El Paso was in line for a first that has nothing to do with Friday night lights. AJUPEME-USA said it was set to inaugurate Ahuitzomeh as the city's first organized Mesoamerican Ulama team and the association's first official Texas delegation.
The public presentation was scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 14, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Lincoln Park, 4001 Durazno Ave., KFOX reported. National representatives were to recognize the new delegation and its leadership. The Asociación de Juego de Pelota Mesoamericano-USA framed that recognition as the start of a Texas practice, not a one-afternoon exhibition.
A Delegate, Two Captains, An Open Park
Israel Sanchez was to be appointed Texas State Delegate. Daniela Garcia and Noberto Solis were to be recognized as Ahuitzomeh's captains.
The association already lists Lincoln Park — 4001 Durazno Ave., El Paso, TX 79905 — as a practice site and says practices are open to everyone, according to its event page. That page also names founders Armando Uscanga and Reyna Puc.
Recognition, the organization says, is meant to widen Ulama in Texas through athletic training, educational workshops, cultural demonstrations, and play in national and international tournaments. A named delegate and two captains are the local structure for that list.
Hips, Rubber, And A Disputed Age
Ulama is not a hands game. Players strike a solid rubber ball with their hips. KFOX put the ball's weight between two and 10 pounds — a range wide enough that one practice ball and the next are not the same piece of equipment.
AJUPEME-USA dates the Mesoamerican ballgame to more than 3,500 years and says Indigenous people have practiced it throughout the Americas for thousands of years. The Associated Press describes Ulama as a 3,400-year-old ballgame that survived in Mexico. Either figure leaves a Saturday plan in central El Paso looking very new.
Banned, Then Kept In Pockets
A 2023 KPBS report put the break in plain terms: Catholic conquistadors banned the sport. Half a millennium later, teams were forming again in Central America and the United States.
NBC News reported that Ulama survived only in remote pockets of northwestern Mexico before a late-20th-century rebirth. After player Aurelio Osuna died, his widow, María Herrera, kept teaching the game to their grandchildren in Sinaloa.
That family line is a long way from Durazno Avenue. It is also the surviving thread the U.S. association has been trying to attach to city parks, one delegation at a time.
California First, Then A Texas Slot
El Paso is not the association's first American city. In 2019, San Fernando officials and representatives from Mexico named Raul Herrera the California Delegate of the San Fernando Valley for AJUPEME USA, the San Fernando Sun reported. He picked San Fernando as the first California city where he would build a team. At the time, six men and five women were in informal practices.
That account said an association representative had already formed a team in Las Vegas and that another team had been founded in Salt Lake City. The stated goal then was a first international AJUPEME tournament in San Fernando in October 2020.
In July 2023, KPBS profiled the Tlecoyotes — Fire Coyotes — working to revive Ulama in San Diego. Association representatives planned to inaugurate that team on July 29 at Centro Cultural de la Raza, then play Itzpapalotl of the San Fernando Valley at Chicano Park. The El Paso schedule followed the same public shape: a park, a recognition, and named leadership.
AJUPEME-USA says it placed third in its first international Hip Ball competition, in Belize. That is the association's account of where a U.S. side has already been scored against other teams.
A World Cup Year, And Durazno Avenue
The timing sits inside a louder year for the old game. In the lead-up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, NBC News reported in May that authorities and corporations were launching Ulama exhibitions in Mexico City and Guadalajara and featuring players in advertising.
Texas' piece, on the association's own terms, is closer to the ground: training, workshops, demonstrations, and tournament trips, with Lincoln Park as the listed practice field. Anyone can show up. The ball still has to be moved with the hip.
