the same time it’s different,” he said.

Eva Mayhabal Davis agreed that Saturday’s event celebrated and welcomed the diversity of different cultures and traditions within Mexico.

“What’s really important to remember is that in Mexico, there are over 68 spoken languages. There’s a multiple, multiple, multiple, innumerable amount of communities and Indigenous communities, and each one of us has our roots somewhere,” she said. “And so I didn’t grow up with these exact practices, but I grew up around this kind of smudging. I saw danza in the plaza of the pueblo that I grew up in. And everybody here has some connection. And as part of that, it’s about the work, it’s about studying it too, right? It’s about relearning, asking your parents, asking your grandparents, remembering that you’ve come from a place.”

People came from as far as Georgia and North Carolina to attend Saturday’s celebrations. Mayhabal Davis, from Cetiliztli Nahucampa in New York City, was one of several people who traveled across state lines.

“When you receive an invitation to such an important event and an important feast, you do your due diligence and willingness to be here when you’re invited to someone’s home, which in this case, that’s how it feels,” she said. “And it’s also relevant because of the year that it is. It’s the house, it’s home, it’s Calli. It’s a year to build foundation, to build strong community. So that’s why everyone’s here.”