As if the last super blue moon for 14 years weren’t superlative enough, on Wednesday night a group of industrious San Antonians set out to break a 12-year-old record for the world’s largest piñata, working feverishly in the dust of the San Antonio Charro Association’s charrería arena on Padre Drive.
Minnesota-based Hormel Foods celebrated the release of new Corn Nuts snack flavor, Mexican Style Street Corn, by sponsoring the creation of a corn cob piñata the size of a 10-story building. The food company looked to Vayner Media, who found Tamara Deike of Lockhart-based advertising and promotions facilitator Aces High to produce the event.
Deike said, “They came to us and said, ‘Look, we want to build the world’s largest piñata.’ And I said, ‘It has to happen in San Antonio. It is the home for it, it’s where it’s gotta go down.’”
Hormel Senior Communications Specialist Brian Olson concurred, noting that “Texas is one of our largest consumer bases of Corn Nuts, so we thought it would all tie together beautifully.”
The previous record set a daunting precedent: to mark the one-year anniversary of pretzel M&Ms in 2011, candy company Mars Incorporated created a giant piñata in New York, 47 feet high, 69 feet long, and 38 feet wide.
Deike looked to the Masa Collective, a group of San Antonio artists and culture workers, to help design, engineer and create the massive, functional sculpture, which had to meet strict criteria set by Guinness World Records to achieve the new record.
Guinness official adjudicators Andy Glass and Chloe McCarthy were on hand to certify the piñata, which had to be made with traditional materials, hang in the air and, McCarthy said, “a very critical part of this record is making sure that it opens and the Corn Nuts spill out. We have to make sure that the piñata functions like a normal piñata.”
A big heart
To achieve the feat, Deike enlisted the help of a number of facilitators, including Vasquez Sons Trucking & Welding to transport a ton of steel rebar and weld the nine piñata sections together, Devon Crane to hoist the initial top section aloft and delicately maneuver the crane as subsequent sections were added to the hanging behemoth, and surveyor ATS Engineers to provide final measurements to Guinness to apply for official world record certification.
By 6 p.m., almost 200 spectators had gathered at the gates of the arena to bear witness to the achievement, the latest attempt at a San Antonio Guinness World Record.
Maria Gomez, grandmother of Masa Collective member Marco Antonio Vargas, sat in the shade of the stands patiently waiting as her grandson labored in the 95-degree heat. Translated by grandson Jonathan Salas, in Spanish she said she was proud of her artist grandson.
“She’s very happy, very proud. She’s got such a big heart right now,” Salas said. Standing nearby, Vargas’ son Dezmas speculated that it might take a wrecking ball to bash the giant piñata open.
Masa Collective member Doroteo Garza engineered the massive structure with the help of artist Rudy Herrera, who sketched an initial design. Actually realizing the onsite construction of the 100-foot-tall piñata proved complex, however, and was made more difficult by buffeting winds complicating the joining of the pieces as the structure dangled on crane cables.
Long into the night
Completion had been advertised for 7 p.m., but by 9 p.m. three large pieces remained to be attached and the crowd had dwindled.
Earlier, a massive storm cloud loomed over the proceedings, but cleared in time for the super moon’s glow to shine over the arena. By 10:30 p.m., two more pieces awaited placement, with a final touch of sweeping green-painted husks added to give the piñata its required width.
Many spectators had left without knowing whether the record would be achieved, but the Guinness adjudicators waited patiently among dusty clouds from the sandy floor of the arena as work continued into the night.
Masa Collective member Santiago Lopez IV said he was proud to be a part of putting his hometown on the map. In working with the artistic and cultural collective, he said, “I knew I wanted to reach a lot of people and bring a lot of people together and put Masa out there and let it grow. And now this is way beyond anything I could have asked for or imagined.”
By 2 a.m., the collective and their construction cohort had completed the towering elote, husks and all, and pulled the cord on the bottom section to release a flurry of Corn Nuts bags. McCarthy and Glass certified the structure’s measurements as 20 feet wide, 60 feet long and 100 feet high, a full 40 feet taller than the previous record holder.
Confirming via email, McCarthy said, “Yes, San Antonio has a new record on their hands!”
Reflecting on the effort, Deike said, “I love a challenge. I really enjoy bringing together creative people and watching them wrap their arms around a project. And for the Masa Collective, especially, this was more than just a job. … It was for their community, and it was for San Antonio.”
This story has been updated to correct the location of Hormel Foods Corp.’s headquarters. It is in Austin, Minnesota.
