Abuelitas de Oro Teach Culture Across Generations in Fiesta San Antonio

A gray blanket of clouds Saturday and a chill in the air couldn’t dampen the spirits of Las Abuelitas de Oro, the Golden Grandmothers, as they dance like flowers in the wind in long pleated Jalisco dresses of red, purple, yellow, and turquoise at the San Antonio Botanical Garden.

As the folklórico dance troupe, a group of eight women ages 66-87, spin and twirl in unison to recorded trumpets and guitars playing traditional Mexican music at an official Fiesta San Antonio event, they convey cultural significance and pride in their heritage. 

They also act out an important educational tenet: abuelita epistemology, a philosophy that says ancestors have important lessons to share. “A lot of times when we think of Fiesta or Día de los Muertos, we just think of them as events,” says Kat Espinoza, Ph.D., assistant professor of education at Trinity University. “We don’t see how it’s connected to pedagogy and how it’s so much more important than just a festive event that happens once or twice a year.” 

As a professor, Espinoza encourages future teachers to extend the abuelita epistemology beyond singular celebrations and to look to people from the community who aren’t formally trained educators, like Las Abuelitas, for wisdom and lessons in culture and tradition. 

Espinoza, who taught bilingual education in public schools for 10 years, began collaborating with Las Abuelitas five years ago as part of a grant to bring art education into classrooms, especially on San Antonio’s South Side. Now, she’s their sponsor, helping schedule and coordinate the dancers’ year-round schedules, including several more Fiesta appearances. Las Abuelitas, she says, “Keep me grounded. They give me a space to be authentic and vulnerable.” 

Growing up in San Antonio, near downtown, Espinoza learned cultural traditions from her own abuelita and tías while her mother worked multiple jobs. “I was raised by strong women who are no longer with me,” she says. She works with, and studies, Las Abuelitas out of a sense of “yearning, wanting to stay close to my culture and wanting to stay close to the experiences that I had when I was a little girl, working with my tías and my grandma in the kitchen, and wanting to preserve that and make sure my own son is able to do that as well.” 

At Hawthorne Academy, a Title I elementary school where Trinity education students engage in field experiences, Las Abuelitas teach first- through third-graders using oral histories and dance. In her research, Espinoza says the older women “deepen (the students’) historical consciousness and sense of identity,” Espinoza writes in one paper.

More importantly, she says, the Hawthorne students “need to see themselves in the curriculum.” 

Kay Cansino ’26, from San Antonio, who wants to teach elementary students, came to watch Las Abuelitas. Seeing abuelita epistemology in action “is really special to me,” she says. “Trinity has done a really good job teaching me how to be culturally competent, how to be the best teacher I can be, and making these connections through the education department at Trinity has really prepared me.”

Nayeli Aleman ’26, also from San Antonio, says Las Abuelitas provide “a different kind of learning, one that’s maybe even more valuable. It’s something you can only learn from your elders.” Aleman, majoring in global LatinX studies and Spanish, started a baile folklórico club at Trinity and has danced with Las Abuelitas de Oro. “It’s an awareness and valuing of how much knowledge there is generationally.” 

At the performance, boys and girls from Hawthorne patiently wait their turn to dance with Las Abuelitas. They are Los Rayitos de Sol, Rays of Sunshine. Girls wear similarly colored Jalisco dresses and big smiles, and boys wear black charro suits and make minimal contact with the girls. Espinoza, standing in the crowd, mirrors the dances for one very serious-looking little boy, her son Isaac, 6. 

A steady rain falls as the dancing ends. Sandy Rodriguez, 73, and Yolanda Garza, 75, join others under shelter. They say that when they dance they love to see the smiles on children’s faces. 

“We dance to show them our culture, so they can carry it on to other generations,” Rodriguez says. “I think kids are missing out.” She wishes more people shared their cultures like the Abuelitas de Oro are doing.  

Garza says when kids put down their phones and dance, “they love it, and we love it, too.” 

Espinoza, ever the educator, is pleased. “For our community, it’s important to have children present and have their voices present so that they’re learning about Fiesta but also participating in Fiesta events that are meaningful to communities and families that are supportive of those spaces.” 

And Las Abuelitas? “They brought joy to everyone who saw them,” she says.