Mexico City Gives Girls a Party to Remember

They entered Mexico City's great Zócalo plaza in open-topped double decker buses to the strains of Carmina Burana - a cloud of floor-length frocks, fancy hairdos, tiaras and fantasies of a different life.

"When would we have ever been able to do something like this," said Atenas, one of the 282 girls and young women who had signed up for a mass quinceañera party organized by the city council for those whose economic limitations precluded an individual bash. "It's the one chance we will get to feel like princesses."

Coming-of-age quinceañera parties held when girls reach 15 can put families in debt for years. For Saturday's event, businesses donated the dresses, and beauty salons provided 150 stylists who worked on the girls all morning before they were paraded through the city, ending up on a stage by the cathedral. There they performed a dance they had rehearsed for weeks, cut a huge cake and then danced at a hip-hop concert.

"This is one of the most important moments of our lives," Nadia said as three hairdressers tugged and twisted her hair into a latticed whirl atop her head. "It's a dream every girl here grows up with."

Many of the young women were well beyond 15, and some were mothers. "It's something that's unrepeatable and can never be taken away," said Claudia, who was pregnant at 15 and now works in a shop. "It will stay with me forever."

Some trace the quinceañera tradition back to the Aztecs, but its current form is probably rooted in the rule of the Emperor Maximilian and his wife, Carlota, after the French invaded Mexico in 1864.

The grand event was somewhat lacking in chambelánes - accompanying boys in suits - with only 32 answering the council's plea for volunteers. Veronica didn't mind, pointing out that male presence was less important than the pomp and media attention.

"We don't just get a party in the Zócalo," she said. "We get to be on the telly too."