|
[Page 2: Black Indians
and Savage Christians: Unmaking the “Other” in the Performance
of the Conquest, by Sarah Jo Townsend]
Printer-friendly
version 
It takes a special effort not to lose sight of
this duality in the scenes from the Tratado curioso, given that
our view of them is limited to brief descriptions in a text whose
primary concern is a much larger drama. Ciudad Real's depiction
of the prelate's visit to the pueblos of Michoacán clearly
conforms to what Taylor identifies as the "scenario of discovery"
inaugurated by Columbus and endlessly replayed up to our present
day. The drama begins with Alonso Ponce himself, who causes such
a stir among the spectators (most of them Purépecha Iindians),
that one might suppose these civilized Christians had never before
seen a European (6).
. For the readers, however, he remains an invisible presence reflected
only in the natives' awestruck faces and obsequious behavior; rarely
are his actions described directly, an omission that creates the
impression that he shares the space outside of the frame occupied
by the readers. We, like Ciudad Real and Ponce, are encouraged to
turn an ethnographic gaze upon the natives' unusual dances and skits,
performances that flesh out the author's portrait of the region
and serve as a diversion from his methodical descriptions of the
local flora, fauna and foodstuffs.
Another element of excitement arises when it becomes evident that
the scenario of discovery reenacted every time Ponce stops to take
in the sights is simultaneously a scenario of conquest played out
against a backdrop of unseen danger. Although the threat of attacks
by Chichimecas is undoubtedly real, it is also a convenient plot
element carefully manipulated to serve Ciudad Real's more general
goal of legitimating the authority of his protagonist, who at the
time was engaged in a bitter power struggle with other members of
the Franciscan order. Even before embarking on the narrative of
their adventures in Michoacán, Ciudad Real lists the monasteries
already established in the province and states ominously that seven
of them lie near the northern border, "among Chichimecas and
warlike people, and so to get to them and live there one must undergo
much danger and travail."(7)
The specter of these wild Iindians follows Alonso Ponce and his
scribe throughout their journey, leading Ciudad Real to comment
every time they pass through a village along the border between
Spanish territory and the lands of unknown savagery that "there
is little safety on account of the Chichimecas, who often come to
the river, and sometimes even cross it." (8)
But if the author and the indigenous inhabitants express fear of
these wild men, Alonso Ponce is a would-be religious warrior in
the campaign against the unsubdued Iindians of the north. At various
points the prelate desires to visit several other monasteries that
lie beyond the safe zone in the "heart of the chichimeca territory,"
and it takes many desperate entreaties by other friars to persuade
him that he should desist from such a risky endeavor and send an
envoy in his stead (9).
But while Ponce never manages to try his hand
at converting the true "savages," there are plenty of
"counterfeit Chichimecas" who at various times dance,
attempt to scale a faux castle, and even pelt each other with lemons
(10).
Although he does not mention Alonso Ponce's thwarted attempts to
enter the northern territory or the political motivations behind
his conquistador act, it is not difficult to see why the historian
Richard Trexler views the Chichimeca performances described in the
Tratado as theatrical exercises in Spanish domination. Focusing
solely on the scenes that involve mock warfare, he sees these spectacles
as versions of the moros y cristianos plays, a tradition that he
condemns as "a crafted ethnography of manners, clothes, and
other customs intended by its clerical stage managers to recall
past native humiliations, to create memories of present failures,
both native and Iberian, and to project future images of these colonized
peoples." (11)
His most convincing examples all revolve around the only scene in
which a confrontation between "Chichimecas" and indigenous
actors dressed as Spaniards takes place. As Ciudad Real portrays
it, this drama fits nicely into the three-part "morphology"
of military theatre in Mexico that Trexler outlines in his article:
"greetings," "battle," and "submission."
Ponce is first welcomed by armed "Spaniards," one of whom
approaches and informs him (in Spanish) that "because there
were Chichimecas in those parts, he was coming with his comrades
to safeguard his way and protect him." (12)
These bodyguards yell "Santiago" (the Spanish battle cry
against the infidels), ten to twelve Iindians dressed as Chichimecas
appear, and the two groups charge one another. The "Spaniards"
capture one of the wild men and present him to Ponce as a trophy,
and finally all of the other indigenous people file up to ask for
the prelate's blessing before gathering to watch the "Chichimecas"
climb a constructed castle. For Trexler, the scene's meaning is
unambiguous: both a rehearsal of future native defeats and a reenactment
by the natives already defeated, it is yet another of the military
plays staged in New Spain that "involved large groups of people
committing themselves to their own defeat." (13)
While I agree with Trexler's general point about
the dangers of celebrating forms of "popular culture"
without acknowledging the cultural violence that accompanied their
creation, it also strikes me that his own assumptions about what
the Chichimeca performances meant for the performers bear remarkable
similarities to the "we think, they act" attitude of the
European priests he condemns. Is Trexler simply seeing and critiquing
what is truly there, or are his often misleading descriptions simply
restaging the drama of indigenous defeat that the Spanish wished
to see? Max Harris, the only other scholar who has commented at
length on these scenes from the Tratado, suggests that while Trexler
correctly identifies the "public transcript" of native
submission, these performances also contained a "hidden transcript"
of resistance. Describing the same scene mentioned in the above
paragraph, Harris interprets the actors' cries of "Santiago"
as mockery of the Spanish war cry and points out that the "Cchichimeca
captive" offered up to Ponce managed to escape his chains and
run off. Furthermore, Harris says, the final defeat of the savages
who scaled the castle was foiled by nightfall, and instead the "Chichimecas"
joined the "Spaniards" on the ground, where "they
all danced in their style to the sound of a teponastle," a
native drum (14).
Noting that in most of the scenes the "Chichimecas" who
appeared shouting and brandishing weapons had no visible opponents,
Harris concludes that "Christian Indians imitated Chichimecas
because they could not openly enact their own resistance, and the
absence of Spaniards implied Spanish defeat." (15)
In many respects, this idea of the natives pulling
one over on the Spanish is a more attractive interpretation than
Trexler's story of unmitigated humiliation, since it allows for
a certain degree of indigenous agency and also recognizes that the
meaning of a performance can be constructed differently by participants
and spectators. Looking more closely, however, one has to wonder
if these basic plot differences do not mask a more fundamental similarity
between the two analyses. Both, after all, are based on a common
understanding of these performances as symbolic representations,
either of defeat or resistance; for both, the drama is a duel between
Spaniards and Indians in which the identification between the indigenous
actors and the Chichimecas they represent is complete and unproblematic.
In Trexler's analysis, this is because the disguises worn by the
indigenous actors are rendered invisible; equating the characters'
defeat with the actors' humiliation, he claims that "[t]his
theatre was not meant to conceal the group and class character of
the players beneath the masks." (16)
For Harris, on the other hand, the disguises reveal a hidden core
of resistance, a true self that exists prior to the performance.
Rather than keeping both the actor and his role in focus and recognizing
the dialectic between the two, both Harris and Trexler repeat the
colonizers' gesture of collapsing these two distinct identities
into the single category of the "Other."
|
