A RESISTANCE DANCE
by David Bacon
Contexts, a publication of the American Sociological
Association
September 7, 2015, Summer 2015 issue
http://contexts.org/articles/a-resistance-dance/
All photos and text (c) David Bacon, 2015.
The Spaniards conquered the Zapotecs of the central
valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico, almost 500 years ago, in an earth-shattering series
of events. It changed everything in the lives of the conquered. So many died
that many indigenous peoples came close to disappearing; some estimates hold
that the indigenous population of the Americas was reduced by 90% in the two
centuries following the conquest. The population drop was so great that the
Spaniards later had to bring slaves to labor in their plantations on the Costa
Chica (Oaxaca's Pacific coast).
Such change and catastrophe, however, produced one of the
world's most beautiful dances: The Dance of the Feather. Today, it is performed
in a number of towns in central Oaxaca, among them the weaving village of
Teotitlan del Valle. In one of life's ironies, the forced migration of the
Zapotecs, driven from their homes by poverty and conquest, helped this
commemorative dance survive.
The name of the city, Teotitlán, comes from Nahuatl and
means "land of the gods". Its Zapotec name is Xaguixe, which means
"at the foot of the mountain". It still retains its Zapotec culture
and language. The dance is performed in the town plaza in front of the Preciosa
Sangre de Cristo Church, begun in 1581 and completed in 1758. The church sits
on the ruins of a Zapotec temple, which the Spanish destroyed.
The rattle and the baton, symbols of power.
The dance recalls the basic history of the conquest. At
the time of the Spaniards' arrival, indigenous people had been living in
Oaxaca's central valleys for 11,000 years. The first site of human habitation
is not far from Teotitlan, in the Guilá Naquitz cave near the town of Mitla.
The discovery of corncob fragments indicates that the world's first people to
cultivate corn lived there.
Doña Marina.
People speaking Zapotec in Oaxaca's central valleys built
towns with palaces, temples, ball courts and markets, coexisting and sometimes
fighting with each other until 1457. That year the Aztec tlatoani, or ruler,
Moctezuma invaded. First he conquered the towns inhabited by Mixtecs, then those
of the Zapotecs. The Aztec invasion halted when Hernando Cortes arrived in the
Yucatan, traveling up the coast of Tabasco in 1519. Cortes made alliances with
the Aztecs' enemies and marched on Tenochtitlan, their capital, massacring
thousands of indigenous people at Cholula on the way.
By then, the first Moctezuma was dead. The second
Moctezuma let Cortes and his soldiers into the city. Moctezuma was then taken
hostage and later murdered. The city's inhabitants rose up, forcing Cortes to
flee, but they won only temporary respite. Cortes laid siege to Tenochtitlan
and finally destroyed it, burying the huge temple pyramid under what is now
Mexico City's main cathedral and central plaza, the Zocalo. Moctezuma's
successor, Cuauhtemoc, was eventually captured and, with his death, the Aztec
empire crumbled.
Children representing the soldiers of Cortes march in
front of the community authorities.
To form alliances against the Aztecs, Cortes needed a
translator. First he found a priest who could speak Mayan, then a Nahuatl woman
from the Gulf Coast who could translate between Mayan and Nahuatl, the language
of the Aztecs and surrounding peoples. Malinalli, or Doña Marina, was one of 20
women given to the Spaniards by the residents of Tabasco. She became Cortes'
lover and advisor, and bore Cortes' first son, Martin.
The dance of Malinche.
Malinalli became known as the Malinche, an object of
hatred and veneration ever since. She is blamed for the defeat of the feathered
warriors of Tenochtitlan and the end of purely indigenous civilization in
Mexico. But she was also the mother of one of the first children borne of this
enormous clash. The Oaxacan Jose Vasconcellos, secretary of education in
Mexico's first post-Revolutionary government, called the mix a new race: la
raza cosmica or "the cosmic race." He and his intellectual companions
held that Mexico had people of mixed indigenous, African, and European
ancestry, and was therefore moving beyond the boundaries of the old world.
While the union of Malinalli and Cortes gave birth to the
mestizo, this did not free indigenous people, who were forced into conditions
close to slavery. When Cortes died, Martin became Marquis of the Valley of
Oaxaca. His lands included 23,000 people living in 11,500 square kilometers of
territory. The Spaniards set up the encomienda system, huge land grants that
included the indigenous population, forced into slavery to "pay" for
room, board, and religious instruction.
The symbols of nationalism incorporated into the dance.
Martin, so the legend goes, invented a dance to dramatize
the conquest of indigenous people by the Spaniards. Jorge Hernandez Diaz, an
anthropologist at the Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca, writes
that there are three theories of the origin of the dance. In one, Martin
celebrated the birth of twins by staging a fight between dancers representing
the conquering Spaniards (headed by Martin himself in the role of his father)
and the defeated native people. The roles of the dancers in the Dance of the
Feather today are still the same: Cortes, his captains and soldiers, Moctezuma
and his allies. The personality of Malinalli was split into the roles of two
people: Doña Marina and the Malinche.
Women watching the dancers.
A second version of the dance's history points to the
existence of performances carried out before the conquest, which represented
battles between different groups of the feathered warriors of the kingdoms of
that period. Yet a third version reported by Hernandez "has a more symbolic,
ancestral and astronomical role," which is also traced to the pre-conquest
epoch. In this, Moctezuma represents the sun, while other dancers perform the
role of planets.
"Independently of the historical origin of the
dance," Hernandez explains, "its essence is renewed, adapted and
given new meaning with the symbolism it has for the social group that takes
ownership of it throughout its history, giving it new life." The dance is
an important part of the celebration of the town's fiesta. "It is a tradition,"
he continues, "that can't be overlooked, given that it's part of its
cultural, ceremonial and spiritual identity." Eighty-six percent of the
town's residents aspire to become actors in this dance, he says.
Dancers in the courtyard in front of the church.
Martin's intention was to use the dance justify his rule
and to emphasize to indigenous people the uselessness of resistance. But after
over 450 years, the dance no longer means what it once did. If anything, it
represents a spirit of resistance to those forces that would deny Zapotecs
their language, dance, music, and other cultural traditions. The Dance of the
Feather is one element of a broader indigenous culture maintained through
hundreds of years of colonization, followed by decades of official national
policies denying their culture's autonomy and value.
Hernandez says, "The Dance of the Feather keeps its
importance in communities that hold to the tradition, like Teotitlan del Valle,
because it fulfills the function of reaffirming their cultural identity by
recalling a glorious past, that is, of what the community was before the
arrival of the Spanish, and what it continues to be in spite of them. The Dance
prevents forgetting, because it recalls the struggle that native Zapotecs
maintained with the Spanish to defend their territory, and from whom they
inherited, according to the perception of the townspeople, only negative
things."
Teotiles dancing.
In Teotitlan del Valle, the dance also highlights another
contradiction. Fifty years ago, the town was very poor and much of the
traditional weaving craft that had created part of its historical identity was
no longer practiced. That poverty, reinforced by economic reforms and trade
agreements that undermined Oaxaca's agricultural economy, forced many of the
town's residents to leave. They became migrants, first within Mexico and then
across the border into the United States. As remittances began arriving to
support the families left behind, expatriates also provided money to buy
materials for weaving. With the influx of tourists anxious to buy rugs in
traditional Zapotec designs, weaving workshops were reestablished.
Migrants saved money to buy the materials for the
elaborate clothing and headdresses needed for the Dance of the Feather. Some returned
home to fulfill the three-year commitment required of those wanting to perform
the dance.
Teotitlan has a complicated relationship with migration.
The remittances helped to revitalize the town. The workshops now weave not just
for tourists, but also for museums in the U.S. But how easy is it to keep a
culture in an economy that still depends heavily on the willingness of people
to leave home to seek work elsewhere? "This dance is also a strategy for
defense against what they felt were negative influences of the modern world,
against the consequences of migration, against the loss of moral values and
customs," Hernandez emphasizes.
The community's authorities preside over the dance.
"Why do people make the commitment?" he asks.
"These commitments have a religious and spiritual importance. [Benito
Mendoza Mendoza, who played Moctezuma in 1977, says:] 'In some cases we do it
because the Lord helped us overcome our food situation, when we had no money.
Others do it because of their faith. And other people do it because they had a
personal problem, or were sick and got better. Therefore, to give thanks to God
that they were able to move forward they made the commitment. There are many
reasons why people do it.'"
The Dance of the Feather in Teotitlan has had its ups and
downs, according to Hernandez. "There have been long periods in which it
wasn't performed, until someone takes the initiative to revive it. In different
historical periods various situations have caused a break in the tradition.
Modern social forces have played a paradoxical role, sometimes leading to
changes in the dance. But at the same time, they've allowed it to survive, to
be reproduced and to continue to exist."
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