In fact, Lucero's quinceañera was not, strictly speaking, a quinceañera at all.
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The first installment of "15: A Quinceañera Story" documents a transgender girl's quinceañera.
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Featured Article: "The Quinceañera, Redefined" In "The Quinceañera, Redefined," Walter Thompson-Hernández and June Canedo document two different quinceañeras that challenge traditions and rituals to create unique and meaningful celebrations.
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HBO's documentary series 15: A Quinceañera Story also featured a young trans woman, Zoey Luna, whose quinceañera served as both a welcoming to adulthood and a gender-affirming coming out ceremony.
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So let me set the record straight: No Mexican family would have a mere 16 people at a quinceañera, and no Mexican family would be listening to the radio at a quinceañera.
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There's the bat mitzvah, the quinceañera and the Sweet 16.
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For her 15th birthday, Luna got her very own Quinceañera.
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Sometimes a quinceañera is celebrated when the girl turns sixteen.
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Jasmine takes a portrait at home for her quinceañera, 2014.
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Monica Sandoval receives communion during her quinceañera Mass in Queens, 2017.
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Godparents of the quinceañera do the canastas dance in Brooklyn, 2014.
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ER: The image of Jamie, the girl in the quinceañera dress.
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HBO's newest documentary, 15: Quinceañera Story, is a reminder of that.
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Sanchez's sister, Jacqueline, was supposed to celebrate her quinceañera on Sunday.
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At a quinceañera, one friend wrote, Chris danced up a storm.
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The Kills were throwing a tequila-soaked, desert roadhouse Quinceañera of sorts.
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Planning for a quinceañera can take up to a year or more.
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Monica Sandoval dances with her friends and family at her quinceañera in 2017.
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The quinceañera is an important celebration thrown for a young woman's 15th birthday.
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For Jayla, the quinceañera was an occasion to celebrate blackness and black womanhood.
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As a result, the quinceañera business is a booming industry in South Texas.
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Leilah had just celebrated her quinceañera in May, according to the Washington Post.
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Stephanie Rodriguez gets ready for her quinceañera at her home in the Bronx, 22013.
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In her documentary 15: A Quinceañera Story, which begins airing tonight at 7 p.m.
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Widely celebrated among Latinos, the quinceañera marks an important milestone in a girl's life.
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While I admit that being part of this emotional celebration made me partially regret not having a quinceañera, I remembered the reason why I was here—and every other quinceañera in the past—in the first place: I came for the food.
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Pizano spared no expense when it came to throwing a quinceañera for her talented pup.
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A quinceañera is a celebration of a girl's 15th birthday in some Latin American cultures.
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A photographer for the AP documented Cuba's amazing quinceañera tradition at the end of 2015.
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Disney's "Frozen" was among the most popular themes last year, according to quinceañera store owners.
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"The quinceañera is a symbol of status and recognition," Ms. Bejarano, the magazine director, said.
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And who could forget the hauntingly upbeat song that played when Latrelle rolled into Olivia's quinceañera?
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Miriam Morales points out her quinceañera dress in a catalog in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in December 22016.
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In the Mexican tradition, if the quinceañera is Catholic, the festivities begin with a thanksgiving Mass.
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She never had a quinceañera of her own, so she had a special devotion to Amina's.
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The morning after a quinceañera or wedding often includes giant cazuelas full of the bubbling caldo.
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Mexican-American entrepreneurs were setting up businesses — taquerias and shops selling quinceañera dresses and cowboy hats.
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Because you don't want to feel like you're going to your Quinceañera when you're a grown woman.
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The newest episode of Freeform's Good Trouble centers on recurring character Jazmin Martinez's 30th birthday double quinceañera.
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A viral video on Twitter shows a young girl crying during the father-daughter dance her quinceañera.
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Note: Gomez's character, Elena, is a young woman who came out as a lesbian at her quinceañera.
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It is a celebration of a quinceañera, a 15-year-old's traditional rite of passage into womanhood.
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His first paycheck came shortly after when he was invited to sing at a quinceañera in Neiva, Colombia.
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We had arced that first season around the [daughter Elena's] quinceañera, so we knew we were heading toward that.
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They were planning on celebrating her confirmation on Saturday and were also preparing for her quinceañera — her 15th birthday.
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Veronica's Sweet 16 floral arrangements are displayed in the party room where her quinceañera was celebrated in Brooklyn, 2014.
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As a 19-year-old Mexican-American woman, I never had a quinceañera, nor did I ever want one.
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If Phoebe follows in her adopted sister's pawsteps, we would hopefully get another adorable canine quinceañera in the future.
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My boyfriend's coworker is throwing himself a bar mitzvah/quinceañera-themed birthday party, so we walk downtown for that.
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"Nowadays, families are disrespectful to the church," said Ana Morales, quinceañera coordinator at St. Paul's Church in East Harlem.
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After 15 years of unabashed love, Luna deserved a party, so Olavarria's mother decided a kitty Quinceañera was in order.
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Guests, friends, and family of Monica Sandoval take her photos while she dances the waltz during her quinceañera in 2016.
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The Mexican American neighborhood, located just east of Downtown Los Angeles, was once characterized by its taquerías and quinceañera shops.
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"I started very late," Belinda Martinez said, admitting she began planning her daughter Jaymin's quinceañera only nine months in advance.
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You can see more photos by Ms. Markosian about the quinceañera tradition in communist Cuba on the Magnum Photos website.
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Jhoselyn Moro celebrates with her family during her quinceañera Mass in the church of San Miguel in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, 2016.
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Thanks to a viral video invitation, a teenage girl in rural Mexico is going to have the quinceañera of a lifetime.
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At her daughter's quinceañera, at graduations, and at birthday parties, the love Andrea and her kids share is transparent and inspiring.
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For second- or third-generation Latino Americans, the quinceañera has become a way to reclaim traditions with which they've lost touch.
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The chances of every character getting a happy ending on this show were slim to none, ever since Olivia's devastating quinceañera.
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She dry heaves over a toilet in the bathroom, which has the vibe of a quinceañera set in a Zen garden.
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In her dream, she was wearing a blue dress that sparkled at the quinceañera that would happen on her 15th birthday.
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When her library was celebrating its 15th anniversary, just about a month after the election, she suggested they throw a quinceañera.
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A Quinceañera is often a celebration for a young's girl coming of age, marked by an extravagant party on her 15th birthday.
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Beyond being a rite of passage, a quinceañera is a family event that envelops the community and creates strong ties of compadrazgo.
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The average quinceañera can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000, so it usually is a collaborative effort from the entire extended family.
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Gámez worried about making promises he couldn't keep, such as vowing to be with Heydi for her quinceañera, or 15th-birthday celebration.
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These skills came in handy because Jazmin also gets to do a tantalizing dance on Jennifer Lopez's "El Anillo" during her quinceañera.
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Some business owners in Cuba told the AP that they've seen an uptick in families from overseas arriving for traditional quinceañera photoshoots.
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He had been at a quinceañera at the Shilo Inn in nearby Idaho Falls, to which Ms. Luna had also been invited.
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" Another Facebook user, who claimed to have done Leila's makeup for her quinceañera, wrote that they were "in total shock and disbelief.
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The novel opens into a tense and vivid scene in Acapulco, the massacre of an entire Mexican family during a quinceañera cookout.
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"We as a society do a really good job helping people through transitional times: quinceañera, graduation, wedding, baby shower," Mr. Conley began.
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Since 20163, Briones has been documenting one of the most important rites of passage for girls in Mexican communities — the beloved quinceañera celebration.
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Rubi Ibarra Garcia's quinceañera celebrations in central Mexico on Monday were attended by "thousands" after a video invitation to the festivities went viral.
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Depending on your family and background, coming of age could be marked by things like a quinceañera at 15 or sweet sixteen party.
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Stopped wearing red lipstick or the nameplate necklace Abuela gifted me for my quinceañera, the only piece of real gold jewelry I owned.
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The episode of the week for October 29 through November 4 is "Rosario's Quinceañera," the sixth episode of NBC's revival of Will & Grace.
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Here's what we know about the victims: Leilah Hernandez celebrated her quinceañera three months ago, wearing a beautiful green dress covered in rhinestones.
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Sure, we celebrate birthdays with cookouts and playlists; we don't have a mariachi or banda at every pachanga — but this was a quinceañera!
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During one winter visit, he popped a tape into a VCR, showing his daughter's quinceañera — her 15th birthday party — at the Hotel Nacional.
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For the occasion, the girl wears makeup, an extravagant hairdo, and a colorful, elegant dressing gown that the quinceañera has chosen on her own.
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There, the quinceañera goes to the religious celebration formally dressed — the gown is generally ostentatious, creative, and alludes to her status as a princess.
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These teenagers will be donning bright, sparkly, formal quinceañera gowns to take a stand against the hate being directed their way through this bill.
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When we left off on the Season 1 finale, viewers watched as Ruby and his crush Olivia (Ronni Hawk) were shot at her quinceañera.
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Weeks before the quinceañera, her father, Crescencio, created a Facebook event and video that was originally intended specifically for the family's neighbors and friends.
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ARCE When I found out I was undocumented, I was 14, and I was bugging my mom about going to Mexico for my quinceañera.
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Jamal's belief in RollerWorld eventually leads to some tension with his friends (and a an argument with Monse) that causes him to skip Olivia's quinceañera.
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Mexican megastar Thalía was given the opportunity of a lifetime to tell the story of five teenage warriors in her documentary, 15: A Quinceañera Story.
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Teens are notoriously phone-obsessed, but Sarah's had an extra layer of meaning: She'd chosen a new iPhone instead of a quinceañera the year before.
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They are the compadres — that is to say the godfathers and the godmothers of the quinceañera are the ones who sustain and pay the party.
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In New York, a quinceañera celebration averages around $10,000, according to Alfonso Caviedes, who owns Fantasy, a special-events dress shop in Jackson Heights, Queens.
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These might be more traditional events, like getting your license; graduating from high school; or celebrating a quinceañera, Sweet 16, or bar or bat mitzvah.
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The audience sees a school friend of her daughter's get deported and her daughter herself attend her quinceañera in a suit instead of a dress.
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He is now working with a teenage girl from El Salvador who was reunited with her mother after years apart, and he attended her quinceañera.
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A GoFundMe page has been set up to help cover Jacqueline's funeral expenses, the 14-year-old was planning to celebrate her quinceañera — her fifteenth birthday.
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To promote the docuseries, the 46-year-old star visited Univision's morning show Despierta América yesterday, where she dressed as a quinceañera in pink tafetta dress.
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Thalía was especially thrilled when co-host Alan Tacher surprised her with a photo of her real quinceañera 30 years ago displayed on a giant screen.
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At the beginning of the episode, Zoey's mother, Ofelia, explains that in Latino culture, a quinceañera is meant to celebrate a young woman's journey into womanhood.
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A week later, the boomers were gone, a quinceañera raged in the back, and a sampling of the mid-twenties, M-train art set streamed in.
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But then, on a visit to L.A., a photographer friend took them to a quinceañera and introduced them to one of their idols, DJ Muggs, a.k.a.
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The moment, a traditional part of the quinceañera, is supposed to be the first time a young girl wears high heels and dances with a man.
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The 15-year-old daughter, Elena (Isabella Gomez, a charmer), is a school debate champ who sees her coming quinceañera as a tool of the patriarchy.
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Olivia's quinceañera and "Chapter Ten" took an unexpected turn when Latrelle crashed the party and fired a gun at the group of friends, shooting Olivia and Ruby.
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Juan claimed he was helping a friend prepare for a quinceañera celebration and Rosendo said he was at a bowling alley at the time of the murder.
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The incident On Saturday, April Johnson and her daughter attended a quinceañera, a traditional coming-of-age party for 15-year-old girls in the Hispanic community.
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Rosario's funeral — which is styled after the quinceañera she never got — also gets a drop-in visit from Minnie Driver's Lorraine Finster, Karen's disaster of a stepdaughter.
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"We wanted an 80s quinceañera where the girl throws up on the cake, and this hand that represents Nalgadas, comes out and starts attacking everybody," Delfin said.
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It wasn't like quinceañera music, it wasn't Spanish music, it was house music and they had a DJ and people were dancing and competing with each other.
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In the pictures, I focused mainly on portraying the most sentimental and important moments, such as the waltz, the Mass, the cake, and the coronation of the quinceañera.
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The four-piece also filmed a music video for their single "What A Waste" that depicted a quinceañera (the celebration of a girl turning 15) gone terribly wrong.
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Season 1 had a more urgent through-line about the teenage daughter Elena (Isabella Gomez) eventually coming out to her family in the lead-up to her quinceañera.
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On Heydi's 13th birthday in March, Mr. Gámez promised her he would be with her by her 82553th to celebrate her quinceañera, the traditional coming-of-age celebration.
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Each episode of this four-part mini-series tells the story of a different quinceañera, the 15th birthday party that is a rite of passage for many Latinas.
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Cagen is an advocate of the self-wedding, which she views as a much-needed coming-of-age ritual that functions like a bat mitzvah or a quinceañera.
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They chose the cultural symbol of the quinceañera because it's the time in a girl's life when she traditionally becomes a woman and starts taking responsibility for her community.
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Another breaking point came when a girl celebrating her quinceañera asked for a photo with the boys in front of the Independence Column at the center of Mexico City.
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When they all get in a fight about Elena's quinceañera, for example, it's rooted in each of their specific expectations and desires, rather than a blanket need to argue.
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One of my favorite examples of this effort is Jolt's Poder Quince ("Power Fifteen") campaign in Texas where volunteers attend quinceañera parties In Texas and register Latinxs to vote.
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Longoria is in demand as a director lately -- she is also attached to direct and produce Universal's "24/7," and will be producing "My Daughter's Quinceañera," also for Universal.
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If this city is going to be underwater in a few decades, we might as well watch good movies and party like it's the last quinceañera we'll ever attend.
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In 2003 my family and I went to celebrate the 15th birthday or quinceañera of my oldest daughter, who was blessed by the priest during the Notre-Dame mass.
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Mey Rude, trans editor at Autostraddle, was surprised with a quinceañera by her friends to celebrate her coming into her own as a young trans woman in her twenties.
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According to Remezcla, the quinceañera protest is being hosted by Jolt, a non-profit dedicated specifically to giving Latinx people the tools and support that they need to affect change.
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But when it came time to celebrate her 15th birthday, she headed 90 miles south to throw her "dream" quinceañera in a place that has previously been mostly off-limits.
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A group of 15 young women headed to the Texas State Capitol on Wednesday wearing vibrant quinceañera gowns to protest the state's Senate Bill 4 (SB4), which bans sanctuary cities.
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Little Village, a pocket of Chicago that heavily draws immigrants from Mexico, is known for its streets lined with bakeries, dollar stores and shops with quinceañera dresses in the windows.
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After breakfast, Escovedo drove down Jefferson Boulevard, admiring the pawnshops and the quinceañera storefronts, and the Texas Theatre, where Lee Harvey Oswald was cornered after the assassination up the road.
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A young girl can be seen dancing at her quinceañera, a celebratory occasion in Latino culture for a girl's 23th birthday — a symbol of the passage from childhood to womanhood.
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But, he said, he'd really been enjoying it, before mentioning his latest favorite segment, in which Cohen tricked some yahoos into staging a fake quinceañera meant to "trap" undocumented immigrants.
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As a teen, the former Desperate Housewives actress worked at the fast food chain to make money for her Quinceañera (just one of many celebs who have taken that career path).
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Today's quinceañera is for Lorena Matias, and it only took a few months of preparation despite the fact that she had been looking forward to it her entire life (thus far).
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"American Dirt," the new novel by Jeanine Cummins, traces the journey a mother and son make to the US, after a cartel kills their family in a massacre at a quinceañera.
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After the Mass, there is a huge party, wherein all the attention continues to be focused on the quinceañera, who, together with her entourage, dances, has a toast and cuts the cake.
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The rapist's girlfriend whispers to the rapist, and the rapist spots the woman and looks as stricken and trapped as the anime piñata in the Zen-quinceañera bathroom, though he recovers quickly.
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According to the BBC, the girl's parents created a video, inviting everyone to her quinceañera, complete with local bands and a horse race, and posted it online as part of a Facebook event.
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The telenovela actress told the hosts that she celebrated a luxurious 15th birthday bash in the 1987 Mexican soap opera Quinceañera, where she played a teen who had an exclusive princess-like party.
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His next stop is Austin, TX, for a piece involving 50 people, including fifteen 15-year old girls in a quinceañera performance that also features a female biker gang and Tibetan throat singers.
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His next stop is Austin, TX, for a piece involving 50 people, including fifteen 15-year old girls in a quinceañera performance that also features a female biker gang and Tibetan throat singers.
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"I wanted to have a Quinceañera when I was 15 and my family didn't have the money, so I got a job at Wendy's and paid for it myself," Longoria, 41, tells the publication.
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In the course of the killing, Martinez recovered $210,000 in cash, some of which he gave to his mother, and some of which he spent on a quinceañera party for one of his daughters.
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There is this renaissance of this pride and the cultural belonging that people don't understand about the border that is all present in this image of a 16-year-old wearing her quinceañera dress.
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Young men hang out in the seating area near the taco stands; a young girl presses her nose against a display window in admiration of the blue quinceañera-style dress on the other side.
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Event planners, bakers and caterers, hair stylists, makeup artists and D.J.s have all become part of what will soon be a multibillion-dollar industry, said María Bejarano, director of Quinceañera Magazine, a trade publication.
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In 250, Disney introduced a line of princess-inspired quinceañera dresses, retailing for $220 to $212, and its theme parks offer catered events like the Belle of the Ball package, which starts at $0003,2000.
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And at the quinceañera, which marks the transition from childhood to young womanhood, guests sat at tables, dressed in white and red linens, near vendor and party tents while enjoying dinner, desserts and dancing.
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"Rosario's Quinceañera" isn't the best episode of the revival so far, but it is at least representative of what this new round of Will & Grace is trying to do, whether it works or not.
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The first built to the quinceañera of Elena Alvarez (Isabella Gomez), the oldest child of Penelope Alvarez (Justina Machado, who gives one of TV's single best performances), the single mother at the show's center.
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Another showed all three children at a quinceañera — Shamal kneeling in front, with a powder blue clip-on bow tie framing his baby face, and Tatiyana tucked in back with a deep-dimpled smile.
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Its neighborhoods encompass everything from the mega-mansions and gleaming Land Rovers in Piney Point Village to yard sales featuring poofy quinceañera dresses in the majority Latino and African-American middle-class neighborhoods like Cypress.
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"Anyone who attended the quinceañera and may have taken home some of the gummy rings is urged to discard them immediately," said Dr. Tomas Aragon, health officer for the city and county of San Francisco.
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The collection also travels across time and place: a boxing star escaping post-revolutionary Cuba, a Jewish family in pre-war Poland, Guatemalan-American girls celebrating a quinceañera, an aging professor in a hot tub.
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Longtime residents adapted with each demographic change, bringing new interpreters to the schools and watching as shops offering quinceañera dresses became Somali grocery stores selling pastries called sambusas and a spongy teff-flour bread called injera.
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Other quinceañera stories (which air at the same time on each of the following three evenings) include one in Cuba, one for an amateur boxer whose coach is facing deportation and a joint celebration in Texas.
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"It wasn't like quinceañera music, it wasn't Spanish music, it was house music, and they had a DJ, and people were dancing and competing with each other," Rosales, an LA-based artist and archivist, tells Noisey.
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Poor Ruby (Jason Genao), after trying to make Olivia's quinceañera absolutely perfect and having a not-so-subtle crush on her the entire first season, his party is a success and Olivia thanks him by kissing him.
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In case you need to refresh your memory before binging the season 2 of On My Block all in one night, we've broken down where we left each of the characters the night of Olivia's (Ronni Hawk) quinceañera.
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Invite goes viral Earlier this month, Rubi Ibarra Garcia was just another girl preparing to celebrate her quinceañera, a birthday party akin to a "sweet sixteen" -- but for 15-year-olds -- and celebrated in many Latin American cultures.
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Clients were not necessarily the rich and famous, but everyday people heading to bashes around town — from flower girls in frilly dresses and pearled headbands, to men rocking white tuxedos and mullets on their way to a quinceañera.
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Diana Markosian of Magnum Photos was awarded first in the contemporary issues category for an image of a quinceañera celebration in Cuba, while Finbarr O'Reilly took first in the portraits, singles, category for a fashion photo from Senegal.
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According to KTRK, the German Shepherd's owner, Jackie Pizano, threw a quinceañera, a party often thrown for a girl's 15th birthday, for her very good pooch when Nova surpassed 15 in dogs years, which is about 2.5 years old.
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On the day he was photographing for us, he got up early and headed to the Chelsea skatepark, then met up with his girlfriend to go on a booze cruise where he crashed a quinceañera on the upper deck.
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Her father Fredy was working to save money for her quinceañera, the traditional coming-of-age celebration of a girl's 15th birthday, when he was among the 680 workers immigration authorities picked up Wednesday at Mississippi food processing plants.
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That is to say, it's a scary movie that does its work slowly, playing an insidious little mind game by injecting whispers of violence into seemingly ordinary settings: a lunchroom dance-off, a glittery quinceañera, an afternoon at the mall.
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Watch the Harry Potter-themed festivities in the video below: The last quinceañera to make headlines was the viral party of Rubí Ibarra García, which drew in 20,000 guests from a Facebook invite and took place on a ranch last year.
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Glimmers of hope, like the friendly valet parker (Octavio Pizano) who invites Kasie to his sister's quinceañera, also lighten the tone and add substance to a movie that can feel almost too delicate, as if not much were holding things together.
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" Redefem Edomex has conducted these performances throughout the state of Mexico, including ones where female activists take to the streets dressed up for their coming-of-age quinceañera, but smeared with bloody makeup that they say makes them look "dressed to die.
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One woman I speak to by phone, a friend of a friend who imported high-end quinceañera dresses for Tijuana's middle- and upper-class residents, says little more than that her dresses come from a warehouse in a tony San Diego suburb.
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Cake, of course, has long played a symbolic role, from the barley cakes the ancient Romans served at weddings to the Chinese bean-paste cakes that celebrate the new year to the elaborate quinceañera cakes that mark the transition of Latinas into adulthood.
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His first paid gig was at a quinceañera party Maluma was 16 years old when he recorded his first song and he started promoting his music with the help of his aunt Yudy Arias and her husband, who were his managers at the time.
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Double quinces, for example, which are held by those turning 30, are being celebrated by an increasing number of people who may not have been able to afford a quinceañera at age 15, or who would rather celebrate womanhood once they are firmly in it.
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The season ends with Elena's quinceañera, which winds up being a celebration of who Elena is rather than who her elders want her to be, complete with Lydia putting together a pantsuit and Doc Martens for her rather than a dress and high heels.
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Released on January 21, American Dirt kicks off with a group of cartel members shooting up a quinceañera and forcing protagonist Lydia, whose husband dies in the massacre, to flee Mexico with her 8-year-old son Luca and seek refuge and safety in America.
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I will never deny my Ecuadorian roots, under this administration nor the next—I followed through in having a quinceañera when I was an egg (like that in Demain by Hermann Hesse) because it was more of a celebration for others then a celebration of myself.
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She also created an exhaustive Twitter thread of the relationship timeline, sharing screenshots and past articles about Henry's quinceañera and her brother's birthday celebrations in the Daily Mail as "evidence" that Henry was actually 18, not 19 — which would make her 17 when she met Payne.
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And there is the lovely Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga, nominated for an Oscar for her role in "Loving," descending the stairway past the musicians from Mexico en America, a local mariachi band that plays at weddings, quinceañera celebrations and, somewhat unaccountably, this annual Chanel gathering.
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Here, Santos Briones shares with BuzzFeed News her poignant photos, as well her expertise and thoughts on the rituals surrounding quinceañeras: The sweet fifteen party, known as a quinceañera in Mexican culture, is a celebration that marks publicly the transition from being a girl to becoming a woman.
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"The modern quinceañera has become the 215st-century manifestation of what it means to be visible in an American system on your own terms," said Rachel V. González-Martin, a folklorist and professor in the Department of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
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In case you missed the controversy, here's a recap: Cummins' novel tells the story of Lydia, a bookseller in Acapulco, who flees Mexico for the American border with her son after a drug cartel kills her family, who are gathered at her mother's home for her niece's quinceañera.
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They have unspoken dress codes (white or brightly colored dresses for the birthday girl); set gender distinctions (the chambelán, whose job is to escort and dance with the quinceañera, is almost always a young man); and established rituals, both religious and secular (Mass before the party; waltzing at the party).
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What we did discover, however, were people engaged in small acts of resistance, resilience, and reclamation: a man who rows, recreationally, on the Rio Grande; first- and second-generation Mexican Americans who are running local political offices; a family, against immense hardship, putting together the money for their daughter's quinceañera.
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After multiple twists and turns, the season 1-ender seems to be closing with a sweet quinceañera-set dance party — until birthday girl Olivia (the polarizing Ronni Hawk) and beloved genius Ruby Martinez (Jason Genao) both get shot in a gang hit gone awry (Diego Tinoco's Cesar Diaz was the real target).
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But the resulting clothes, most memorably the dresses, had a busy, over-the-top vibe that made them look like they were made for people who had a prom coming up in peak-reality-show-era New Jersey, or a bar mitzvah in the tropics, or a quinceañera on a boat somewhere.
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It all seems like any other Latina teenager's quinceañera, except that her family and us viewers get to see just how much work went into not just ensuring that Zoey was capable of having a quince just like any other little girl, but also, how she could honor her culture's traditions while also creating her own.
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The telenovela plot is a pastiche of stereotypes and melodramatic tropes of the sort one might expect from an author who did not grow up within Mexican culture, from a massacre at a quinceañera to the inexplicable choice of a relatively wealthy woman to leap onto La Bestia, a gang-controlled train — rather than just take a plane to Canada.
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Season one's 13 episodes are loosely structured around the skeptical, feminist, 14-year-old Elena's on-again/off-again plans for her quinceañera, as well as the way Penelope uses pills and therapy to manage the physical and emotional pain left over from her military service (to the dismay of Lydia, who believes it's more honorable to "fight the crazy" than to rely on any outside help).
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I also talked with the band Las Cafeteras; Carlos Portugal, the co-creator and director of Hulu's popular series "East Los High" (which has one of the first all-Latino, English-speaking casts in history); Los Angeles City Councilmember Gil Cedillo; graphic artist Ernesto Yerena Montejano; guests at a quinceañera and people in the streets of the predominantly (for now -- one guy asked me if I was there to "gentrify his neighborhood") Latino neighborhoods of East LA and Boyle Heights.
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The cost of arranging a party and photo shoot in Cuba is about one-tenth of what it can be in the United States, according to The AP. While it's not clear how widespread the trend actually is (one South Florida-based quinceañera expert told Refinery29 that she hasn't personally witnessed an uptick in interest in celebrating in Cuba), the recent move to officially restore commercial flights between the two countries is expected to increase the flow of people for a range of purposes, including parties.
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