Indigenous Education through Dance and Ceremony

A Mexica Palimpsest

E. Colín

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137353610
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In the first book on Aztec dance in the United States, Ernesto Colín combines cultural anthropology, educational theory, and postcolonial theory to create an innovative, interdisciplinary, long-term ethnography of an Aztec dance circle and makes a case for the use of the metaphor of palimpsest as an ethnographic research tool.

1

A Danza Landscape

On May 1, 2006, historic demonstrations¹ ignited across the United States when millions turned out to support the cause of (im)migrant and worker rights in cities large and small. In San José, California, more than 125,000 people marched from the East Side epicenter of the Mexican-origin community to the city hall in downtown toward Guadalupe River Park (which, appropriately, is a sacred site for the Ohlone Nation). Sergeant Nick Muyo of the San José police department was surprised by the attendance and called it one of the largest demonstrations in the city’s history (McPherson, 2006). At the head of the serpentine procession were members of a Mexica (Aztec)² dance group, Calpulli Tonalehqueh. In full regalia and along with dancers from associated Aztec dance groups, the dancers paced the procession with drums that carried over the shouts of organizer bullhorns. Calpulli Tonalehqueh was invited to head the march by local labor leaders and was placed ahead of the images of Catholic saints, police cavalcades, and the community at large. It was a historic day. Children missed school. Employers closed businesses to allow their workers to attend. Day laborers halted their searches, and counter-protesters organized their platforms. A plane flew overhead pulling a banner that read, “Wake up America close the borders. Americaisfull.com” (Ostrom et al., 2006). Calpulli Tonalehqueh’s symbolic place at the head of the serpentine mass that day was a product of their cultural diffusion efforts and community work. They have been invited to head that demonstration every year since that time as a symbolic spearhead in the struggle for human rights, one that has been active for centuries.

I was a 10-year veteran of Danza³ on that day in 2006 and had been a part of Calpulli Tonalehqueh for just over a year. During that 10-year span I had attended many events lying on a political and ceremonial spectrum (e.g., the annual commemoration of the occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco by the American Indian Movement), but I had never felt such a vibrant, almost seismic, atmosphere around Danza in the United States. It was thrilling to reflect upon how in city after city millions of people would march in solidarity for (im)migrant rights and that our dancers would be at the head of so many of these manifestations.

Marching for civil rights in San José was not new. In September 1970, for example, at least 1,000 people marched in San José’s eastside in solidarity with the Chicano community of Los Angeles, who on August 29 gathered in Belvedere Park to protest the Vietnam War and were assailed by a historic display of police brutality by the Los Angeles police department. That event is known as the Chicano Moratorium. The year 2010 marked its fortieth anniversary. The 1970 march in San José took place a few days after the Chicano Moratorium and was documented by local public television stations (NCPB/KQED, 1970). As we fast-forward, the 2006 march in San José can be viewed as an amplified echo of the 1970 manifestation, carrying a similar message of solidarity and human/civil rights but multiplying the participation by a factor of one hundred.

The morning of the May 1, 2006 march, I arrived early to help Yei Tochtli Mitlalpilli (Mitlalpilli hereafter), the head of Calpulli Tonalehqueh, get ready at his home in downtown San José. Two other members, Xochicuauhtli and Don Toño, were loading a flatbed truck that would carry the drums, water, and banners for the dancers in the march. The principal banner that Calpulli Tonalehqueh used in the march was a 10-by-10-foot banner that represents the Mexica flag. It is a replica of the pantli (flag) now expropriated in the Vatican archives that was carried by Cuitlahuac when leading the indigenous resistance to the sixteenth-century Spanish invasion of México City. On a day when hundreds of US and Mexican flags would wave on the main boulevards of San José, a giant Mexica flag led the way. Calpulli Tonalehqueh’s vision is to study and carry out indigenous traditions but also position themselves in the community, providing avenues for cultural diffusion and community empowerment.

At the historic intersection of Story and King roads, human chains of volunteers tenuously contained the eruption of people in several large parking lots. I felt like I was in a beehive of white shirts, waving flags, and horns. I was unprepared for the sensory overload but do remember the crowd parting for those of us who were in ceremonial regalia. We started dancing and moving the mass. The moment uncapped all the energy the crowd had reserved. Several other local dance groups joined Calpulli Tonalehqueh, including the Tezcatlipoca group and another, Mictlan, the group to which Tonalehqueh belonged before a split. Danza groups had collaborated on similar events in the community. Soon we broke into lines and led the mass surrounded by photographers, vuvuzelas, and, in an instance of historical irony, a flank of mounted police.

We proceeded through the eastside of San José, which had the highest concentration of immigrants in general, Mexicans in particular. San José has been an immigrant city since the late eighteenth century. With the whole parade behind us, I felt awe. Streets were closed. Thousands cheered from the sidewalk. Dancers took turns carrying out traditional leadership roles in the ceremony, including drumming, leading dances, and carrying flags and fire. Thousands waited outside the city hall where we formed a large circle and offered several dances before moving on to Guadalupe River Park for some closing dances at the official rally. After the event, dancers from all groups gathered to socialize and then slowly trickled away in cars. The people of the city made their mark. Calpulli Tonalehqueh and I were part of the moment, the living palimpsest.

This book explores how moments like this were made possible. In the twenty-first century, there exists an entire set of resources, ancient and modern, that are marshaled and manipulated, assembled and arranged, as a lifeway for Mexica dancers in a multicultural United States. What follows throughout the text is an account of one group’s efforts for indigenous education through dance and ceremony resulting in the achievement of modern palimpsests.

A Landscape that Gives Life to Calpulli Tonalehqueh

The purpose of the following sections of this chapter is to introduce the important milieus and features of dance in México-Tenochtitlan (México City) in the early sixteenth century and trace some historical junctures that shape the landscape from which Calpulli Tonalehqueh was born. Following the details of dance before the European invasion is an introduction of the different expressions of Danza that exist in México City today, expressions that emerged in the centuries following European arrival in México City. Next, I describe how Danza traditions made their way to the United States and California, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century. This section also includes a narrative of how Calpulli Tonalehqueh was established in 2004. Although the survey of five centuries of dance is brief, the background information is key to understanding the ideals for which members of the group strive and the components they enact in the present.

Danza in Pre-Cuauhtémoc Anáhuac⁴

As Sten (1990) has pointed out, there is a dearth of information about the components of Mexica dance before the arrival of Europeans to México. Fewer than 10 of the thousands of books written by the Mexica before contact survive the mass burnings. The friars who did record aspects of dance in Mexica society saw in it the work of the devil, and in the human body, a fountain of sin and vice. It was largely with this lens they interpreted the events they witnessed. Clendinnen (1990) wrote thus:

The Spanish conquest of México in 1521 was followed almost immediately by the ardent attempt by picked bodies of missionary friars to convert the Mexican Indians to Christianity, or more precisely, given the friars’ view of things, to liberate the natives from their miserable servitude to the Devil. (p. 105)

For the most part, the economic and evangelical interests of European monarchies and churches underwrote their chronicles (Keen, 1990). Even with the doubt that must be cast on colonial accounts and the possible imprudence of basing a study of dance in pre-Cuauhtémoc Anáhuac on the descriptions of colonial writers—as many modern scholars do⁵—there are scholarly agreements about the practice I can establish. Additionally, it is important to remember that a fuller picture of the elements of Mexica dance can be gained by examining the paintings, architecture, poetry, musical instruments, ancient murals, and other pieces of the archeological record, especially those that have been guarded in the oral and dance tradition into the present (Sten, 1990, pp. 9–11). The loss of information, or the debated and often contradictory accounts about dance in ancient México, is an obstacle that modern dancers effectively overcome. This achievement is at the heart of the book.

Anthropologists are clear about the importance of dance to every culture in human history. They are also clear about how a study of this art can reveal the entire set of values, beliefs, social relationships, economy, and general life way of any given culture⁶ (Hanna, 1979a, 1979b; Kaeppler, 1978; Martí and Prokosch Kurath, 1964; Merriam, 1972; Royce, 1977). Sten (1990) underscored the centrality of dance for Mexicas in their classic period, stating that “in Aztec society, dance forms an inseparable part of the important events of life” and that

[l]os elementos materiales (vestidos, adornos, pinturas faciales y corporales), elementos espirituales (religión, mito, rito), elementos sociales (estratificación social, edad, sexo, ejercicio del poder), etc., se enlazan en la danza prehispánica a manera de diferentes hilos en un rico tejido formando diversos dibujos que ocultan un sentido no siempre fácil de detectar.

[the material elements (attire, ornaments, face and body paint), spiritual elements (religion, myth, rite), social elements (social stratification, age, sex, exercise of power), etc., are tied together in pre-Cuauhtémoc dance like different strings in a rich tapestry to form diverse images that hide a meaning not always easy to detect.] (p. 23, my translation)⁷

Dance was ubiquitous, and the elements that comprised the dance ceremonies in pre-Cuauhtémoc Mexica society were mutually constitutive and synergistic. Fray Toribio de Benavente “Motolinia” (1971) wrote in the early sixteenth century, “una de las cosas principales que en toda esta tierra había eran los cantos y los bailes” [one of the principal things that existed in this whole land (Anáhuac) were songs and dances] (p. 382, my translation). The origin stories and mythology of the Mexica also include dance. The style of dance that Europeans encountered in the early sixteenth century included carryover elements from many predecessor groups of México (e.g., Olmeca, Tolteca, Chichimeca) (see Sten, 1990) that had influence on Mexica culture. Though there is a “baffling hiatus in documentation for the first twenty years or so after the conquest” (Clendinnen, 1990, p. 105), due to the general instability of “New Spain” prior to the arrival of the first viceroy in 1535, early colonial authors such as Acosta, Durán, Ixtlixochitl, Mendieta, Oviedo, Pomar, and Sahagún all described ceremonies of Mexica dance they (allegedly) witnessed. Not one early colonial author excluded descriptions of the frequency and modes of dancing they saw. As I review their text I find mention of the occasions, attire, adornments, structures, locations, durations, pedagogies, politics, participants, instruments, songs, games, theater, splendor, diversity, and pervasiveness of dance. Furthermore, it becomes clear that recreation, agricultural rites, gender norms, collective identities, community service, international relations, commerce, child rearing, and music we all manifest in and through dance. Francisco Javier Clavijero (1780/1987), an eighteenth-century Mexican-born Náhuatl-speaking Jesuit historian, explained that learning to dance in Mexica society was as fundamental as learning the alphabet was in schools centuries later. In the primary grades of pre-Cuauhtémoc Anáhuac at the cuicacalli, the house of song, all content was delivered to students through song and dance. Dance was integral to the curriculum of all levels of formal schooling and beyond. There were professional dance instructors, music composers, and musicians. Dance in pre-Cuauhtémoc Anáhuac was unlike other arts and occupations because every member of society participated.

Dance was eminently collective in nature⁸ (as opposed to some of the partnered or individual traditions of dance developed in Europe). In his text The Conquest of America, Todorov (1995) placed weight on the collective aspect of Mexican dance traditions, explaining that individuals are a constitutive element of a social totality that can be moved collectively and influenced as a whole through dance because every member of society participates whether as a dancer or observer. If changes took place in dance, these changes would reverberate throughout the whole community.

Dance in pre-Cuauhtémoc Mexica society was public and obligatory. Vast resources were dedicated to dance and ceremonies that included dance. Mexica people have been called People of the Sun, or People of the Corn. It may be apt to describe them as People of the Dance as well. Dance ceremonies were a time and place to

• pray for fertility and abundance of crops, including prayer for rain (Many dances were tied to ceremonies that were aligned to agricultural cycles.)

• mark astronomical events

• commemorate human events

• tie human relations while demarcating social relations

• show gratitude to community leaders for social welfare

• mobilize communities in spiritual practice

• inculcate discipline in youth and citizens

• exchange news and goods

• celebrate and re-create

In her work “La danza entre los mexica,” Martha Toriz Proenza (2002) concluded that, above all gene...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1   A Danza Landscape
• 2   Calpulli (An Alliance of Houses)
• 3   Tequio (Community Work)
• 4   Tlacahuapahualiztli (The Art of Educating a Person)
• 5   Cargos
• 6   Macehualiztli (The Art of Deserving)
• 7   Decolonial Pedagogy
• 8   Reinscribing the Self
• 9   A Modern Mexica Palimpsest
• Appendix A  The Mandate of the Huey Tlahtocan (Great Council) of 1519
• Appendix B  Palimpsest in Academic Fields
• Appendix C  Gathering Materials, Experiences, and Interpretations
• Appendix D  Content Summary: Calpulli Tonalehqueh Ensayo January 2008
• Appendix E  Content Summary: “The Myth of Human Sacrifice” by Ocelocoatl
• Appendix F  Basic Structure of the Prayer Used to Open and Close a Calpulli Tonalehqueh Ensayo or Formal Ceremony
• Notes
• References
• Index