Gorgeous dances and rhythmic music were featured at Emma Prusch Park in East San Jose during the 24th annual Mexica New Year Ceremony, held from Friday to Sunday by Calpulli Tonalehqueh, a San Jose-based Mexica community group.
Culhua-Mexica is an indigenous group, also known as the Aztec Empire, that ruled a large empire during the 15th and early 16th centuries throughout what is now Southern and Central Mexico, according to an August 12, 2021 Encyclopedia Britannica entry.
Mexica New Year follows the Aztec calendar and is celebrated annually on March 12 as a way to preserve Indigenous traditions, ancestral medicine and teachings, according to a 2013 published Santa Clara County presentation.
The first evening was called California Native Night and featured a performance by the local Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.
During the late-18th century mission era of California, Muwekma Ohlone members stopped performing ceremonial dances for their safety as they were either forced into slave labor or killed off, said Aquihua Perez, co-founder of Calpulli Tonalehqueh.
“It is a testament to the survival of the Muwekma Ohlone,” Perez said. “You know, most of them, a great majority were killed off but they're still here, and they are now beginning to thrive again.”
On the cool winter night, members young and old of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe walked onto the dancing ground to perform their once-lost dance for the first time in over 150 years.
Before they began the dance, members of the tribe shared a reading of the Muwekma Ohlone Land acknowledgement, spoken in English and the Muwekma Ohlone native language of Chochenyo.
“A Land Acknowledgement is a formal statement that recognizes and respects Indigenous Peoples as traditional stewards of this land and the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories,” according to Northwestern University.
Throughout the next two days, community members walked through the park, smelled the sweet scents of burning herbs including copal and sage, watched ceremonial Indigenous dances and listened to the constant beating of drums accompanying the Aztec dancers.
Aztec dancers, also known as concheros, are those who participate in pre-Columbian ceremonial dances, according to an November 23, 2011 Britannica entry.
The Aztec dancers walked through the field wearing brightly colored feathered headdresses, their movements followed by the sounds of ankle rattles.
The rattles, also known as chachayotes in Nahuatl, are tiny percussion instruments worn around dancers' ankles and made from hollow chachayotes tree nuts, according to a Claremont College digital library.
The concheros moved rhythmically to the drums as chanting voices boomed from around an altar in the center where the singers and musicians were shrouded in clouds of smoke from the burning incense.
Hundreds of vendors came from various areas to participate in the nation's largest Mexica New Year celebration, according to the Calpulli Tonalehqueh website.
Illustrator Jorge Garza came from Gary, Indiana to sell his artwork through his shop Qetza.
Garza sells illustrations of pop culture icons from Marvel, Nintendo and anime that are inspired by Aztec designs as well as original artwork, according to his website.
In addition to vendors selling their art, Together We Create, an artist collective, gave attendees the chance to see 26 visual artists at work in real time.
Together We Create is focused on mentoring youth and teaching people the values they can acquire from practicing art, according to the collective’s Instagram bio.
The collective is run by four leaders: Wipser, Mesngr, Alba Raquel and Roberto Romo who have been painting in front of live audiences across the Bay Area since 2016.
“We like to paint in social events because I think that that's where a lot of the dialogue happens between artists and the community,” Romo said. “Also the artists are part of the community so they can come out to expose their different communities, traditions, images that are unique to them and to the culture that they're representing.”
Along with the visual arts, there were about eight classic cars at the event from the San Jose chapter of the Boulevard Kings Car Club parked next to the Emma Prusch barn.
“It’s a part of our hispanic culture. Just like the dancers are here, we’re here because it’s a pride thing, we take pride in our cars because it’s a part of our culture and has been since the 1950s,” said Angie Gonzales, a club member.
Gonzales went on to say that lowrider culture is generational and that the cars are maintained over the years so that they can be passed down from one generation to the next.
Lowriders are very popular in Mexican-American cultures and were a symbol of resistance against the dominant culture of the early 1950s, according to an May 5, 2021 Smithsonian article.
The celebration welcomed 2022’s Mexica new year sign which is 10 Matlactli Tochtli or 10 Rabbit
In Aztec culture, the calendar followed the celestial bodies and was broken down into sections of 20 days, with each day having its own name, patron god, symbol and omen, according to World History.
“Ten in Nahuatl is Mahtlactli . . . and ten is basically the unity of opposites,” Aquihua Perez said.
It’s similar to the yin and yang in Chinese culture, Perez said.
“So, it is represented by, say for instance, our fingers on our hands. It is a unity of both and it symbolizes the working together of, you know, to create,” Perez said. “That symbolism is important because tied together with the rabbit, a rabbit symbolizes fertility, it symbolizes the ability to listen, the ability to feel and listen and then create.”
