The Matachines Dance in Alcalde, New Mexico

The Matachines Dance in Alcalde, a Mestizo Community in North-Central New Mexico.1

Danna A. Levin Rojo

Introduction

The matachines dance is one of the few traditional dances observed both by Pueblo and Hispano-Mexicano2 people in New Mexico, as well as many Indian and mestizo communities around Southwest United States and Mexico. Among these we may quote the Yaqui Indians both sides of the border; the Tarahumara, Tepehuano, and Mayo Indians in Chihuahua and Sonora; mestizo communities in Texas and Zacatecas, and a long list of additional places in central Mexico.3 According to Claude Stephenson (2003), in the nineteenth century almost every

1 The research for this article was done with the support of the following institutions: Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (conacyt, project U40611-S), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación e Innovación Tecnológica papiit project IN308602), Mexico North Research Network (Transnationalism Felowship Program 2004), Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco (Programa de Apoyo a Estancias Sabá-ticas de Investigación), Latin American and Iberian Institute, University of New Mexico (Greenleaf Library Visiting Researcher Fund), and Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico (Writers in-residence program 2007). I want to thank specially matachin dancers from Alcalde and the Ohkay Oweengeh people for allowing me to witness and record their performances, as well as for their interviews. Also of much help was the guidance and support from the librarians at the Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico and the State Archives and Records Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

2 I use this term to refer to the descendants of Spanish and Mexican (Indian or mestizo) people settled in New Mexico before it became part of the usa in 1848. This social segment, also known as Spanish American, Hispanic or Hispano must not be confused with the Latino or the Mexican-American groups, composed of post-1848 Spanish speaking immigrants from Mexico and Latin America and their offspring.

3 Claude Stephenson (2001) provides a lengthy list of matachin versions in diferent localities all over former New Spain.

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village in New Mexico had its own matachines band that would dance on the town’s annual feast or during Christmas, but the number has presently shrunk to less than two dozens, including Alcalde. This is a small, 89 % Hispano-Mexicano village located in the vicinity of Ohkay Owingeh (former San Juan Pueblo), the Tewa settlement where the first “Spanish” colonists led by Juan de Oñate esta-blished their headquarters in 1598.4

Although none of the existing versions (or traditions) of this dance are equal to one another, they do share several features in varying degrees. This has led to the common belief that it was originally one and the same tradition ultimately deriving from the danzas de moros y cristianos, a variant of the kind of choreogra-phic representation that Jesús Jáuregui and Carlo Bonfiglioli (1996) have termed danzas de Conquista early introduced in Mexico by missionaries as a theatrical resource to reinforce evangelization. Unlike the more typical instances of moros y cristianos, the matachin performance is a purely choreographic, unscripted representation, but has a dancer named Malinche and another called Monarca/Mon-tezuma. Therefore, it has been suggested that matachines are a colonial product based on European models adjusted to represent the triumph of Christians over Moctezuma thanks to the efforts of Doña Marina, la Malinche, who is considered the first covert in New Spain (Bonfiglioli 1995, 2000; Harris 1997; Rodríguez 1996; Ortega Morán 2005).

According to this interpretation, that also calls upon the symbolic cross and double file formation included in the choreography, natives in different areas later added their own elements, appropriating the traits that missionaries imposed and creating a new symbolism adapted to their own worldview and ritual needs. Ramón Gutiérrez, for instance, considers that like other ritual dramas introduced by Spaniards, the New Mexico matachines dance was an ideological means to in-culcate Pueblos with the consciousness of their own defeat, but Pueblo performers later subverted this original meaning with comic gestures and inverted utterances (quoted by Rodríguez 1996: 144-145). Over these two layers of meaning –Spanish conquest and Indian resistance– modern Hispano-Mestizo communities, Sylvia Rodríguez asserts, have made of the dance a symbol of cultural resistance against Anglo protestant penetration.

This article analyses the Alcalde performance and logistic organization of the matachines dance as they currently occur. It focuses on local processes of symbo-

4 In November 2005, according to former San Juan lieu tenant governor Dennis Oyenque, the community voted to drop the former Spanish name of the town and reinstate the pre-Spanish one, Ohkay Owingeh, meaning “Place of the Strong People” in the Native Tewa language.

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531The Matachines Dance in Alcalde

lic and material reformulation associated to the socio-political transformations that interethnic hierarchical relations forged under colonial circumstances have regionally undergone throughout history; particularly since the turn of the ni-neteenth century when capitalist, commoditized social and economic relations became more generalized and the presence of Anglo-American immigrants and religious institutions, as well as United Sates’ legal and governmental structu-res, started to exert a more profound and extended influence. Sylvia Rodríguez (1996) has already elaborated upon the ideological and political meanings that this ancient tradition has come to embody as a social space for cultural resistance and identity reinforcement vis à vis the struggles of pre-usa communities all over the state. Therefore, I expand on the symbolic expression of the realignment that such struggles have impressed upon Indo-Hispanic relations, leading Alcalde participants to emphasize, at the level of exegesis and performance, the Catholic liturgical aspects of the dance as a prayer in order to de-emphasize those features that denote conflict and violence. I also discuss the recent appearance of a whole female matachines group and the occasional inclusion of some of its members in traditional ritual performances. This is a controversial development that not only reflects transformations in local gender relations brought about by modernization but also ties to current sociological conditions that obstruct the continuity of the dance as a cohesive cultural practice. Like most rituals elsewhere, New Mexico matachines have been an efficient means to solidify ties of solidarity. Under the present circumstances, however, it is turning increasingly difficult for them to continue fulfilling this function, due to decreasing community involvement re-sulting from paid employment and other restrictions. Therefore, tough partially resented, female dancers offer a way out of this cultural reproductive impasse.

Matachines are seen in this study as a “total social fact” wherein gender, political, interethnic and cultural relations articulate. Thus deploying the historical and contemporary socio-economic context of the Alcalde performance is more important than tracing in detail its ultimate sources. Nevertheless, establishing the performative and symbolic particularities of the regional complex to which it belongs, while keeping an eye to the genealogies thus far proposed for the dance, shall facilitate restricted comparisons. Particularly relevant is the Ohkay Owingeh instance because the contrasting socio-political conditions of this community as a duly recognized autonomous tribe seem to have allowed a higher degree of tradition preservation. For both instances I draw from the ethnographies by Sylvia Rodríguez (1996) and Brenda Romero (1993), as well as my own field research, conducted in 2004, 2005, and 2007.

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Overview of New Mexico Matachines

Following Rodríguez (1996) and Bonfiglioli (1995, 2000) we can transitorily define New Mexico matachines as a ritual drama that evokes the conflict of the Spanish military conquest over Indian subjects through its final result, conversion to Christianity. The dance is characterized by two rows of ten to twelve masked male dancers who engage in several choreographic maneuvers that may represent confrontation between Christians and pagans, dancing to the tune of violin and guitar music and, in some places, the beating of Indian drums. These dancers, the matachines proper, are accompanied by a young girl dressed in white (Ma-linche) who is paired with an adult male dancer wearing a floral corona (Monarca/Moctezuma), a boy dressed as a bull (toro or torito), and one or two clown figures usually called abuelos, one of whom is sometimes cross dressed as a woman and receives the name of Perejundia.

Despite local variations, this basic dramatic structure and main characters distinguish all New Mexico matachines from matachines elsewhere, while some of the other typically New Mexican elements listed below may be present as well in other areas: a) Dress and paraphernalia including ornamented miter-like head dresses

–often called cupiles or crowns– with long multicolored ribbons pending down the back; the face covered with handkerchiefs over nose and mouth, and thread fringes over the eyes, by way of masks; colorful capes (tapalos) frequently stamped with the image of the Immaculate Conception or the Virgin of Guadalupe; a palma or trident-like object on the left hand and a gourd rattle (sonaja or guaje) wrapped in a handkerchief on the right hand (figures 1-3).

b) The prominence of violin as leading instrument. c) A complex choreography that includes some figures and evolutions also

typical in Northwest Mexico such as cross-overs between the two files of dancers who, at some point, assume a cross shaped formation; serpentine and weaving dance progressions, and half or complete individual turns of dancers on their own place.

d) Repetitive kick-stamp-and-jump steps. e) The role of abuelos as order keepers, usually by means of a whip (látigo/

chicote) and, in some places, as comic transgressors who mock the audience. f ) An exchange of palma and guaje between Malinche and Monarca (figure 4)

and the final defeat (killing or castration) of the torito by the abuelos after the sequential chasing between the torito and the rest of the dancers.

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g) The progression of several distinct sets or “movements” (between seven and eleven) sometimes performed in a different order, each characterized by particular steps, figures and melodies that correspond to one or another set of the European “morisca” dances (Kurath 1949; Champe 1983; Rodríguez 1996; Torrez 1949).Within this general frame, some particular elements that run along the

lines of ethnicity distinguish Indian from Hispano-Mexicano versions at the level of meaning, performance, and organization. Thus for instance, even when both groups attribute to the matachines a Christian origin, Indians consider they were introduced among them by Montezuma, a Pueblo god dressed in European outfit who predicted the arrival of the Spaniards,5 while Hispanos attribute their intro-duction to Juan de Oñate, Diego de Vargas –leading captain of the post 1680

5 Richard Mermejo from Picurís Pueblo says: “In our history Montezuma came up here to visit, and he was here during the Christmas season and he taught the tribes to dance matachines as a welcome to Christ, as he was told by the Spanish” (Davenport 2006).

Figure 1. Alcalde Matachines, Fiesta de Santa Ana, July 2004. Photograph: © Danna Levin.

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Figure 3. Palma and guaje of a San Juan Pueblo matachin. December 2008. Photograph: © Danna Levin.

Figure 2. Cape or tapalo stamped with the Immaculate Conception. Alcalde Matachines, Fiesta de Santa Ana, July 2004. Video Still: © Danna Levin.

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rebellion reconquest– or Hernán Cortés himself (Ortiz Garay 1999: 3; Treviño and Gilles 1994: 106; Rodríguez 1996: 2; Stephenson 2001: 11, 41-43). Another important ethnic difference is the time of the year when the dance is performed, December among both groups but also the patron saint feast whenever it occurs, or several civic and familial occasions among Hispanos. Finally, Native-European contrasts exist regarding the degree of sacredness accorded to the dance, the re-cruitment process and ethnic integration of the troupe, the salience of the comic-transgressive elements (more abundant and prominent among the Pueblos), and the presence of certain sets and costume “identity markers”.

Some Pueblo versions include a segment, absent in Hispano performances, called the maypole consisting of the weaving of color ribbons tied to a pole by means of the crossing over of dancing matachines. This segment is also present in some Mexican versions that Bonfiglioli, Gutiérrez and Olavarría associate with the cosmic tree that, in Mesoamerican cosmology, stands in the center of the cosmos com-municating the earthly human locus with the divine spheres of the underworld and the upper heavens (Olavarría 2003; Bonfiglioli et al. 2004: 8). Regarding dress and paraphernalia, Indian costumes are generally more colorful and elabora-te than those worn by their Hispano counterparts, and they include important Indian pieces of attire such as beaded moccasins and feathers attached to the

Figure 4. Exchange of palma and guaje between Monarca and Malinche. Alcalde Matachines, Fiesta de Santa Ana, July 2004. Photograph: © Danna Levin.

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cupiles (figures 5-6). Finally, it is important to note that among the Pueblos. the matachines are clearly kept as a foreign ritual that does not belong to the cycle of traditional religious ceremonies, being the only one where neighboring Hispano-Mexicano individuals participate, frequently recruited through payment to act as musicians and abuelos. Contrastingly, Hispano-Mexicano groups recruit all their members on a voluntary basis and never include Indians (Rodríguez 1996; my own fieldwork observation).

According to an Ohkay Owingeh former lieutenant governor,6 the Pueblos probably adopted the matachines “when the Spaniards introduced Catholicism because the leaders of those days realized this faith was going to change their life for history, and, on the other hand, it involved Montezuma who was their own god too”. However, this incorporation was done in their own terms, introducing subtle changes like the position in which the rattle is held or the way the ribbons are worn. Thus the Pueblos made the dance their own and, at the same time, dif-ferentiated it from other Native dances. Its place in the ritual calendar has always been Christmas, when the birth of the Virgin’s child is celebrated. Nevertheless,

6 Dennis Oyenque in interview with the author (2005, 2007).

Figure 5. San Juan Pueblo matachin costume. December 2007. Photograph: © Danna Levin.

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Spanish catholic and Indian religion came to a compromise whereby Indians dance matachines for two days, and, on the third (December 26), they perform their own traditional turtle dance that symbolizes rebirth, and mock the church. “All dances are sacred –says Oyenque– and have a proper place in our ritual cycle. In spring animal dances, in summer corn dances, in fall the harvest dance, and in Christmas matachines, and there are others. So it has the right place”. Despite this assertion, the fact that pictures are allowed and Hispano-Mexicano performers are recruited indicates it is perhaps considered less sacred than traditional dances, and somewhat foreign, or even better: A space for mediation with the His panic world. This hypothesis is also supported by the fact that, as the same person ex-plained, traditional Pueblo dances “come from” the rain chief and are organized and controlled by the kiva, whereas matachines “come from” the tribal governor’s office, an institution that belongs to the governance structure created after the arrival of Europeans.

Figure 6. Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo) matachines. December 2007. Photograph: © Danna Levin.

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Alcalde: An Old but Modernizing Community in a Relatively Recent Location

Alcalde is located near the junction of the Chama and Grande rivers about twenty eight miles Northwest from Santa Fe and only three from Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo) in Rio Arriba county. It is a commercial post also dedicated to chili and alfalfa cultivation as well as the growth of cattle and sheep. Bearing the status of a non-incorporated village, it stands on the east bank of the Rio Grande, west of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at the heart of the Española Valley on grounds originally occupied by Tewa Indians and successively granted, after the reconquest that ensued the great 1680 Pueblo rebellion, to different Spanish/mestizo individuals or groups of settlers from Santa Cruz de la Cañada, a few miles to the South (figure 7).

I have not yet come across any peace of solid evidence regarding the foundation of Alcalde, but it seems to be a late and indirect product of the land grant policy that Diego de Vargas dictated to encourage the separation of Spanish and Indian communities when reestablishing Santa Cruz after the revolt, in 1695. Although some of the colonists arrived with Juan de Oñate in 1598 may have established in the area, certainly central in the earliest decades after the Spanish conquest because, as Romero asserts (1993: 184), San Juan and San Gabriel (now Chamita) functioned as headquarters for the newly created kingdom of New Mexico, the actual settlement of the town does not date from those days. New Me xico’s ca pital was transferred to San ta Fe in 1610 and the area where Alcalde stands today seems to have remained vacant until at least the late eighteenth century, even when the same year of 1610 a certain Pedro Lucero de Godoy settled two miles to the north in a place he called Nuestra Señora de la Soledad del Río Arriba (Rubright 1967), presently respon-ding to the name Los Luceros. After 1680 this locality also remained uninhabited for decades and was only resettled when it became the headquarters of the grant made in 1712 to Sebastián Martín, a military officer who had participated in the reconquest campaign. By 1750, according to Lynell Rubright (1967: 75-7), there were 40 families living around Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, which functioned as an administrative and military outpost throughout much of the remaining Spanish period, as the first alcalde, primary civil servant for the area, made it his home somewhen around those years (Romero 1993: 184).7

7 The alcalde mayor for the jurisdiction of Santa Cruz de la Cañada, comprising in that period all the settlements in the Española Valley and beyond to the North, lived and worked in this place already by 1766, for on July that year he issued a purchase deed corresponding to a piece of land located at the banks of the Embudo River that starts as follows: “En este puesto de Nuestra

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The place is registered either as Soledad or Río Arriba in several eighteenth century maps of New Mexico that also include San Juan but not Alcalde, four of them made by Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, the most prominent New Mexico cartographer, between 1755 and 1779.8 The only detailed map of the region of previous elaboration, delineated by father Juan Miguel Menchero around 1745 (Levin Rojo 2007: 14; Wheat 1957: 83-85), registers Santa Cruz de la Cañada, San Juan, and even the rather small and then recently established community of Embudo, but not Rio Arriba or La Soledad. Therefore, I think that before 1750 this must have been merely a small and unimportant cluster of houses of the Martín family, which grew in size and importance only after the alcalde made it his residence.

Many locals think –and this is supported by the maps aforementioned– that Alcalde is actually a nineteenth century outgrowth of La Soledad, given its name and location only two miles to the south and still within the boundaries of the Sebastián Martín Land Grant, which ran northbound from San Juan Pueblo “to the cañón that reaches to El Embudo” (grant documents quoted by Romero 1993: 184n). Right across the Rio Grande on the west bank stands a small settlement now called El Guique, sometimes San Rafael del Quiqui, that could have also contributed settlers to Alcalde. The first mention of this place so far uncovered comes in a will made in 1765, wherein Antonio Abeytia certified that he lived at San Antonio del Bequiu del Guyqui, in the jurisdiction of Santa Cruz. However, Rubright thinks it may have existed as a small cluster of houses already by 1750 because the spot was part of the Chamita Land Grant, given in 1724 to Antonio Trujillo, soldier in the reconquest campaign (Rubright 1967: 75, 78). Given the fact that the narrowness of the flood plain limited the amount of farming land in this site, it seems likely that people eventually moved to unoccupied terrain across the river.

As it is clear from the previous paragraphs, Alcalde may have only existed as a compact village in its present location for little over a century, but still its

Señora de la Soledad del Río Arriba en diez y nueve días del mes de julio del año de mil setesientos y sesenta y seis yo Don Manuel de la Pareja, Alcalde mayor y Capitan a Guerra de la jurisdicción de la Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz de la Cañada conparecieron ante mí…” (Family papers owned by Tomás Atencio).

8 Excellent quality reproductions of these maps (except the first) can be seen in the State Records Center and Archive (Santa Fe, New Mexico). For details on each of them and their location see Levin Rojo (2007), and Wheat (1957). The Nuevo Mapa Geographico de la America Septentrio-nal delineated in 1768 by Antonio Alzate y Ramírez also shows the place as Soledad but here it is wrongly located (copy at the State Records Center and Archive, Santa Fe, New Mexico).

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residents constitute a well established and old community, comprising several descendents of the oldest families in colonial New Mexico. It is located in the immediate vicinity of the first Indian pueblo occupied by the Spaniards, Ohkay Owingeh, upon the property of which it encroaches today (figure 8.);9 and its members have long shared with these Tewa people, and competed over, the available natural resources and, more recently, the economic opportunities that modernity has created. On the other hand, Alcalde has experienced in dramatic ways both the benefits and drawbacks of Anglo-American penetration, including loss of its agricultural land base, the impact of market and cash economy, urbani-zation, the development of modern transport and communication networks, and the introduction of several protestant churches in the surrounding area. Whence the sym bolic importance of the matachines tradition, dutifully kept in this locality as a means of cultural resistance.

The most dramatic effects of modernization experienced by Indian and Hispano communities in the Española Valley came in 1880 with the arrival of the Denver & Rio Colorado Railway –also known as Chili Line– at El Punto de las Vegas de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe that was soon renamed Española (Ru-bright 1967: 105; Weigle 1975: 118-119). The line, originally planned to run southwards to Mexico City, never went beyond Santa Fe but connected New Mexico with the mining camps and most important cities in Colorado, providing paid employment opportunities for the valley inhabitants and a big market for their agricultural produce. By the 1890s market crops like chili, apple, peach, and apricot had already pushed the subsistence products previously grown to a secondary position, and the value of arable land increased, making of the property that local people owned by virtue of old Spanish and Mexican Land Grants an attractive choice of investment for outsiders and Euro-American speculators. In fact, at the turn of the century, an investor group from Colorado bought all the Sebastián Martín Land Grant except for 23 farms along the river that were clai-med and occupied by heirs of Sebastián Martín (Rubright 1967: 106-108). The second blow of deep change came with World Wars I and II, most particularly with the construction, in 1940, of Los Alamos on the Pajarito Plateau, 25 miles southeast from Española. The project, started by the Army and soon placed un-der the responsibility of the newly created Atomic Energy Commission, aimed

9 Each of the Pueblo Indian villages in New Mexico supposedly received confirmation grants from the intruding Spaniards after the 1680 revolt, and although these grant documents have never been found, their title to the land was guaranteed by United States patents in 1864 (Rubright 1967: 75).

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at housing laboratories for the design and proof of nuclear weapons and, later on, nuclear reactors to produce atomic energy for the usa outer space program (Rubright 1967: 109).

At present, the Hispano population in Alcalde, like in most of the Española Valley, still represents a vast majority: 89 % of its 377 total inhabitants, according to the census of the year 2000, which is a figure significantly superior to the state average. Its Amerindian population represents 2.4 % of the total numbers, and

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Figure 8. San Juan Pueblo showing the encroaching southernmost portion of Alcalde. Courtesy by Dennis Oyenque.

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white non-Hispanics, that is, mostly Anglos, 7.7 %. The village median age, 30.6 years old, is lower than the state average, while median household income, 37 969 usd per year, is slightly above. This may seem strange considering that the percentage of the local population with a professional degree is significantly below the state average, a circumstance that may be explained by the fact that many people are self employed ranchers, others work in menial jobs at Los Alamos –one of the richest counties in the usa due to the presence of the military labs– and some combine ranching with paid employment. In fact the unemployment rate is low, 4.2 %, and there are other sources of employment such as commercial activities, education, health and social services, construction, and public administration as Española (four to five miles south) houses part of the public offices pertaining to Rio Arriba County (the rest are in Tierra Amarilla).

Alcalde Matachines

Matachines are customarily performed in Alcalde during Christmas (December 26-27) at the old chapel of San Antonio de Padua, located in what could be taken as the central plaza of this tiny settlement, and also in July for the feast of Santiago and Santa Ana at the new Santa Ana church, off the main road leading from Es-pañola to Taos. The performing group is traditionally organized by a mayordomo that, as a general rule, belongs to the Cofradía de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno. This is a lay penance confraternity of long existence all across New Mexico whose members are commonly known as penitentes. Usually the dancers are the same in both occasions, all of them voluntary members of the community and only male until 2004 except for the little girl playing as Malinche. On occasion, Alcalde matachines have also danced by request in certain civic celebrations of the His-pano community such as the annual commemoration of Juan de Oñate’s arrival in New Mexico, or in private family catholic rituals such as funerals.

Matachines and Comanches in December: Decline and Revival

December is the most active time of the year for Matachines. On the first day of Christmas, December 26, they appear for vespers in the early evening at the old San Antonio Chapel that also hosts one of the two Penitente chapter houses (moradas) active in Alcalde, around which luminaries are lit and the penitent brothers pray a series of rosaries. Sylvia Rodríguez asserts the dance begins around three and “is followed by vespers and a procession [….] north to the new church of Santa Ana” where the old chapel saints are left overnight (1996: 102). People

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I interviewed in 2004 and 2005 said the most important piece of the day is the Rosario, danced to accompany the brother’s prayers during the night procession after mass. Interestingly, Rodríguez mentions a set called by this name in the Alcalde performance but is intrigued about its meaning, which I shall discuss further below.

The ritual is longer and more complex on the 27, when the community also celebrates its first patron saint, San Antonio.10 Matachines dance at least twice on this date, after morning mass in front of the Santa Ana church and then again in the afternoon or throughout the day at one or more of the following locations: the houses of the mayordomo, the Malinche, and the Monarca, the homes of certain elders, and in front of the San Antonio chapel and the Casanova, a popular community dance hall where social gathering usually takes place when the day ritual activi-ties are over. Unique to the Alcalde Christmas tradition is the staging, immediately after the morning performance this day, of another pageant composed in the eighteenth century, Los Comanches that is played on horseback and portrays a battle between Mexicans and Comanche warriors led by the historically famous chief Cuerno Verde. After the display of this spectacular drama, the mayordomos host a noonday banquet for the public and, at night, before partying, people take their saints in procession back to the old chapel (Rodríguez 1996: 105; Lamadrid 2003: 66-69, 73-75).

On interview with Enrique Lamadrid, Roberto Vialpado Lara asserted that matachin and Comanche performances came from Abiquiú, a genízaro village11 up the Chama river, from where they dispersed to such distant places as Las Vegas, across the Sangre de Cristo mountains, and Socorro, to the south of Albuquerque. When this diffusion occurred is not clear, but it is generally held that Alcalde is one of the places where both have been yearly performed for the longest time, always together because in the old times the costumes and mystery of the matachines

10 Although the traditional feast day of San Antonio de Padua is June 13, decades ago a priest moved the fiesta to December 27 (Lamadrid 2003: 74).

11 Genízaros were detribalized plains Indian captives (Comanche, Apache, Ute, etc.) “rescued” from their Indian captors by the colonists and integrated, frequently since childhood, in the colonial Hispanic society as domestic servants. They received a Christian upbringing and usually recovered their liberty when reaching adulthood but almost never returned to their origin communities due to the process of cultural estrangement they had gone through. Their liminal condition made of them ideal autonomous mercenaries for the frontier defense; therefore, during the 18th century the colonial authorities created whole genízaro villages in the most isolated or exposed frontier areas of New Mexico where they granted them lands to serve as buffer communities against the nomadic Indians’ incursions (Levin 2008: 201-202).

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served to attract the attention of the Indians, while the purpose of Los Comanches was to pacify them (Lamadrid 2003: 73-74). According to Lamadrid, however, Alcalde –like many other villages– ceased to perform both temporarily after World War I, a lapse that followed a general period of decline at the turn of the century in the performance traditions all over New Mexico, probably due to the fact that men in this period frequently left for jobs in the railways and mining. Then, by the 1920s, the emerging Anglo art colonies in Taos and Santa Fe, together with members of the Hispano cultural elites, promoted a revival of Los Comanches that was echoed in some rural communities but languished again from the great 1929 depression to the postwar boom. During that period, many men went into the military and others were forced to seek work in migrant agricultural labor and distant mines, interrupting traditions. In Alcalde, a local revival in the early 1960s that survives into the present thanks to the efforts of Chicano cultural activists and community elders was rooted in a series of performances staged by returning World War II veterans who had made vows to rededicate themselves to their religion and community traditions (Lamadrid 2003: 69-71).

Sylvia Rodríguez attributes this pattern of attenuation and revitalization in the observance of village traditions among Hispanics also to the pressures of intensifying capitalism and the social ruptures and marginalization created by the impact of modernization and the urbanizing process, noting as well a direct link between the 1960s-1970s revival and the growth of ethno-cultural and ethno-political acti vism. Furthermore, the social and political concussions resulting from Anglo capitalist development, she rightly contends, have also contributed to reorient the focus of the matachines symbolic enactment away from Indo-Hispano power relations and towards intra-community hierarchy concerns and the reaffirmation of vernacular Catholicism as a means to resist against the tide of Anglo assimilation (Rodríguez 1996: 147-148). This is precisely the point I want to focus on in the remaining pages: I maintain that, in fact, symbolic reorientations still address Indo-Hispanic relations via obscuring conflict. Also, I shall expand on the local response to the challenges that the matachines tradition faces today as a cultural practice of social reproduction through the enhancement of group solidarity.

Matachines: Prayer and Devotion, Seasonal Cosmic Battle, or Pagan-Christian Conflict?

Besides Christmas, the other yearly occasion when matachines are performed in Alcalde is the feast of Santiago and Santa Ana, celebrated at the new church on July 25 or 26 (sometimes 24 to adjust the calendar to non working weekend

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time). This day the altar image of Santa Ana is taken outdoors and placed before a temporary template where a morning mariachi mass is held, and popular mu-sic, mostly Mexican, is played for entertainment before and after the matachines dance (figure 9). Apparently, Los Comanches is never included for this celebration: only on July 26 of 2000, according to Lamadrid (2003: 74), were they part of the program in a special observance for the millennium jubilee year. Food and non-alcoholic drinks are sold and amusement games are offered throughout the day in small, improvised stands set by local villagers and the money thus collected is used for the church. The dance floor is created by an open space left between the template with the altar, the food stands, and the seats for the audience (figures 1, 10, 11). The focal point of the feast since it was first celebrated, probably in the 1960s when the church was built, has been mass and the matachines, despite Rodríguez’ assertion that by the time she conducted her study, in 1989, they were no longer included in the program (1996: 102). I think that was rather an extraordinary occurrence because matachines have been continuously staged since I started fieldwork in 2003 and my interviewees do not recall a prolonged in te rruption of the dance for this festivity in that or any other period.

Although I have not witnessed December performances, Rodríguez and Romero’s descriptions are very similar to what I have seen in July. These authors, however, pay little attention to the troupe membership numbers, a detail I discovered has no minor importance as it reveals the meaning of the Rosario references that puzzled Rodríguez years ago and bespeaks of the symbolic reorientation of the dance.

Conquest, resistance, religious conversion, and reconciliation are the topics that scholars most commonly associate to this ritual drama. Its origin, diffusion and symbolic meanings have been the object of much research and speculation, frequently involving an etymological battle of Italian,12 Arabic and Nahuatl de-rivations, together with the tracing of ancient pagan and Christian symbolism.13 Such debates aim at explaining the widespread distribution in North America of a ritual performance that bears the same name and presents similar features across cultural boundaries but also the existence of resembling dances in mediae-val and renaissance Europe, some of which had the same or an almost identical name: Matachines in Spain, mattachins in France, and matacinio in Italy (Kurath

12 For a discussion of this etymology and the Italian origin theory, based on a supposedly explicit comparison by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, see Bonfiglioli 1991: 38-39; Stephenson 2001: 14; Acuña Delgado 2005: 23; Corominas 1954.

13 For summaries and detailed discussions of these writings see Champe (1983), Romero (1993), and Stephenson (2001). I herein take up and quote only some relevant details and arguments.

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Figure 9. Mariachi mass. Alcalde Matachines, Fiesta de Santa Ana, July 2004. Photograph: © Danna Levin.

Figure 10. Alcalde Matachines, Fiesta de Santa Ana, July 2004 Photograph: © Danna Levin.

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1957: 259). Scholarly theories, therefore, aspire to arrive at an explanation that is globally valid for the whole matachin phenomenon, including issues that are irrelevant from the perspective of local practice. I will summarize them below so the impact exerted upon folk interpretations by current local concerns regarding Anglo-American penetration can be clearly appreciated.

Some authors have linked Spanish, Italian, and French matachin perfor-mances to the German moriskentänzer and the English Morris (Kurath 1957: 259, 262; Ortiz Garay 1999: 3; Robb 1961), the name and symbolism of which clearly associate, like the Spanish moros y cristianos, to the Arab-Christian conflict. Others have explored the possibility that matachines evolved from pagan ritual dances used in ancient Greece and Rome to train warriors or celebrate military victories,14 or even from other European pre-Christian fertility rites that enacted the confrontation between “good-day-light” and “evil-night-darkness”, in which case the conflict and war imagery would refer to the symbolic battle of seasonal

14 This is based on a 1588 treatise by Thoinot Arbeau on popular European dances, Or-chestography (quoted by Champe 1980-1981: 39, 1983: 2).

Fig. 11. Alcalde Matachines, Fiesta de Santa Ana, July 2003. Photograph: © Danna Levin.

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forces, death and resurrection (Paul A. Walter 1919 –apud Stephenson 2001: 26–; Lyon 1974-1975: 26; Lea 1963-1964; Champe 1980-1981: 35).

Irrespective of the particular genealogy proposed, all these theories share the assumption that Europeans brought and imposed matachines onto different Native-American subjects who then created multiple modified versions of the received original. Nevertheless, except for a brief and up to now ignored referen-ce in a 1629 comedy by Francisco de Quevedo that evokes the two parallel files of dancers typical in North America –farting, he says, “is joyful because when someone farts everyone laughs, and innocent people grab their nose and stand face to face looking at each other like matachines”–,15 the structure of European performances as generally described in the sources –combat representations with four to eight buffoons disguised with masks and armor, usually dancing in circle accompanied by a flute or violin and appearing to kill each other with wooden swords–16 is very different to the one characterizing New Mexican and some nor-thern Mexican variants. These, as Rodríguez remarks, feature dancers who carry “rattles and tridents or fans,” not swords, and “wear high caps with streamers and feathers”, not helmets (1996: 6).

It was precisely to bridge this interpretive difficulty that an ultimate Arabic source was proposed for the dance on the grounds that its choreography is closer to the Catholic Moriscas of Latin Europe, which, like the German and English instances, are unscripted and symbolize combats between Moors and Christians (Kurath 1957: 262). The documented Spanish recourse to the re-enactment of that conflict in missionizing contexts and the melodic correspondences noted in section two of this paper contributed to this hypothesis, which considers that Malinche and Montezuma came to represent, respectively, Christians and Moors (pagans), while swords and helmets were substituted by tridents and high miter-looking caps to represent the Church and emphasize conversion over the violence of conquest. The Arabic etymological root, introduced in the discussion by Bessie and May Evans in 1931 and strongly supported by Gertrude P. Kurath in 1957, is the term mudawajjihin, meaning “those who stand face to face”, “those who put on a face” or “to wear a mask” (Stephenson 2001: 28-29; Kurath 1957: 259).

15 “Pero se ha de advertir que el Pedo … de suyo es cosa alegre, pues donde quiera que se suelta anda la risa y la chacota y se hunde la casa, poniendo los inocentes sus manos en figura de arrancarse las narizes, y mirándose unos a otros como matachines”(Francisco de Quevedo, Gracias y desgracias del ojo del culo. Dirigidas a Doña Iuana Mucha, montón de carne, muger gorda por arrobas. Escriviolas Juan Lamas el del camison cagado, quoted by Herrera 1999: 284).

16 Arbeau (1588), Tesoro de la lengua castellana (1611), Cobarrubias (1734), and other sources quoted by Bonfiglioli (1991: 39) and Harris (2008: 16-17).

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Brenda Romero (2007: 66-67), however, credits the Italian etymology as more convincing and explains Moorish-like elements suggesting that, by the time of the New World conquest, matachines had come to represent Moors or Islamic Turks recently converted, which would also account for their adoption as evan-gelizing instruments.

In recent years Adrian Treviño and Barbara Gilles (1994) took a different route to solve this puzzle. They proposed an indigenous, New World origin for the dance on the basis that the performance structure closely resembles the ancient tocotín and the Sonoran “Montezuma dance”, respectively described by Andrés Pérez de Ribas and Ignaz Pfefferkorn in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,17 and suggested the Nahuatl term matlatzini, which they interpreted to mean “ho no rable” or “spirit warrior”, as the likelier root to the word matachin. Their theory, however, has had little acceptance in standard scholarship on the grounds of its alleged lack of sufficient evidence, even when an Aztec descent for isolated elements like the rattles or cupiles (dancer headdress) had been proposed earlier (eg Champe 1983), and, as Max Harris contends (2008: 17), we actually have no record of the word matachin or any of its cognates in Europe before the 1530s. Based on this argument, Harris (1997, 2008: 16-17) considers the Mexica origin hypothesis plausible and speculates that, in Renaissance Europe, mattaccini could have become a generic term for a wide variety of foreign dances, including those early performed in Spain by Mexica Indians and witnessed by Italian observers who may have mispronounced the word matlatzini –or its derivations–, thereby coining a term later applied to a series of dances that blended once independent traditions in Europe and America.

The old World, Arabic related origin and mendicant transmission thesis still permeates most current interpretations. The majority revolve around Indo-Hispano relations, sometimes taking the symbolic plot to represent, as does Enrique La-madrid (2003: 1, 75), the conciliation of European and indigenous spirituality; sometimes asserting, like Ramón Gutiérrez, that although matachines celebrate ethno genesis and cultural creativity, they strongly denounce domination.18 Few authors consider new added meanings deriving from the post colonial circums-

17 Pérez de Ribas’ description appears in his 1645 Historia de los triumphos de nuestra santa fee (1992: 639-640) while Pfefferkorn’s is included in the second book of his Descripción de la provincia de Sonora (1983: 41-42). Both spoke of two files of dancers following patterns closely similar to the formations of what we now call matachines, along with other intriguing similarities (Stephenson 2001).

18 Gutiérrez makes an important contribution when he asserts that such denounciation is metaphorically formulated in the exchange of palma and guaje between Malinche and Montezu-

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tance that both Hispanics and Indians in New Mexico live; and even those who focus upon this issue, like Sylvia Rodríguez, offer no explanation regarding how resistance against Anglo assimilation translates into the dance symbolic plot and choreography, an aspect I shall now turn to via relating exegetical and performative elements recovered during field work.

When asked about the matachines origin, people in New Mexico may quote in broad lines the Euro-Arab argument outlined above. Nevertheless, the exegesis of the participants from several Hispanic and Pueblo communities –both performers and observers– makes more emphasis on its character as a prayer (plegaria) against evil and evil spirits then on the Christian-Pagan conflict, sometimes completely obliterating conversion as a symbolic argument.19 Furthermore, in Alcalde the whole dance is actually taken to represent the rosary, a traditional prayer that commemorates the Mysteries of the life of Jesus and the Virgin Mary; that is, the major events in their lives that are connected to Redemption. In fact, the Monarca (significantly never called Moctezuma in this location) is at the same time God Our Lord and the leading captain of an army of soldiers (the matachines) that confronts evil in war to protect the Malinche, who personifies the Virgin Mary, purity, and goodness; hence the choice of an innocent pre-adolescent girl to play this role.

As every catholic knows, rosary is at once the name of the prayer and the cir-cular string of beads used as a memory aid to keep count of its required recitations. These must include twenty sets of ten recitations of the “Hail Mary” –re presented each by a small bead in the string– and one of “The Lord’s Prayer” –re pre sented by a large bead that marks the end or beginning of each prayer decade. Thus the worshipper recites one decade for each of the twenty Redemption Mysteries.20 Standard rosary strings contain a total of 59 beads: a circle of 50 small divided by four large ones in five groups of ten and connected to a medal, plus a pendant string of five small beads used to tally optional prayers and ending with a cross or crucifix. Since the string contains five decades, to complete a rosary the worshi-pper must go over it a total of four times. Now, although exegetical explanations do not elaborate upon the symbol of the rosary within the dance, it is clear that

ma, which not only represents conversion but also marriage, the institution that most poignantly “structured social inequality in colonial New Mexico” (quoted by Rodríguez 1996: 144-145).

19 Interviews with Dennis Oyenque (2005, 2007), Joseph García (2005), Galento Martínez (2004), Elaine and Bobby Herrera (2007).

20 Fifteen before 2002 when the five Luminous Mysteries were added to the traditional set of the five Joyful, five Sorrowful, and five Glorious Mysteries.

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each dancer in the matachines troupe stands for one of the small beads in the rosary, reason why there should always be ten dancers who split in half to form two parallel rows of five. It is true that this requirement is not always fulfilled, I only saw eight in 2004 but I was told this was an irregularity due to a tide of waning interest the community hoped to surmount.

The possibility that this is a recent Alcalde reinterpretation reflecting current interest in highlighting the liturgical aspects of the dance in order to reaffirm Ca-tholicism before Anglo Protestant Christianity and, at the same time, underscore good neighborly ties with the Indians via obscuring the conquest motif cannot be discarded. The fact that previous authors describing other variants in Southwest usa counted twelve dancers, not ten, apart from the Malinche, Monarca, toro and abuelos, could indicate the phenomenon is restricted to this locality. Let us not forget that the files of dancers are not taken here to represent opposing parties of Christians and pagans that battle against each other but a whole army struggling to keep evil away, neither that the recently accelerated growth of Española exerts a strong economic and cultural pressure over both Alcalde and the neighboring Pueblo of Ohkay Oweenge, two communities that constitute the oldest spot of Indo-Hispano vicinity in New Mexico and have long established a cooperative modus vivendi. This turn, however, could also be of wider regional scope but more extensive fieldwork is required to determine its actual reach. Meanwhile, a detailed description of the performance based on Romero’s ethnography (1993: 232-236) and my own observation can illuminate the overall prayer/blessing metaphor.

The performance starts with a very simple entrance procession where mu-sicians and dancers occupy their positions defining “a ritual space by forming a double-file between and around which the drama takes place”. The musicians occupy the front (altar) position; facing them, the Monarca and Malinche open the ritual, moving backwards between the standing files, and as they progress the ma-ta chines kneel. The following set involves the alternation of two fragments, the cortesía that “features an exchange of the rattle and palma between the Malinche and the Mo nar ca while she faces him and rotates her arm around his” (figure 4), and the Ma linche dance where she proceeds back and forth through the matachines files following serpentine evolutions: First she dances winding in the middle corridor between the kneeling lines, carrying the Monarca’s guaje to the front and then goes back, this time weaving around the danzantes on one of the files; then she dances again along the corridor as she brings forth the palma and guaje and goes back through the danzantes of the other file to return the Monarca’s instruments. I was told that the arm movements preceding each exchange of palma and guaje

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symbolize a blessing from the Virgin/Malinche, who then takes the sanctified instruments around to bless each of the soldiers/matachines.

Romero groups all these procedures as part I of the performance and asserts that in part II the Monarca is the central character. First, he begins by what she describes as an exhaustive dance in which he extends alternately his legs to the abuelo (foot pantomime) and then dances from the front to the back raising the ma ta chines from their kneeling position, two by two. Finally, while he dances back and forth again between the matachines files they exchange positions in pairs, horizontally, and return to their original places. The three occasions I have seen the performance, however, there was no music or dancing break between the Malinche and Monarca sections that signaled a separation between parts “I” and “II”, and the Malinche took part in all the dance progressions that followed the so called “foot pantomi-me”. This fragment has been described as a sort of healing or awakening where the abuelo massages the leg of the Monarca. What I saw, however, was neither a reinvigorating nor a therapeutic interaction. Rather, the abuelo placed his whip momentarily on the ground at the center of the stage and went four times to vow before the Monarca, letting him pass each of his legs between his open arms on the first two occasions, and picking up the whip on the other two in order to pass it under each of the Monarca’s feet as he projected his legs forth (figure 12). This, I was explained, symbolizes a blessing and is a way to ground (¿or tie?) the Monarca on earth so he can properly protect and guide his army.

What Romero defines as part III of the performance is a complicated series of choreographies, started indeed after a brief music and dancing break every time I have been present: first the Monarca guides the matachines to produce formations that assume the shape of a cross while the Malinche stays in place at the very front facing the musicians. Then both proceed to “visit” and vow se-parately with every matachin, each along one of the files and facing the dancers alternatively from the middle corridor or from the outer flank in such a way that zig-zag or serpentine evolutions result. Finally, they both lead the matachines to new positions diagonally opposite to their original ones, drawing an X pattern progression as they follow the lead. The three evolutions comprising this section, which produce each a distinct imaginary design, are not always danced in the same order, but the cross fragment, properly the one called Rosario, has been interpreted by most scholars as a symbol of the introduction of Christianity. Alcalde participants think of it only as a devotional prayer and an offering to the Lord. Despite the exegetical and scholarly silence concerning the X design that ends this section I think it might reveal a Mesoamerican cosmic symbolism as it draws a quincunx-like map of the universe, marking the four quarters of the

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world and its center, so common in pre-conquest and colonial codices such as the Codex Mendoza or the Féjérváry.21 There is no room in this article to explore such hypothesis, but I consider it is an element we should start to think about as it suggests a Euro-American blend where the Native input is more pervasive then most academics writing on matachines have hitherto conceded.

The rest of the performance corresponds to the battle between the torito and the army soldiers (part IV), and to the rather short and simple conclusion, farewell or despedida (part V). Like in almost every New Mexico version of matachines, the torito here personifies the spirit of evil, while the abuelos are there to scare him away and support the Lord and his warriors in their effort to subdue his power.

Characters and choreography, but also steps and bodily movements in Alcalde current discourse on matachines converge in devotional meanings emphasizing prayer, offering, and the good vs evil struggle. Thus I was told that when matachines turn clockwise and counterclockwise in their own place, they are trying to scare evil spirits and double check they are no longer there. Likewise, the frequent step that requires them to push a leg sidewise while bending the other indicates kneeling. The paraphernalia too has Catholic liturgical meanings and functions. The palma, for example is said to represent the holy trinity, whence its trident shape, while the rattles seem to have instrumental rather than symbolic value since the noise they produce also helps to scare evil away. Finally, crowns and masks have the purpose of depersonalizing dancers hiding their individual fea tures from the observing audience and lending solemnity and joy to the ritual occasion by means of adornment.

Matachines Organization in a Changing Society

A decade ago Sylvia Rodríguez pointed out that although anthropologists stu-dying Mesoamerican societies had introduced the political economy of colonial and contemporary Indian-Ladino relations as a central variable in their analysis of ritual meanings, ethnologists of the Pueblo Indians had continued to focus more on the surviving elements of aboriginal cosmology than upon historically invented metaphors of socio-political significance and external projection. Their analyses, she contended, were largely made “with reference to environmental absolutes and [the] internal social structure” of communities misleadingly conceived as isolated totalities (1996: 143). Her book on matachines recovered from James C. Scott the

21 See the first plate of both Codex Mendoza (Berdan and Anawalt 1997) and Codex Féjérvary (León Portilla 1992).

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notion of “hidden transcript” to built a comparative ethnography of interethnic relations as metaphorically encoded in a shared cross-cultural tradition that covers Central New Mexico along the Rio Grande corridor from Taos to Tortugas; that is, a wide, multi-ethnic region where domination-dependency relations have historically run along ethnic lines in a multilayered pattern of inter-community convergen-ce and competition. At the end of her journey she came to the conclusion that material, perceptible features and symbolic interpretations distinguishing Pueblo and Hispanic performances respond not only to the internal structure of either group or the relations they established in the past, but also to economic, political and cultural pressures from without occurring in their living present. Thus, for the Pueblos, matachines portray European intrusion and forced conversion to Christianity, symbolizing as well resistance via discussing the social consequences of such intrusion and subverting alien rule and religiosity. Contrastingly, for His-panics, matachines celebrate the triumph and persistence of Catholicism, both over Indians and, perhaps most importantly, against Anglo assimilation.

Unlike most analyses previously put forth by academics, this discussion goes beyond the level of ritual meanings to analyze the sociocultural, political,

Fig. 12. Monarca dance, foot pantomime. Alcalde Matachines, Fiesta de Santa Ana, July 2004 Photograph: © Danna Levin.

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ecological, and historical settings that give the different matachines a particular ground. Rodríguez, however, only treats the practical operation of the dance as an institutionalized community endeavor that articulates kinship, gender, and neighborly relations, in detail for the Taos and Picurís instances. I think this aspect of the matachines, touched upon for Alcalde and San Juan by Brenda Romero, is essential to understand the complete phenomenon as a “total social fact” that reflects the dynamics of internal social arrangements and their connection to the external economic and political contexts within which local communities exist. This takes me, necessarily, to discuss both the recruitment process and the circumstantial de-terminations that impinge upon the participation of individuals in the performance; issues that stand beyond the sphere of symbol and meaning but help illuminate the lar ger picture of cultural and social transformations that people experience in the realm of contingency that constitutes history.

According to Romero (1993: 286) “the yearly organization of the dance is delegated to a different church mayordomo every year, someone who is usually married, and whose wife takes on the role of mayordoma”. To this we shall add that mayordomos are generally brothers of the local penitente morada, which, although related to the church, functions as a separate organization. Also, by the period I conducted fieldwork at least, the post did not have a fixed duration and, in fact, it was common for a mayordomo to last for several years. As a general rule, he is in charge of conducting direct business with the dancers, invariably male except for the Malinche until 2004 when Galento Martínez, a man who had held the position for several years, left the group and organized a whole female troupe that I will discuss below. The mayordoma then oversees other aspects of the feasts where matachines appear, specially organizing the preparation of the public meal in December or the food and game stands in July. Romero noticed, and I did as well, that the mayordomo frequently dances as Monarca while his daughter, or that of someone who has previously occupied the position, often assumes the role of Malinche.

The group is not organized on the basis of permanent membership; therefore, its composition changes almost every year. Recruitment relays on the voluntary participation of individuals who are prepared to commit themselves to the group, which means essentially attend the rehearsals and all public presentations, a commitment that has become quite difficult these days as many people work in paid employment and have few days off. To dance with the matachines it is not necessary to belong in the community or live in Alcalde, but most of the dancers are indeed from the village and those from other surrounding communities such as Lyden, La Canova, La Villita or Velarde are associated with the church in the

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community. Usually all of them belong to the morada. Those who want to dance in any given year just have to tell the mayordomo, around March, bring their own costume and paraphernalia and start rehearsing, and if they do not want to conti-nue they only have to let him know in advance. Many do it for several consecutive or non-consecutive years.

There is no formal selection process; rather, when there are more dancers than needed, their inclusion in public presentations is decided upon the degree of their commitment. In this sense, the July Santiago and Santa Ana feast is a crucial filter, for as Galento Martínez and Joseph García, the mayordomo in 2005, explained, everyone wants to dance in December because it is very important and entertaining whereas in July the event has a lower profile. Moreover, since this is the most difficult time in the year due to climatic conditions of extreme high temperatures, those who fail to participate in this date have less right to do it for Christmas. To dance matachin is therefore a commitment, often tied to a religious promise or manda but it is also an honor to be deserved. Matachines are not paid because, being fundamentally a ritual endeavor, they do not charge for their per-formance, which takes place only in religious fiestas and extraordinarily on special occasions like funerals or 50 years anniversaries of a community member.

The years 2003-2005 seem to have marked a moment of serious decline that could also be seen as a transformative re-start. It shall be remembered that on July of 2004 the mandatory ten matachines file of dancers could not be completed so there was only eight. That year, Galento Martínez had ceased to oversee their organization and, in collaboration with Elaine García, put together a parallel whole female group –except for the torito that continued to be a boy– because, he said, “nowadays men are too irregular and do not really commit themselves”. This matachinas troupe, initially comprising kin related women, adopted the name of Rainbow Dancers and made their first and unexpected public appea-rance in the Española Fiesta, celebrated in July every year to commemorate the arrival of Juan de Oñate. Despite the rejection they have experienced from some community members with a rather traditionalist position, they have been quite successful. Actually, in 2005 they saved the day for the Santa Ana feast as three of them danced with the male group on request of the mayordomo to substitute three men who failed showing up in the rehearsals shortly before the date. Although these participation failures are generally perceived as lack of commitment, they actually reveal the changing regional economy as they often result from labor restrictions inexistent in previous contexts of generalized self-employment. In 2007, for example, I interviewed a young 25 year old man from Velarde whose maternal family has participated with the matachines for generations as regular

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members of the Alcalde morada and who, having performed continuously since age 11, was not able to dance that year because he could not get the day off at Walmart, where he now works to sustain his family.

The appearance and activities of the Rainbow Dancers have been resented by some people for several reasons: firstly because the matachines tradition never in cluded female dancers before; secondly, because they are not structurally linked with the church, which means that their performance does not always have religious purposes but is rather treated as a spectacle for entertainment; finally, there is the per-ception that they are stealing and disrespectfully transforming a tradition which particulars they do not really know. Apart from the evident gender transgression of the rule, they are changing the style of the costumes and paraphernalia. Their new palmas are wider and have no decorations, while the traditional ones, like the cupiles, are old objects that pass from one generation to another and are usually decorated with the drawing of a rosary string of beads on one side and several de sig-ns on the other. The capes or tapalos they wear are silky and glittery and do not have the Virgin’s image, always present in the traditional ones that are made of color but not glittery clothes.

The main issues at stake here are the subversion of a gendered order of male predominance in the public sphere and the commoditization of a faith oriented practice that traditionally articulated social relations in terms of group solidarity and cooperative exchange not mediated by monetary transactions. This, of course, reveals the tensions created by the introduction of a modern, market oriented and urbanized economy and the kind of social relations it propitiates, as well as the gradual displacement of a rural self-sufficient economy where kinship and other non remunerated social relations once predominated.

Conclusion

The matachines tradition as today practiced in North America seems to have developed in central Mexico as a blend of European and Mesoamerican ritual elements and then traveled all across New Spain with Indian auxiliary troops and Spanish colonists, missionaries probably being responsible for its promotion and adoption. However, the fact that every explicit reference to the matachines in colonial documents, starting with Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1982: 88), is an allusion to something already extant and generally known, there being no mention about how and who introduced or taught the dance to the Indians, or when should Spaniards and mestizos perform it, could lead to suspect that its existence and basic structure predated the Spanish arrival. This in turn suggests that missionaries,

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rather than introducing the dance from zero, were instrumental in its assimilation to Christian celebrations and the catholization of its meanings and paraphernalia. Thus, in 1584, Baltasar de Obregón (1924: 255) remarked that certain dance performers he saw near present day El Paso “imitated the dance of the matachines”, alluding to something so common and widespread in New Spain that no more explanation was needed. Similarly, Lorenzo Gera (1736) and Bartolomhaus Braun (1752), Jesuit missionaries at Norogachi in the Sierra Tarahumara, said to have made, or to have on storage, some costumes for the matachines (Bonfiglioli 2000: 16), which indicates the ritual was regularly practiced by the time they wrote, and no document has been found that registers its introduction or first performances in the region. Finally, an eighteenth century Franciscan friar stationed in Texas advised his successor that Indians should dance matachines on Christmas and at the Corpus Christi procession (Stephenson 2001: 16-19), a reference that deserves the same comment as those from the Tarahumara just quoted.

How and when did matachines arrive in New Mexico is a mystery. The poet-soldier Gaspar de Villagrá mentions in his Historia de la Nueva México two occasions in 1598 when Oñate had conquest dramas represented: one before making contact with Pueblo people at Paso del Norte where the soldiers staged a drama composed by Capt. Farfán,22 and then again in San Gabriel after dedica-tion mass for the first church he built. Although these were rather performances of moros y cristianos, some have argued they prove that Oñate and his Franciscan companions introduced matachines to the region. Champe has proposed a likelier theory based on material from Bernalillo, where people commemorate with mata-chines their ancestors’ survival from the 1680 rebellion every 10th of August: It was probably Mexican Indian and Spanish colonists, she contends, who brought the dance from Zacatecas during Diego de Vargas 1693-1696 reconquest, since many Nahuas who certainly had it as a common practice lived in that mining district which provided many New Mexico reconquest colonists (Champe 1980-1981). The maypole segment in some Pueblo versions and the imaginary quincunx-like design in one of the dance sets commented above may constitute an evidence that a pre decessor of the dance, as Treviño and Gilles (1994) contend, was a common ritual among Nahua peoples who took along its catholicized version wherever they went as auxiliary troops.

While no conclusive argument seems possible regarding the origin of the matachines and the time, route, and means of their introduction in New Mexico,

22 “Cuio argumento sólo fue mostrarnos, el gran recibimiento que a la iglesia, toda la Nueva Mexico hazia” (Villagrá 1989 [1610]: 216).

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the evidence hitherto discussed supports the thesis that in this region the dance was somehow connected originally to the evangelizing program, and that its symbolism entails both conversion and resistance. Among the Pueblos, their ado-ption amounted to the seal of a pact with conquering Spaniards whereby native communities incorporated Christianity to their overall ritual practice and belief-system, which by no means meant renunciation to their traditional culture or absolute submission, whereas for the “Spaniards” and Central Mexican allies they purported victory and domination by means of conversion. But one may ask how “Spanish” were seventeenth and eighteenth century colonizers of New Mexico, and how Hispanic have they remained along the centuries. Perhaps the fact that those non-Pueblo New Mexican communities commonly identified as Hispano or Spanish have kept the matachines tradition alive is another indica-tion that, from the beginning, their composition was heterogeneous, including a high proportion of central Mexican indigenous and mixed-blood Spanish-Nahua individuals who, on the other hand, soon incorporated Pueblo blood and culture through miscegenation and every-day intercourse.

Most literature on the matachines assumes that sixteenth and seventeenth century groups of conquering settlers were mainly Spanish, which renders almost natural the hypothesis that they brought and imposed matachines as an evangelizing instrument, having impressed the dance with a symbolism of conquest and defeat by juxtaposing originally Iberian meanings, related to the Christian-Moor conflict, with New World conquest meanings related to the defeat of the Aztecs in central Mexico. Nevertheless, one could proceed conversely, taking the matachines not only as a phenomenon to be explained but as explaining evidence; that is, evi dence for the fact that the conquest and colonization of Northern New Spain was an interethnic enterprise and the so-called Spanish Americans of New Mexico at least, are, and have always been, a hybrid and complex mix, both culturally and biologically. This does not preclude the possibility that the matachines have strong elements denoting conquest and Christian-pagan conflict, or that mestizo conquerors had anyway dee-ply assimilated a Christian/Spanish ethos. It only adds complexity to the process of cultural transformation and acknowledges more importance to the central Mexican indigenous substratum of this particular ritual dance: the cosmographic design of some choreographic elements like the maypole or the quincunx.

The other conclusions we can draw from this article refer to the symbolic and operative transformations that matachines have undergone in Alcalde after New Mexico became part of the usa in 1848. Some may also apply to other spots in the Rio Grande corridor. Sylvia Rodríguez pointed out that economic, political and cultural pressures coming from without Pueblo and Hispano communities in

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recent history have impressed on the matachines dance a symbolic reorientation towards intra-community hierarchy concerns, or the reaffirmation of vernacular Catholicism as a means to resist Anglo Protestant assimilation, thereby bending the symbolic enactment away from Indo-Hispano power relations. In her view, material and emic interpretation differences between Pueblo and Hispanic performances stand almost as they existed before 1848, except for the fact that resistance against Aglo assimilation and cultural endurance are an added concern in both cases. Thus, she contends that, while for the Pueblos matachines portray European intrusion and forced conversion, symbolizing as well subversion of alien rule and religiosity, for Hispanics they still celebrate the triumph and persistence of Catholicism, both over Indians and against Anglos. I think, however, that the specific form the symbolic reorientation assumes in Alcalde towards emphasizing the liturgical character of the dance as a devotional rosary prayer and the obli-teration of conquest and violence do not imply the disappearance of concerns regarding Indo-Hispano power relations. On the contrary, those concerns are still present under a modified guise that responds, precisely, to the cultural and eco-nomic pressures introduced over both groups by the modern Anglo American way of life and institutions.

Alcalde and the surrounding area are among the first spots of Indo-Hispano vicinity and miscegenation in New Mexico. For centuries, local Tewa commu-nities and intruding Hispano/mestizo settlers competed over land and water and cooperated in agricultural activities, as well as in the defense against the raids of the nomadic Indians. The dynamic of their power relations resulted in both vecino encroachment on Pueblo lands and the establishment of cross-ethnic ties of kinship, sometimes forced, sometimes voluntary. By the time New Mexico became part of the United States, they had apparently reached a point of fairly stable compromise and deep codependency, but the arrival of Anglo settlers and speculators, as well as the imposition of a new legal framework, has confronted both communities to new threats over the control of local resources and the ca-pacity to keep their cultural traditions alive. Some of this threats affect Hispano/mestizos more poignantly, particularly after the 1960s, when Native American struggles for civil rights achieved important conquests that translated locally into slight advantages for the Pueblos, such as priority water rights, recognition of a community land base to be protected due to the acknowledgement of a legal tribal status that turns the Pueblos into wards of the United States Government, and the legal right to employment absentism for the observance of tribal ritual duties. Therefore, the need for Hispanics to emphasize good neighborly ties with the Indians and obscure historical conflict in order to project a brotherly Indo-

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Hispano image of a Native New Mexican community that, unlike Anglos, prays to the Catholic Lord and struggles to keep evil away.

Finally, a few words must be said about the recent gender bend of the mata-chines in Alcalde and how it relates to the sociological difficulties the community currently faces to sustain it as a cultural reproductive practice under capitalist modernization.

In this patriarchal community, late capitalist social structures have upset the gender division of labor and the traditional domestic role of women, while obstructing, at the same time, the practice of ritual activities typically associated to an agrarian way of life. Paradoxically, female participation in ritual practices like matachines, traditionally reserved for men, allows for the maintenance of traditions of social and cultural reproduction precisely via turning the old gender structure upside down. Matachin women take on formerly masculine roles in the public sphere of communal ritual thereby securing continuity by substituting men who cannot fulfill their duties temporarily. Nevertheless, this is possible preci-sely because their still widespread confinement to the domestic sphere translates into free time availability and a wider possibility to assume responsibilities not related to paid employment. No wonder the phenomenon provokes resentment and also enthusiasm, but the modernizing change in gender relations that is currently permitting cultural endurance may, in the long run, work against the preservation of tradition, as women incorporate more fully into the labor market and kinship solidarity structures associated to the extended family pattern break into a nuclear family predominance. Unless, of course, the community keeps the pace of creativity and manages to maintain a pattern of gender collaboration and/or secure through political action a franchise protecting intra-community spaces for social and cultural practice similar to the one that Native American tribes have conquered after long civil rights struggles.

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Interviews

Alfredo Montoya, Alcalde, New Mexico (2008).Dennis Oyenque, San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico (2005, 2007).Elaine Garcia, Alcalde, New Mexico (2004).Elaine & Bobby Herrera, Velarde, New Mexico (2008).Galento Martinez, Alcalde, New Mexico (2004).Joseph García, Alcalde, New Mexico (2005).

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The Matachines Dance in Alcalde, New Mexico

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Transcript of The Matachines Dance in Alcalde, New Mexico