ABSTRACT
In episode 6, season 4 of the popular Nickelodeon children’s animated TV series, Dora the Explorer, Dora is charged with taking “cultural icons” (Cantú 2002, 19), that is, high heels and a crown, to her cousin Daisy’s quinceañera. Time is marked by the ringing of church bells, implying a religious dimension to the celebration without underscoring it through showing any ceremony in the visuals. The bells are merely indicators of the impending party that Dora is to attend. While on her adventurous journey to get to the quinceañera, Dora practices dancing the mambo, which she encourages her young audience to imitate. This episode emphasises both the cultural icons, and the significance of these as integral parts of inherited traditions, yet suggests a loosely transnational approach to the celebrations. Through the foregrounding of the quinceañera as a narrative device and the rehearsal of the Cuban mambo, Dora the Explorer demonstrates how a Chicana/Mexicana tradition has travelled beyond the boundaries of its original community and is now a display of Latinidad, which has become popular across the United States and Latin America.
