Aha, you've hit upon some of the reasons why i find this subject endlessly fascinating.
Let me reply by way of example. My grandmother, who lived in New York, would supplement her meager fixed income by selling things at flea market. When she came to visit us in Texas every year or so, we'd drive to Laredo and cross over into Mexico for a day trip, where they'd buy a few gorgeous little things for her to take with her to sell for a markup in New York.
Once or twice, perhaps, a merchant there would try to sell me or my sister some small little trinket and say it was for luck, or some such. So my parents would buy us a little luck trinket or whatever.
Suppose i was an enterprising little kid and i bought a lot of them, and then went back to my friends and said, "It's a Mexican luck trinket, you can have it for $5." Before you know it there might be a whole lot of white people running around with "Mexican luck trinkets."
But honestly, we had no way of knowing, and i have no way of knowing now, whether such things were actually considered good luck charms. Maybe it was just some meaningless little bauble he'd bought a lot of and was trying to clear out. Or, maybe it is considered lucky but it signifies a lot of other things, too. Whatever original meaning the trinket may or may not have had, it's liable to be drowned out if enough white people come to think of them as "Mexican luck trinkets."
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Let me reply by way of example. My grandmother, who lived in New York, would supplement her meager fixed income by selling things at flea market. When she came to visit us in Texas every year or so, we'd drive to Laredo and cross over into Mexico for a day trip, where they'd buy a few gorgeous little things for her to take with her to sell for a markup in New York.
Once or twice, perhaps, a merchant there would try to sell me or my sister some small little trinket and say it was for luck, or some such. So my parents would buy us a little luck trinket or whatever.
Suppose i was an enterprising little kid and i bought a lot of them, and then went back to my friends and said, "It's a Mexican luck trinket, you can have it for $5." Before you know it there might be a whole lot of white people running around with "Mexican luck trinkets."
But honestly, we had no way of knowing, and i have no way of knowing now, whether such things were actually considered good luck charms. Maybe it was just some meaningless little bauble he'd bought a lot of and was trying to clear out. Or, maybe it is considered lucky but it signifies a lot of other things, too. Whatever original meaning the trinket may or may not have had, it's liable to be drowned out if enough white people come to think of them as "Mexican luck trinkets."