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[Page 4: Black Indians
and Savage Christians: Unmaking the “Other” in the Performance
of the Conquest, by Sarah Jo Townsend]
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It is known that the Purépechas that
Ciudad Real found so curious and intriguing had a long history of
interaction with the Chichimecas to the north that vacillated between
violent confrontation and integration. The Relación de Michoacán,
a text compiled by a Spanish friar between the years 1539 and 1541
and based on the accounts of Purépecha informants, traces
the historical development of pre-Conquest Michoacán and
reveals the ambivalent relationship between its inhabitants and
the Chichimecas (21).
The nomadic tribes, considered semi-barbaric by the more settled
groups, periodically made forays into Purépecha communities
and often settled among them. By the time the Spanish arrived, the
Purépecha had absorbed many cultural traits of their neighbors
to the north, and much of their political leadership was of Chichimeca
descent. The Relación de Michoacán tells a tale of
violent altercations, marriages, truces and acts of trickery between
the two groups which, to a large extent, shaped the Purépecha
identity.
This may explain the puzzling fact that
in most of the scenes described by Ciudad Real, the "imitation
Chichimecas" do not appear battling Spaniards; instead they
are simply dancing, shouting war cries and "laughing just as
real Chichimecas do," or throwing lemons at each other and
knocking one another over the head with clubs. As ridiculous and
degrading to the actors as these scenes may appear, they take on
another meaning when seen alongside illustrations from the Relación
de Michoacán that portray Purépechas and Chichimecas
(in many cases indistinguishable to an outsider's eye) playing out
their own dramas by exchanging blows to the head. This makes me
think that Trexler and Harris are only half right when they see
in the Chichimeca "disguise" the true identity of the
one who wears it, and altogether wrong to view the performances
in purely metaphorical terms. Rather than merely symbolizing the
indigenous actors' own defeat or their spirit of resistance, it
seems more likely that these performances are actively creating
both identifications and dis-identifications among the actors, the
Chichimecas they enact, and the Spanish observers. The internecine
battles among the "Chichimecas" are not a duel between
two opposed powers but a struggle that even at its most basic level
involves three terms: the Purépecha (more accurately Purépecha/
Chichimeca/ Spanish) actor; his role as the "Chichimeca"
who is simultaneously his ancestor (the Self) and his enemy Other;
and the Spanish conqueror who is a Purépecha ally but also
an Other of both the native parties. Seen in this way, the drama
set in motion by the Spanish overlaps with and becomes inseparable
from a very different conquest scenario between two groups whose
complex form of relating to one another confounds the attempt to
reduce relationships to two monolithic and mutually exclusive terms.
Whereas the Chichimecas were hostile but
familiar adversaries closely intertwined with the Purépechas'
own identity, the black slaves and freemen with whom the indigenous
came into contact were more clearly definable as a distinct group.
Despite the fact that indigenous people in Michoacán sometimes
worked alongside blacks in mines or on haciendas, where slaves and
free blacks often served as overseers for the owner, numerous regulations
throughout Mexico prohibited blacks from living among or marrying
indigenous people(22).
Furthermore, colonial records show numerous complaints of violence
by blacks and mulattos against Iindians, including many cases involving
runaway slaves that date from the era of Alonso Ponce's travels
(23).
Given this evidence of tension between the two groups, it is not
unreasonable to think that the view of the negros in the Tratado
curioso as sinful and demonic was shared to a certain extent by
some of the indigenous participants.
But clearly there is something else going
on here as well. Harris points out the importance of the color black
in pre-Conquest religious life and suggests that these performances
have their roots in earlier rituals that have "disguised"
themselves in order to pass unnoticed by the Spanish clerg(24).
. In fact, the Relación de Michoacán indicates that
the principal god of the Purépecha religion was black, and
that one of their rulers and his lords frequently blackened themselves
with soot in the god's honor (25).
While pre-Christian beliefs are one of the factors that must be
considered in interpreting these performances, I nevertheless object
to Harris's reading of the black characters as a "disguise,"
a convenient cover for the continuation of native practices. Seeing
these figures as a "hidden transcript" of a previously
constituted indigenous subject denies the significance of the performers'
relationship to real black slaves and once again elides the issue
of the multiple "Others." It also assumes that performances
can be read as symbolic statements rather than considering the possibility
that these black Iindians are not saying the indigenous Self in
defiance of the Spanish but rather creating it through the very
act of performance (26).
Although they are a far from perfect source
for understanding the finer points of 16th century performances,
recent accounts of the many dances and rituals involving "black
men" that are performed in Purépecha villages throughout
Michoacán today provide some clues as to what may have been
happening before the unseeing eyes of Ciudad Real and Alonso Ponce
(27).
According to Janet Brody Esser, an art historian who observed these
performances over several years, they usually take place on a town's
patron saint day and during the winter ceremonial season from December
25 to January 6. Associated with both the spiritual forces of Christianity
and the "principal beings" of native Purépecha
beliefs, "black men" sometimes accompany the image of
the baby Jesus through town and at other times appear as huacaleros,
long-distance traders from pre-Conquest times. Yet they usually
wear wigs of black sheepskin and dance with what several of Esser's
informants describe as "African" rhythms. Esser draws
attention to the history of black slavery in colonial Mexico and
suggests that "because his position was ambiguous – because
he moved in both the Indian and the Spanish worlds while belonging
to neither – the space the black came to occupy in the Tarascan
world view was a sacred space, the place of myth." (28)
While it is risky to place too much weight
on contemporary evidence, one detail regarding the general context
in which the "black men" perform may help to shed light
on why the "black slave" described by Ciudad Real tries
his luck in a game of cards with Death. Esser states that a person
who performs as a "black man" invariably does so because
he has taken a religious vow – a manda – after he or
a close relative has recovered from a serious illness. Given that
this mode of performance as fulfillment of an obligation or debt
payment is common to many indigenous rituals that originated in
the pre-Conquest period, it is not impossible that a similar understanding
was informing Purépecha performances in the 16th century
(29).
If there is a connection, then, this suggests that the newly arrived
black slave sometimes manages to outplay his opponent Death. As
a liminal figure who negotiates the boundaries between life and
death just as he occupies a third position between the performers
and their Spanish observers, the black mask is essential for the
participants to construct their own sense of Self. Like the "Chichimecas"
who deal each other blows, the "Black indians" –
indigenous performers who both are and are not the "black men"
they play – create their identity by continually traveling
across its frontier.
If the lens through which I have been viewing
these performances is not distorted, it implies that the dialectic
between the indigenous "actor" and his black man and Chichimeca
"roles" poses a challenge to the understanding of performance
that underpins not only Ciudad Real's scenario of conquest but also
Trexler's critique of power and Harris's model of resistance. Keeping
both the performer and the other marginalized figure he or she performs
within our frame of vision requires us to reconceptualize cultural
resistance in a way that does not depend upon a simple inversion
of the Self/Other dichotomy that authorizes the conquering power
(30).
It seems an act of perhaps unconscious oversight to ignore the fact
that the people encountered by Alonso Ponce and Ciudad Real do not
meet them face to face; the battle between "Self" and
"Other" is one that their indigenous hosts would have
been destined to lose, and it is unclear what winning it might mean.
The way I interpret their actions, they take a different tactic,
working through identities and differences to unmake the "Other"
and create something new that bears no resemblance to the idea of
the "copy."
Sarah J. Townsend is a doctoral student in
the Spanish & Portuguese Department at New York University.
She is co-editing the forthcoming Stages of Conflict: A Reader in
Latin American Theatre & Performance with Diana Taylor.
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