While reading mimismartypants — who gives herself too much grief for gushing about her incredibly cool daughter — I came across this link:

History of the Piñata, By Wendy Devlin in MEXICO CONNECT

Now, I wasn’t all that interested in the theories the website posed, but I did have a moment where I wanted to test my Spanish comprehension after studying it for five years in high school. For my data set, I used the song at the bottom of the page. I think I may have given myself an “F”.

—

Dale, dale, dale, no pierdas el tino,
Come, come, come (?) Do not lose the…tino. That Dah-lay stuff could just be la-las. As for the tino, maybe the stick?

porque si lo pierdes, pierdes el camino.
Because if you lose it (the tino), you lose the street. Well, street could mean path in this case. That’s a little heavy for a song about mindless violence. That stick must be some sort of divining rod or something.

Esta piñata es de muchas mañas
This piñata is made from many tomorrows. Hm, some kind of Zen koan / carpe diem sentiment. We build a papier-mache representation of the future — in the form of a horse, usually, because horses are…always moving forward — and then we obliterate it with a heavy stick to show…that we’re nihilists? Wait, that says mañas. What’s a maña? Well, I’m sure the basic meaning is much the same.

sólo contiene naranjas y cañas.
It only contains oranges and … canes? Or candy, maybe? Candy canes! Aha! That’s a strange combination of foods. And hold on just a second, I thought the piñata was made of tomorrows. Now you’re just going to take that all back and say, “Dale, Dale, only fooling! It’s just a stupid papery husk with oranges and candy canes in it! Is your mind blown yet?”

La piñata tiene caca, Tiene caca:
The piñata has crap in it, it’s got crap in it. Oh, so now I don’t even get the oranges and candy canes? So what, now my tomorrows are hollow, or worse, filled with crap? To hell with this; if I wanted that kind of abuse, I’d pay some leather-clad warrior woman for it and I’d *be* the piñata. Not that…well, anyway, I’m not translating the rest of your stupid song; I’m taking my tino and I’m going home. Bunch of empty promises. Jerks.