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Highlands Today

In Step With Tradition

JASMINA MEYER/Highlands Today

Guadalupe Luevano enters the dance floor with her uncle, Alfredo Luevano, as part of a ceremonial dance celebrating her quincea–era Saturday in Avon Park.

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By DOUG CARMAN

Highlands Today

Published: July 28, 2008

AVON PARK - Guadalupe Luevano turned 15 on July 3, and in Mexican tradition, that age is a special milestone, so her family threw a quinceanera.

As her soccer coach Faustino Torres described it, her entire soccer team, several players on the boy's team, and of course most of her family in Highlands County and in Vero Beach-about 300 people altogether-were there "celebrating the Sweet Fifteen."

Guadalupe and her mother, Maricela Luevano, said the party follows Mexican tradition for girls.

"It shows that you're becoming a woman," Guadalupe and her mother Maricela explained.

The party's setup is like a cross between a high school prom and a wedding. This particular quinceanera was a bit less formal than some, but more than a dozen men were dressed for it as the birthday girl will end up dancing with them all.

The men that will take the floor with her are in white and pink suits, and some of the other men are in western gear. With the women they danced through the afternoon with a Mexican band playing through.

Guadalupe was in a big pink dress as she took a table surrounded by more than a dozen boys about her age. She's been to a few quinceaneras before, and even though this one was on her, she said she wasn't nervous about it or the dance she was going to do.

By about 7 p.m. Saturday, about five hours into the all-day festivities, the boys take her to the middle of the floor, where Guadalupe performs a coordinated dance with her uncle Alfredo Luevano, dressed only in jeans, a white T-shirt and a cowboy hat.

She takes the hand of each boy on the floor, twirls with them for a few seconds, and after she danced with all of them, she's given a tiara, a doll, a scepter and a chair in the middle of the floor.

This is a dance Guadalupe and her family planned, and her father Rigoberto Luevano had been eagerly waiting for it.

Rigoberto said it took about four months to plan the festivities, which also involved getting a live band and all the food, wine and beer.

For the younger boys and some of the girls there, these parties are the places to hook up. Juan Eugenio, 15, said he met his girlfriend in another quinceanera.

"You meet new persons, new friends... they're just fun," he said. Guadalupe Luevano's quinceanera was the fifth one he attended, and he will be at his cousin's soon. "Yeah, I'm a pro," he said with a grin.

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the quinceanera dates from several Meso-American tribes, possibly the Mayas and Toltecs, that gave elaborate rites of passage for their young men and women. Spanish conquistadores and missionaries added several Christian initiation rites into the rituals before it evolved into the modern quinceanera.

Doug Carman can be reached at 386-5838 or dcarman@highlandstoday.com

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