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16. The Travels of Alonso Ponce (New Spain, 1584 –1589)
- University of Texas Press
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16 The Travels of Alonso Ponce (New Spain, 1584 –1589) Between September 1584 and June 1589, Alonso Ponce traveled relentlessly through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, visiting 176 Franciscan convents in fulfillment of his calling as commissary general of the Franciscan order in New Spain. His companion and secretary, Antonio de Ciudad Real, kept a daily record of their journeys. Published most recently under the title Tratado curioso y docto de las grandezas de la Nueva España, Ciudad Real’s account offers valuable insight into the ecclesiastical politics of the day and much anthropological, archaeological , and geographical detail about the regions through which the two friars traveled. Less often noted are the dances, plays, and mock battles staged by indigenous peoples along the way. Although my main interest here is in the mock battles, the other performances also warrant our attention. Ciudad Real provides a detailed (and, to the best of my knowledge, unique) description of a danza de los voladores in sixteenthcentury Guatemala (1586).1 The friars also admired the acrobatic skill of a juego de palo (log game) in the village of Mazatlan ( Jalisco) in February 1587. One dancer lay on his back, with his feet in the air, juggling a carved and painted pole some five and a half feet in length and “a hand’s breadth around” in time to the beat of a teponaztli drum, while others danced around him, singing and shaking gourd rattles filled with small stones or grain. The juggler repeatedly hurled the pole in the air with the soles of his feet, his thighs, or the backs of his calves, catching it again in time to the music; spun it around on one foot while controlling it with the other; and finally allowed two of the younger dancers to sit astride the pole, one at either end, while he created a seesaw effect in time to the music. Although, according to Ciudad Real, this game was widespread in New Spain, few knew how to do it well. But the friar judged the Mazatlan performer “very skillful,” adding that “if he were in Spain, he would soon be rich.” This is not as far-fetched as it sounds: two Indians who performed the juego de palo had traveled to Europe with Cortés in 1528, performing to great acclaim before both pope and emperor.2 The friars also saw several “dances of imitation blacks.” In September 1588, in Tekax (Yucatan), a troupe of young men “in the form of blacks, representing demons ,” greeted Ponce with a dance. But when a choir sang several stanzas of polyphonic song that included the name of Jesus, the negrillos “all fell to the ground and trembled, making a thousand faces and shakings in token of their fear and dread.” And in San Jerónimo (Michoacan), in November 1586, an Indian dressed and speaking “like a newly imported black” exchanged pleasantries and played cards with another dressed as Death.3 Other dances included “a dance of masked Indians” and 153 “an artificial bull,” who performed together to the beat of a hand-held drum; and a “dance of ironsmiths” who set up their forge, with all its trappings and a large pair of bellows, on the patio of the convent in Acámbaro (Guanajuato), and hammered in time to a timbrel while “stonecutters” danced and worked in time to another. In Kantunil (Yucatan), the friars saw an “ancient” dance known as zonó in the local language. Six dancers carried a litter that supported “something like a pulpit, over five feet high, covered from top to bottom with sheets of painted cotton,” in which a splendidly dressed Indian, carrying rattles in one hand and a feathered fly- flap in the other, shook and whistled in time to a teponaztli drum while the bearers and the many other dancers also sang, whistled, and shook their feet to the drum beat, all together “making much noise.”4 Of some dances Ciudad Real tells us only that the dancers wore “many beautiful feathers,” carried “many rattles,” or wore masks, moved beautifully, and imitated the song of “certain nocturnal birds of the region.” On one occasion, in Tlaxcala, in September 1584, he mentions tantalizingly that “twelve teams of Indians” came out to greet the commissary general, each performing a different dance “in their old way” and all dressed “as they used to for the great feast days in the time of their paganism,” but offers no further details...