It is rare to see the women of Lambda Theta Nu performing their step routine on the Tempe campus, or even in public, but the sorority will be performing in the MU Wednesday during the Meet the Greeks event hosted by the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations.
Their use of machetes while stepping is not allowed in many places, including the ASU campus, because the machetes are considered weapons.
Lambda Theta Nu, on the other hand, sees the machetes in a different light.
The Latina based sorority uses machetes in their routine to symbolize female empowerment.
Traditionally, machetes are used by men in the Latino culture to symbolize their power and strength, criminal justice and criminology junior Anna Haney said.
“Since our sorority mainly focuses on women empowerment and power and strength we used (machetes) as our empowerment,” Haney said.
Biology senior Diana Alarcon said the machetes act as a symbol of a new generation of Latinos.
“In Latino communities it’s more chauvinistic so men are basically the head of the family; they work,” Alarcon said. “The women are more traditional so she is in the kitchen with kids.”
Alarcon said when the sorority uses machetes it represents them breaking down barriers in the Latino community.
As an immigrant from Mexico, Alarcon said she is moving away from the traditional path with the decision to pursue an education.
“I feel like I am going aside from what the Mexican tradition is, to get married by eighteen (and) have kids by twenty-one,” Alarcon said.
It is due to the history of the sorority that the machetes represent a tool of cultural awareness, Alarcon said.
The founding members of Lambda Theta Nu were taught how to step from Delta Sigma Theta, a historically black sorority, at California State University Chico in 1987.
Lambda Theta Nu incorporated machetes into their routine in 1989.
“Basically it’s showing cultural awareness and diversity because we do have sisters of all races,” Alarcon said.
It is from that, Haney said, that Lambda Theta Nu hopes to pass the value of women empowerment on to the next generation of women in the Latina culture.
“One of our things is to empower younger Latina girls and other girls in general to go to university (and) to college,” Haney said.
For printmaking junior Marisa Camarillo, machetes become more than a weapon.
“The symbol of machetes means it represents the new generation, new identity, new cultural awareness for females,” Camarillo said.
The audience response is almost always the same, Alarcon said: Scared, shocked and then drawn into the performance.
“The people in the front row are usually the ones who hesitate,” Alarcon said. “It’s defiantly a shock to them but once we start the step show they are so drawn in that I think that they forget that they are lethal weapons.”
Reach the reporter at shurst2@asu.edu
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