In Mexico, piñatas are not just child’s play. They’re a 400-year-old tradition

María de Lourdes Ortiz Zacarías swiftly cuts hundreds of strips of newsprint and colored crepe paper needed to make a piñata, soothed by Norteño music on the radio while measuring pieces by feel. “The measurement is already in my fingers,” Ortiz Zacarías says with a laugh. Piñatas haven’t been displaced by more modern customs, and her family has been making a living off them into its fourth generation.