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R.B. A Ritualistic Fusion of the Old and New Worlds Dance has long been a part of human culture. Even today, dancing is everywhere and everybody has been party to it in some way or another. We marvel at the grace and beauty of the ballet, or we learn about a foreign culture by attending a cultural dance performance. We go to clubs on weekends to get down, or we dress up to waltz at a ball. We turn on the television and catch a dancesport competition on PBS, or we sit back and watch So You Think You Can Dance? on Fox. We become enraptured by the past as we observe a ritualistic rain dance in the desert or a historical reenactment taking place in dance form. Generally speaking, each of the preceding examples shows the following reasons for dancing in human culture: we dance as an exercise in aesthetic performance, as a means to be social, as a way to compete, and as a part of ceremonies or rituals. Every dance operates on at least one of these four levels, often incorporating elements across several. While today there is an emphasis on competition and dancing socially for pleasure—the consequence of the rise of the middle class and the concept of leisure time that was concurrent with the industrialization of the world—dance was first and foremost a ritual, a symbol, and a poetic retelling of history and folklore with the human body. The development of the matachines dance as it is known in Mexico and New Mexico proves to be no exception. From its origins in the Old World to its transformation and appropriation in the New World, the matachines is danced at religious occasions and celebrations and recounts (or in some cases, revises) a history. The following paper will explore the Old World origins of the matachines dance, the New World factors that provided for its appropriation, and the history told (or altered and retold) by the matachines itself. While the matachines is most associated with a dance or cultural significance to Indian groups in Mexico and New Mexico, its origins lie in the Old World. One school of thought regarding the origins of the matachines uses etymology to link the dance to Moorish dances brought to Spain (and subsequently to Italy and France) in the earlier portion of the last millennium. Indeed, the etymology of the word matachín has been hypothesized (though not actually proven) to be of Arabic root. It has been proposed that matachín is a corruption of the Arabic word mudawahhijen, meaning “those who put on a face” or “those who face each other,” referring either to the masks that are traditionally worn by some dancers in the matachines or to certain formations in the matachines where the dancers face each other. Another origin theory also traces the word matachín to Italy, after the dance had supposedly been passed from the Orient to Greece, and from there to Italy and to Spain. With this path of inheritance ascribed to the dance, the matachines may have originally been born in Italy as a satirical dance that lampooned Marco Polo. Indeed, the word mattacchióne in Italian means “prankster” or “jester,” and is consistent with this explanation. But whatever the true origin of the dance may be, it is commonly accepted among ethnographic anthropologists that the matachines has a root in the Old World somehow, and the dance as we know it is performed today was not born solely out of the New World. What is known for certain about the Old World matachines is that it was widely known of in Europe in the time before Spanish importation to the New World. Regardless of origin, the European matachines progenitors fell under the category of ritual dramas, being performed in the courts of the Old World in places as culturally and linguistically disparate as Spain, France, Italy, and Germany. The Spanish version comes from something known as moros y cristianos—Moors and Christians—referring to the attempted conquest of Spain by the North Africans from across the Strait of Gibraltar. This dramatization and other variants of it were usually performed at the European courts at the visits of foreign dignitaries or at other special occasions—including holy days. It is the matachines dance that is derived from these dramatizations that Spanish missionaries—who accompanied the conquistadores—carried over to the New World in the sixteenth century. The drama surrounding the Moorish invasion of and repulsion from Spain was still fresh in the minds of these missionaries, who found it easy to adapt the dramatic representation of the dance to the desired conquest of the Aztec empire. What made the use of the dance as a form of cultural conquest even easier was the rich tradition of dance already preexisting in pre-Columbian cultures. These two factors made the matachines a very easy cultural import for Spanish missionaries. In August of 1523, three Franciscans arrived in Tenochtitlán, followed by twelve more friars in May 1524, who were sent by Cortés himself in order to Christianize the Aztecs. Drawing on their knowledge base of medieval drama (e.g. the matachines dance as it was known to those in Europe), they blended these religiously-charged dances the rich local traditions of ritual, ceremony, and drama indigenous to Aztec culture. This syncretism of Old and New World traditions in regards to the dance eventually gave rise to the matachines as it existed within the New World as a result of the evangelical program of the Franciscan friars. Sacrificial drama existed in pre-Colombian Aztec culture, as well as reenactments complete with mock battle, masked dancing, and puppetry. It is no wonder, then, that the dance was so easily translatable, even to the point where the Catholic didactic theater (as imported by the Franciscans) became a veritable lingua franca between the Aztecs and Spaniards. The dance’s initial religious roots at least partially explains the matachines being performed on certain religious holidays, sometimes inside churches, where one does not usually expect to find dancing. Although there was an agenda regarding the intended meaning of the matachines dance by the Spanish missionaries as a metaphor for the Christianization and conquest of the Aztecs by recalling historical images of how the Moors took hold of Christian Spain, it soon became evident that the meanings of the matachines—indeed, of all cultural imports—could not be controlled by the Spaniards. There soon existed a disparity between the original historical representation of the dance as interpreted by the Spanish and the essential appropriation and rewriting of European history to meet the dramaturgical needs of the indigenous people the Spaniards sought to subjugate. For example, in one Mexican version of the moros y cristianos, the Moorish sultan and his aide were instead represented as Cortés and his aide. In the traditional moros y cristianos, Spanish Christian forces repel the Moors from advancing any further; in the altered version, and Indian army defeated Cortés. All of this cultural appropriation occurred for the most part without the knowledge of the Spaniards; the Spanish allowed the dancing to continue, thinking they were succeeding at evangelizing and subjugating the indigenous population, when in reality, they inadvertently allowed a way for these Indians to retain their own culture and in some ways subvert Spanish rule. Through ways that were responsible for the above transformation, the dance assumes slightly different meanings in each local context as a function of local values or history. The matachines as it exists in New Mexico is an interesting example. The dance was brought to New Mexico by Juan de Oñate (beginning in 1598), who deliberately used performance as a means for conquest (not much differently than how the Franciscan friars used the dance as a didactic tool for conversion). This political drama was taken into the New Mexican frontier and performed for various Indian groups, complete with live artillery fire, which was said to cause fear among those who watched it. This display of military firepower, thinly veiled as a moros y cristianos reenactment, may have caused some leaders to voluntarily render deference to Spain. Some Indian groups resisted or fled, while some welcomed the Spaniards openly. Between both these subsets of Pueblo Indian groups (that is, between those who deferred to the Spanish and those who fled and were subsequently forcefully subjugated), different stories are told by the matachines. The groups that accepted the Spanish (henceforth, “Hispanic groups”) acknowledge that the dance was brought to them by de Oñate, or by reconquest leader Diego de Vargas, or by Cortés himself; the groups that resisted the Spanish (henceforth, “Indian groups”) claim the dance was brought from Mexico by Montezuma. This disparity regarding the history of the dance highlights local values: the Hispanic groups engage in a relatively straight-forward version of history due to their acceptance of the Spanish explorers (and consequently, their values and beliefs over time through miscegenation) during the conquest or reconquest, while the Indian groups effectively rewrite the history of the dance to highlight their connection with the indigenous people of Mexico who were also conquered by the Spanish. Moreover, both groups perform the dance at different times of the year: Hispanic groups perform it during both the summer and the winter, where the Indian groups perform the dance only in the winter. It is important to note that the winter is typically a time when the Indian groups have other social dances that mock or parody outside groups, so performing the matachines at such a time links it to this practice. In any case, both groups use the dance to reinforce their views of history and their shared values, further creating a distinction among in- and out-groups, forging a collective identity for each group. Garay, Andrés Ortiz. “Los matachines: soldados de la Virgen.” Mexico Desconocido. Jan 1999. 11 Dec 2005. <http://www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx/espanol/cultura_y_sociedad/ fiestas_y_tradiciones/detalle.cfm?idpag=3268&idsec=15&idsub=61>. Melzi, Robert C. The New College Italian and English Dictionary. New York, NY: Amsco School Publications, Inc., 1976. Rodríguez, Sylvia. The Matachines Dance: Ritual Symbolism and Interethnic Relations in the Upper Río Grande Valley. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Romero, Brenda M. “Old World Origins of the Matachines Dance.” Vistas of American Music, eds. Susan L. Porter and John Graziano. Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1999, pp. 339-356. Sponsler, Claire. Ritual Imports: Performing Medieval Drama in America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. |