The Quinceanera is a traditional Latin American celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday.
The religious practice is symbolic of a young girl's transition into womanhood. The frequency
of the ritual in America is decreasing more and more every year. The majority of the
celebrations now are held for first and second generations of immigrants, but rarely for the third.
Before long, the fiesta will only be conducted for first generation immigrants. Then,
maybe the performance in American will be completely forgotten. Many of the Latin American
teenagers feel as if they are trying to preserve a tradition that is destined to fail in the United
States. They need to understand that they are not only preserving a tradition, but they are also
preserving an aspect of their religion and heritage.
Astonishingly, the amount of research that has been done on this topic is minimal. The
majority of the articles and books that I found were written in Spanish, which made them
irrelevant to me.
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United StatesThis particular subject is going to be difficult to research for this reason.
Therefore, I plan to begin by researching Latin American culture on a broad level and the
gradually narrowing the topic to la quinceanera. This will involve a large amount of reading but
results will include aspects of the ritual that other articles do not.
Hopefully, the result of my research will be to create a better understanding of the ritual
and its origins. Also, I would like to prove that the ritual promotes religion and heritage in the
Latin American youth that is imperative in preserving their culture. If this ceremony, along with
several others, continues to regress at the same rate that it is now, Latin Americans will soon
become part of the American melting pot. Hence, no longer being recognized...