I have a sister-in-law who lives with us who is 15 and has been to her share of parties for her schoolmates (she had hers in Paraguay - a bit different there!).
We used to live in Pilar and that was the first one she went to, a friend's party out there. Her friend is poor - 6 of them (mother, father and 4 siblings) living in a little 2-bedroom house in a not-so-good neighborhood. But her mother had been saving for years to put on the party for when she completed 15.
The shindig cost around 20.000 pesos. Quite a bit of money for a poor family. It's a good thing that she was the only girl in the family!
And btw - they eat mostly pasta, bread and eggs, cookies and crackers for breakfast, etc, meat and veggies being pretty damned expensive...just a comparison for the comment about eating empanadas
People will spend/save money for what they consider important. In Argentina and Paraguay (I'm assuming the rest of Latin America, though these are the two countries with which I have experience) 15 year birthday parties are important to the culture and many people (certainly not all - not all poor families will put up such a party like my sister-in-law's friend did) will sacrifice a lot to be able to put on a fancy one for their daughter.
I know people in the States who would put a lot of their money into expensive cars and live in run-down neighborhoods and cheap houses - it all depends on the culture and what people consider important. I'm not singling out Latin culture, this desire to put on more than one can afford just manifests itself in different ways depending on the culture.
I was taking my sister-in-law to a party one time (I don't know why, but I have never had a map or directions to the place where the party is - at best an address [sometimes just a description], and outside of the city addresses can be a problem to find) and we got lost. We ended up near where the party was supposed to be, but at the wrong one.
This party seemed to be like the party GringoBoy described. The quinceañera arrived with her friends in a stretch limo (just as we were driving up), everyone was dressed in tuxes and expensive dresses, and the place where they were having it was some kind of really fancy conference center type place with a ballroom. (Most parties are in a salon made for these kinds of parties, pretty basic with tables, chairs and such, and the decorations and things available for entertainment depending on how much the family is spending.)
This one looked like a prom night back in the States, in a fairly well-to-do area. I have no doubt that these people were of the highest echelon here - I know people who are middle-class and up, here, but don't do anything close to that level of party.
The thing that bothers me about a lot of this is the fact that parties here, even for teenagers, don't really start until 12:00 and go all night. My sister-in-law had been invited to 9 different "fiestas de egresados" which are graduation parties. These are normally in the middle of the week and go from midnight to six in the morning (same as the 15-year partis, though in reality many of those technically start at 9:00 but no one would be seen dead arriving that early!). The school where she goes (private, middle-range-cost Catholic school) actually issued a notice to the parents stating that it's the time for graduation parties and any student caught sleeping or acting up in class due to being out all night will be sent home and more than one offense would result in a two-day suspension. Without a doctor's note saying the student was sick, no work missed for a student not showing up could be made up, etc.
I brought my sister-in-law here to have a better education than available where her family lives in Paraguay. I just find myself sometimes wishing that people here weren't so worried about partying all the time in place of getting serious about preparing for life. But it is culturally accepted, unfortunately, and something anyone who has teenagers here has to deal with.
I have a friend about 15 years younger than me who came from Cordoba and he tells me that even here in Capital Federal, in his time, things weren't like this. But he's the only one who's told me that, so I don't know how long this has actually been accepted practice - teenagers partying all night and parents expending tons of money whether they have it or not for their quinceañeras.
We used to live in Pilar and that was the first one she went to, a friend's party out there. Her friend is poor - 6 of them (mother, father and 4 siblings) living in a little 2-bedroom house in a not-so-good neighborhood. But her mother had been saving for years to put on the party for when she completed 15.
The shindig cost around 20.000 pesos. Quite a bit of money for a poor family. It's a good thing that she was the only girl in the family!
And btw - they eat mostly pasta, bread and eggs, cookies and crackers for breakfast, etc, meat and veggies being pretty damned expensive...just a comparison for the comment about eating empanadas
People will spend/save money for what they consider important. In Argentina and Paraguay (I'm assuming the rest of Latin America, though these are the two countries with which I have experience) 15 year birthday parties are important to the culture and many people (certainly not all - not all poor families will put up such a party like my sister-in-law's friend did) will sacrifice a lot to be able to put on a fancy one for their daughter.
I know people in the States who would put a lot of their money into expensive cars and live in run-down neighborhoods and cheap houses - it all depends on the culture and what people consider important. I'm not singling out Latin culture, this desire to put on more than one can afford just manifests itself in different ways depending on the culture.
I was taking my sister-in-law to a party one time (I don't know why, but I have never had a map or directions to the place where the party is - at best an address [sometimes just a description], and outside of the city addresses can be a problem to find) and we got lost. We ended up near where the party was supposed to be, but at the wrong one.
This party seemed to be like the party GringoBoy described. The quinceañera arrived with her friends in a stretch limo (just as we were driving up), everyone was dressed in tuxes and expensive dresses, and the place where they were having it was some kind of really fancy conference center type place with a ballroom. (Most parties are in a salon made for these kinds of parties, pretty basic with tables, chairs and such, and the decorations and things available for entertainment depending on how much the family is spending.)
This one looked like a prom night back in the States, in a fairly well-to-do area. I have no doubt that these people were of the highest echelon here - I know people who are middle-class and up, here, but don't do anything close to that level of party.
The thing that bothers me about a lot of this is the fact that parties here, even for teenagers, don't really start until 12:00 and go all night. My sister-in-law had been invited to 9 different "fiestas de egresados" which are graduation parties. These are normally in the middle of the week and go from midnight to six in the morning (same as the 15-year partis, though in reality many of those technically start at 9:00 but no one would be seen dead arriving that early!). The school where she goes (private, middle-range-cost Catholic school) actually issued a notice to the parents stating that it's the time for graduation parties and any student caught sleeping or acting up in class due to being out all night will be sent home and more than one offense would result in a two-day suspension. Without a doctor's note saying the student was sick, no work missed for a student not showing up could be made up, etc.
I brought my sister-in-law here to have a better education than available where her family lives in Paraguay. I just find myself sometimes wishing that people here weren't so worried about partying all the time in place of getting serious about preparing for life. But it is culturally accepted, unfortunately, and something anyone who has teenagers here has to deal with.
I have a friend about 15 years younger than me who came from Cordoba and he tells me that even here in Capital Federal, in his time, things weren't like this. But he's the only one who's told me that, so I don't know how long this has actually been accepted practice - teenagers partying all night and parents expending tons of money whether they have it or not for their quinceañeras.
