Dawn Starin
Donald Trump piñatas sighted in the south-western Guatemalan Highlands, not far from the shores of Lake Atitlan. No goalie-sized hands on those piñatas.
Trump piñatas are popping up throughout Mexico, Latin America, and the United States. Anytime festivals call for piñatas, Donald Trump has become the go-to papier mâché item for thumping, bashing, walloping, and burning.
Trump’s hardline position on immigration and deportation, his use of divisive language and derogatory descriptions of Latinos as “rapists” and drug runners, and his insistence on building a “great, great wall” on the Mexico-U.S. border—not to mention his vow to “make Mexico pay” for it—has created a backlash of anger. Trump and his provocative rhetoric have spawned a proliferation of highly popular Trump piñatas.
Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican army’s victory over the much larger and better-armed French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. It represents successful resistance to foreign intervention and imperialism and is often seen as a David and Goliath story where righteousness overpowers tyranny. Today this festival, observed in both Mexico—primarily in Puebla—and the United States, honors Mexican culture and heritage through the use of joyful parades and parties, traditional dancing, music, and food, and, of course, piñatas—often political ones.
Last year during Cinco de Mayo celebrations in the United States—particularly in U.S. border states—Trump piñatas sold out fast and furious.
But Trump piñatas have been showing up for other occasions, too. Last April, the people of Veracruz opened their carnival celebrations by burning a Trump piñata. This April they burned an effigy of his proposed “great, great wall.”
Last year in Mexico City, celebrants of the Semana Santa (the week proceeding Easter Sunday) replaced their traditional Judas Iscariot effigies with a Trump piñata stuffed with firecrackers. (Piñatas of the drug cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, a black-clad ISIS fighter with a Kalashnikov and various devils and monsters kept him company.)
Dawn Starin
A small-handed, horned Trump piñata made from crumpled-up pieces of old newspaper, discarded toilet rolls and crinkled-up crepe paper, from the Merposur mercado outside San Cristobal in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
This past September, the former Mexican President Vicente Fox smashed a Trump piñata—unfilled with the traditional candies—on a TV talk show explaining how it was "Empty, totally empty. He doesn't have a brain." And, at a pre-Christmas fiesta Mexican legislators and officials from the Party of Democratic Revolution chanted, danced and took turns bashing a Trump pinata.
The people of Guatemala have also been bashing and burning Trump piñatas. Every December 7, on Quema del Diablo or Burning of the Devil, the night before the Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Guatemalans light bonfires of piñatas and accumulated garbage as a cleansing ritual to banish bad spirits, terrible happenings, negativity, and injustices. While pitchfork-holding devils piñatas are common, the number-one piñata sold and burned during the 2016 La quema was reportedly a devil-horn-sporting Donald Trump.
Very few Latino ceremonies or celebrations occur without whacking a piñata, and frequently they are political figures. Bashing and burning piñatas has become a modern form of peaceful and fun political protest, allowing millions of laughing “little guys” to express their feelings toward bigger, more powerful bullies.