Guest Column

Xilonen: Rites of Passage

Column of the Americas

Patrisia Gonzales & Roberto Rodriguez

May 10, 2005

Xilonen: Rites of Passage
By Patrisia Gonzales

Xochitl Rivera prepared her life for a whole year when she became like tender corn, or Xilonen. She was called this because she was about to ripen into a maiden. She underwent a year-long rite of passage that combined both an indigenous ceremony with a quinceañera. A growing custom among Chicanas practicing indigenous traditions is that of the Xilonen ceremony. Xilonen in the Aztec cosmovision or philosophy represents the spirit of tender corn similar to corn maiden.

"When you're a Xilonen, your are going from a seed and you're growing, growing until you become like a corn. There's going to be lots of changes and your going to go through a lot, "recalled Rivera, now a young woman in her twenties. She went to lunadas, or women's gatherings on the full moon in Sacramento, Calif. In that year, she was expected to be disciplined, to be of more service in her community and to reflect upon her transition. She prepared gifts to give away to the children at ceremonies -- corn earrings, corn clay figures, corn dolls.

Elders and the older girls who had been Xilonens gave her guidance as to what to expect in that year. As a danzante of the Aztec tradition, she had made an elaborate ceremonial dress but was asked to dance in a simple cotton dress with no makeup -- for the entire year!

In 1968, Angelberta Cobb, a Nahua of Puebla, Mexico, living in the United States was given permission by her elder Florencio Yescas to conduct the Xilonen ceremony in the United States for the Mexican and Mexican Indian peoples. The ceremony in Watsonville, Calif., has grown to include hundreds of people. Increasingly, teens are celebrating their coming of age with ceremonies that reflect a return to the Indigenous origins of the quinceanera. (With the coming of the Spanish, clergy replaced the spiritual aspect of the ritual with religious commitment to the Catholic Church.) As indigenous-rooted peoples, our ancestors had various ceremonies to honor the life cycle, including puberty rites and our passage into elderhood. The ceremonies, or rites of passage, recognized our role and responsibilities in our community and the natural word, as well as our personal growth. As a community, it is important to acknowledge and honor beginnings, endings and transitions, the cycles that we share as human beings.

Beginning at birth, there were numerous rituals that showed how valued children
were in Aztec society.  Certain children or teens that were destined for more education and societal responsibilities were give instructions to live by:
-- To spend some nights in vigils and ritual cleansings.
-- To not be lazy
-- To walk in public quickly and with dignity
-- To speak deliberately
-- To ignore gossip
-- To be obedient and do a good job
-- To dress in a dignified manner

Now, some ceremonies are conducted in backyards with prayers to the four directions; some include church services and a simple ritual of grinding corn on the metate. For one of our friend's daughters, the women gathered together and ate dinner and shared words about respecting ourselves as women.

Rites of passage should ideally be used to connect youth across generations and
to connect them to the natural world as well as to their physical body, and their ways of thinking about themselves and community. Today, coming of age ceremonies can include a quinceañera for girls, plus a spiritual ceremony, civic or community service, or a quinceañero for boys. Youth should help decide how they want to honor their passage in the life cycle.

Prior to her Xilonen ceremony, Xochitl fasted for three days. At sunrise, she, her
mother and an elder said prayers to the sun by a river. Later at the Xilonen festival, she and about a dozen girls, including girls from Northern tribes who could not fulfill their puberty rites in their homelands, were honored by the community. When they began a year prior, their ages ranged from 11-14. Elaborate altars were made to the four cardinal directions, which also symbolize different aspects of community and the balance of the male, the female, the mental, the physical, the emotional and the spiritual. At each altar, Xochitl was given consejos or guidance to "stand up for her people." She was told that education came first and to respect her body.

As Harvard professor David Carrasco writes in Daily Life of The Aztecs, People of the Sun and Earth, rites of passage, from birth to death, were essential to the life cycle and education of the Aztecs, lest they become a "fruitless tree." "Rites of passage are fundamental to the cohesive life of any community…." he writes.  He adds that they connect people with their spiritual beliefs and "they relate the elders and their traditional teachings to the evolving humans under their care."

Jerry Tello, of the National Latino Fatherhood and Family Institute in Los Angeles, coordinates rites of passage for boys. "Rites of passage are really talking about a life long commitment. Your commitment to the people." Yet, notes Tello, adults have difficulty even committing to raising youth or dedicating our lives to them for more than a few months. "We've gone from a life-long commitment to three or six months." 

 The writers can be reached at: XColumn@aol.com or 608-238-3161

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