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5. The Mystery of Movement: Dancing in Colonial New Spain
- University of Texas Press
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1 2 7 d a n c i n g i n c o l o n i a l n e w s p a i n the mystery of movement Five Steps of Conquistadors In 1522, upon hearing of the final conquest of the Aztec , Charles V appointed Hernán Cortés governor and captain general of New Spain. Within the next few years, Cortés continued his military campaigns until the Spanish colony was almost double the size of the former Aztec empire. Bernal Díaz del Castillo tells us that in 1524 Cortés set out on yet another expedition to amass even more wealth and land. As he made his journey toward South America, he passed through various towns, where he was welcomed with “great reception and fiestas.” For instance, in the gulf city of Coatzacoalcos, Indians greeted Cortés with “dances of Moors and Christians and other great rejoicings and cunning diversions.”¹ Moros y cristianos are staged reenactments of military battles between Moors and Christians. The tradition developed in Spain, but Spaniards brought it to the New World in the sixteenth century, where it quickly became popular, especially in New Spain. These scenarios incorporated dance and dialogue to represent the military defeat of the Christians (almost always led by Saint James, the patron saint of the Spanish army) over the Moors (often led by Pilate ). Spaniards participated in some of the New World moros y cristianos, but for the most part Indians played Christians and Moors alike, which not only symbolically integrated Indians into a history of Spanish domination, but also literally forced natives to repeatedly and publicly affirm their own subordination.² According to Arturo Warman, Bernal Díaz’s reference to the moros y cristianos at Coatzacoalcos is the first in the chronicles of the New World, although it certainly is not the last. In June 1530 Cort és returned to New Spain after a two-year sojourn in Spain. Díaz tells us that Cortés, by then the “Marqu és del Valle de Oaxaca,” was again fêted by Spanish cavaliers and natives alike when he arrived in Texcoco. Indians assembled in their best dress, and armed as warriors, filled the lake with their canoes; “the dancing continued in every street during the day, and at night the city was illuminated with lights at every door.”³ We know of another historic performance of moros y cristianos from the relación of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, the renowned explorer who survived a fatal shipwreck off the shores of Texas, from where he made a nine-year journey on foot to New Spain. Cabeza de Vaca tells us that his arrival in Mexico City on July 23, 1536, coincided with the feast of Santiago and that the viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza, and Cortés celebrated his rescue and arrival with the presentation of a bullfight and a performance of moros y cristianos.⁴ In 1538 Charles V of Spain and Francis I of France brokered a peace treaty. When news arrived in New Spain, Spaniards and Indians alike celebrated by 1 2 8 d a n c i n g t h e n e w w o r l d transforming the plaza in Mexico City into a metaphorical City of Rhodes and reenacting the series of battles that led to the Christian liberation of the island from the Turks. Hernán Cortés himself allegedly performed the role of the Christian commander and Indians played newly arrived Dominican missionaries . The audience largely consisted of the conquistadors ’ wives, who watched the action from windows that lined the Great Plaza. One section of the Códice de Tlatelolco commemorates a celebration of the 1556 coronation of King Philip II of Spain (fig. 5.1).⁵ The scene depicts the archbishop, Alonso de Montúfar, and other colonial administrators (seated on the central platform) and the caciques of Tenochtitlan, Tlacopan, and Texcoco (seated on their thrones between the warriors and the colonial officials). Beneath them, Mexica eagle and jaguar warriors perform a military danza. Though this particular ceremony is not a moros y cristianos per se, it is an example of the types of militarized dances that formed what Richard C. Trexler has influentially called “military theatre.” These military reenactments were performed on special occasions, to commemorate events in Spanish royal history as well as for viceregal or clerical entradas. As rituals of “humiliation,” colonial military reenactments shared a...