Aztecs, Moors, and Christians: Festivals of Reconquest in Mexico and Spain

2. Reading the Mask (Cuetzalan, 1988)

2 Reading the Mask (Cuetzalan, 1988) The morismas of Bracho are part of a tradition of mock battles between Moors and Christians that is long-standing, widespread, and formally diverse. It draws on both European and indigenous sources, and, despite its apparent focus on past heroics, it is equally concerned with present power structures. The tradition may have begun in Spain as early as 1150 and is arguably more popular there today than at any time in the past eight centuries. Along a broad swath of Spain’s Mediterranean coast, stretching from Catalonia in the north to Andalusia in the south and from the Balearic Islands offshore to the mountains and central plateau inland, fiestas (festivals) and danzas (dances) of Moors and Christians make up a large part of the annual festive calendar. Scattered examples can be found in Galicia, in neighboring Portugal, across the Pyrenees in southern France, and in parts of Italy once ruled by Spain. The tradition’s European roots were transplanted to Asia and the Americas by sixteenth-century conquistadors, missionaries, and traders. Its offshoots can be found as far afield as Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Chile, Brazil, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and south India . In some cases, the historical referent remains European: Moors and Christians, the Twelve Peers of France, or Santiago Matamoros (Saint James, patron saint of Spain and killer of Moors). In other cases, it has been transposed into a local key: the conquest of Mexico, Pizarro and the Incas, or Spanish settlers and Comanche raiders. Many scholars assume that the danza de los matachines is another variant of the same tradition. Formally, too, the tradition covers a wide range. Some performances are on a large scale. In Spain, the fiestas de moros y cristianos in Alcoy (Alicante) dwarf even the morismas of Bracho. As many as twelve thousand lavishly costumed participants, armed with arquebuses and detonating several tons of gunpowder, struggle for control of a strategic castle erected annually in the town’s main square. Kāralmān Charitam, a traditional south Indian musical dramatization of the story of Kāralmān (Charlemagne) and the Twelve Peers of France, “formerly required . . . one hundred performers and fifteen days to perform.”1 Now it is divided into four separate plays. On a smaller scale, the two dozen Moors and Christians who fight on horseback in the field behind the parish church of Chimayo (New Mexico) use swords rather than guns, as do the four Moors and four Christians who stage bombastic tirades and comic interludes in a narrow street in the high mountain village of Trevelez (Granada). Dances may be as long as the eight-hour danza de la pluma that tells the epic story of Cortés and Motecuzoma during the first week of July in Teotitlan del Valle (Oaxaca), or 18 2. reading the mask (cuetzalan, 1988) 19 as brief as the ten-minute circle dance of Turks and hobby horses that opens the Corpus Christi festivities in the Catalan town of Berga (Barcelona). The tradition, in other words, is united less by formal boundaries than by its common theme of the conquest of Moors, Turks, and Native Americans by European Christians. The tradition draws on both European and indigenous sources. The Aztec calendar was packed with religious festivals that incorporated dances, mock battles, gladiatorial combat, long-distance runs, and human sacrifices. Activity spread not only through all the public and much of the private space of the capital city of Tenochtitlan but also into the surrounding mountains. These and other indigenous practices have profoundly influenced the tradition of moros y cristianos in the Americas . They may also have helped, in less obvious ways, to shape the tradition in Spain. In 1522, two years before the first notice of a moros y cristianos in the Americas , Mexican dancers performed in Seville. As theatrical works rather than historical reenactments, the performances represent the past in order to comment on the present, often interrogating it in startling ways. In the morismas of Bracho, the sanctioned narrative of Catholic triumph masks a subtext that invokes the world of the Aztecs in order to challenge current power structures. While such a dissenting voice is not always present in festivals and dances of Moors and Christians, it is common enough in Mexico and in folk performances in Spain to warrant careful attention. The capacity of the tradition to embrace such dissent is one reason it has survived...