Shaping Society through Dance: Mestizo Ritual Performance in the Peruvian Andes (review)

Shaping Society through Dance: Mestizo Ritual Performance in the Peruvian Andes. By Zoila S. Mendoza. (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. [xv, 285 p. + 1 CD. ISBN 0-226-52008-0 (cloth); 0-226-52009-9 (pbk.). $54 (cloth); $29 (pbk.).]

This volume comprises seven chapters, notes, representative photographs, references, and a list of the contents of the accompanying compact disc; also listed are the contents of a supplemental VHS-format videotape, available from the University of Chicago Press (ISBN 0-226-52010-2, $50).

In chapter 1, "An Introduction to the Study of Ritual Dance Performance in the Andes," Zoila S. Mendoza presents the main subject of her book: the comparsas, or ritual dance associations, of the region of Cusco, Peru. The major focus of her analysis in this book is the town of San Jerónimo and the Majeños and Qollas comparsas, which perform on the town's patron-saint day. The Qollas troupe "represents the llama drivers from higher altitudes," while members of the Majeños "impersonate wealthy merchants and landowners" (p. 4). In this first chapter, Mendoza situates the San Jerónimo district within the department of Cusco; discusses pertinent issues of ethnicity, race, and class in this region; explores the history of Cusco, formerly the capital of the Inca empire; examines the Andean cult of the saints and the cult's supporting, colonial-era cofradías (religious lay brotherhoods), the precursors of today's Andean ritual associations; and notes the importance of costumed and masked dances in preconquest Peru.

Chapter 2, "Folklore, Authenticity, and Traditions in Cusco Regional Identity," explores the means by which urban cusqueños--intellectuals and other members of the middle class--have been in the vanguard in "the folklorization of Cusco music and danzas" (p. 48). Early in the twentieth century, Cusco urban intellectuals became institutionally involved in reinventing expressive culture of the area, including dance. In this search for a kind of romantic "authenticity," "[t]he combination of European musical instruments with those associated with the Andean peasantry, the creation of stylized choreographies performed by urban mestizos in staged contexts, and the use of Inca imagery all resulted in new, unique forms that would subsequently influence the production of music and dance in the whole region" (p. 57).

In chapter 3, "The People of San Jerónimo, Their Lives, and Their Main Ritual in Regional and Historical Perspectives," Mendoza narrows the focus to her primary field site, the town of San Jerónimo, pursuing historical and ethnographic concerns: the colonial history of the parish of San Jerónimo; developments in San Jerónimo and Cusco since the 1940s; the ethnography of San Jerónimo in the 1980s; and Saint Jerome, the town's patron saint. She provides a chronology of the events leading up to and during the town's patron-saint festival, as observed in the course of her field research.

Parallel to an earlier article by Mendoza ("La comparsa majeños: Poder, prestigio y masculinidad entre los mestizos cuzqueños," in Música, danzas y máscaras en los Andes, ed. Raúl R. Romero [Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1993], 97-137), though written in greater depth and more theoretically oriented, is the fourth chapter of the present volume, which addresses the following topics: the muleteer (arriero) tradition in the Cusco area up to the 1920s; the early Majeños comparsa tradition in San Jerónimo and the concept of decency, or propriety (decencia); the subsequent reinvention of the Majeños in the 1970s; the re-creation of the Majeños in San Jerónimo in the 1980s and 1990s; the San Jerónimo Majeños dance (1989 and 1990); and economic, familial, and behavioral prerequisites for becoming a Majeños member. The model for the Majeños tradition is a "group of arrieros (muleteers) who traded alcoholic beverages such as wine and sugarcane brandy between...