moctezumas daughter the role of la malinche in mesoamerican dance

Moctezuma's Daughter: The Role of La Malinche in Mesoamerican DanceAuthor(s): Max HarrisSource: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 109, No. 432 (Spring, 1996), pp. 149-177Published by: American Folklore SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/541833Accessed: 08/06/2010 07:21

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MAX HARRIS

Moctezuma's Daughter The Role of La Malinche in Mesoamerican Dance

The character of La Malinche in traditional Mesoamerican dances does not

represent, as scholars too readily assume, Cortes's indigenous mistress and translator

of the same name. She is, instead, the wife or daughter ofa semidivine and messianic

figure named, like the Aztec ruler against whom Cortes fought, Moctezuma. This article correctly identifies the Malinche of indigenous Mesoamerican folklore and

offers fresh readings of the dances in which she appears.

ONE OF THE MORE intriguing and widespread characters in traditional Mexican danzas is that of La Malinche or, as she is sometimes known, La Maringuilla. She appears in dances as diverse and diffuse as Oaxaca's danza de la pluma (Cohen 1993; Harris, in press), the Sierra de Puebla's acatlaxqui dance (Christensen 1937) and danza de los negritos (Ichon 1969:357-364), Jalisco's danza de la conquista (Diaz Roig 1983:189-191), and Michoacin's turiacha or "blackman" dances (Esser 1988). Occasionally, in the Sierra de Puebla, she is added to the danza de los santiagos (Ichon 1969:341-353) and the danza de los voladores (Larsen 1937). Further afield, to give just two examples, she figures prominently in New Mexico's danza de los matachines (Champe 1983; Harris, in press) and in the baile de los huaxtecos from Guatemala's Chiquimula province (Pinto 1983:76-85). In some places, the dance in which she appears is simply named for her: the danza de la malinche (Rosoff and Cadaval 1992:37-40; Toor 1947:358). A female character, La Malinche is often represented by a male dancer.

Puzzled by the many manifestations of La Malinche, Helga Larsen remarked, "Almost all Mexican Indian dances have a Malinche, or Man-Woman, but nobody seems to be able to explain the exact role played by this figure" (1937:392). Enrique Llano and Marcel de Clerck called her "a mysterious individual" (1939:86), and Barbara Bode resorted to generalities: "Malinche," she wrote, "has come to mean any woman in a dance" (1961:234). This essay offers, for the first time, a cogent, if not yet a complete, explanation of the role of La Malinche in the danzas of Mexico, New Mexico, and Guatemala.

Max Harris is Executive Director of the Wisconsin Humanities Council at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Journal ofAmerican Folklore 109(432):149-177. Copyright ? 1996, American Folklore Society.

150 Journal of American Folklore 109 (1996)

Historically, Malinche or Malintzin was the Indian name given to Cortes's

indigenous translator and mistress. The Spaniards christened her Dofia Marina. This Malinche has become a central figure in the Mexican national conscious- ness. Octavio Paz described her, in The Labyrinth of Solitude, as the paradigm of "the violated Mother,

.... a figure representing the Indian women who were

fascinated, violated or seduced by the Spaniards," and hence as a symbol of Mexico itself, insofar as it was conquered by the Spaniards and now permits itself to be "corrupted by foreign influences" (1961:85-86). Paz's view, according to Sandra Messinger Cypess, became "the definitive view of La Malinche for the mid-twentieth century" (1991:94). Recently, however, feminists, Cypess among them, have reconstructed the historical Malinche, praising her as an

"independent, active translator, who searched for the right words to bridge the

gap between two cultures," and as "a remarkable woman with personal strength of character, intelligence, and beauty" (Cypess 1991:151).

Folklorists and other students of the Mexican danzas ordinarily assume that the Malinche of the dance refers to the Malinche of history and often read both in the light of Paz's negative construction. Ted Leyenaar, for example, writes:

Among the negritos, as well as in other dances, the Malinche figure, usually called Maringuilla, fills

an important role. The Malinche is a complex figure based on the Indian mistress of Hernain

Cortes, conqueror of Mexico. The Spaniards called her Doila Marina, but the Indian name for

her was Malintzin, the hispanicized form of which is Malinche. Although sometimes regarded as

a traitor to her people, she was the mother of the first mestizo, Don Martin, the son she bore to

Cortes. The Malinche character that participates most frequently in the dances, for example those

performed by the acatlaxqui (reed throwers), is usually portrayed either by teenager or adult males

dressed in women's clothing. This disguise is meant to symbolize the treacherous, dark side of

human nature. [Leyenaar 1988:2031

Donald Cordry, a collector of Mexican masks, takes a similar approach. "The Malinche mask," he observes, "is used throughout Mexico in the numerous

variations of the Conquest Dance. Malinche is also found in a number of other

dances such as the Dance of the Negritos, where she represents the 'wanton

woman,' the destroyer." Cordry assumes the standard historical referent: "Malinche was the Indian woman who served as Cortes's interpreter and who

became his mistress. She is viewed as the betrayer of her country and as a woman

whose uncontrollable sexual passion destroyed the Indian nations." Aware,

however, that this report is somewhat at odds with the general indigenous

perception of La Malinche, Cordry adds, "When all is said and done, the Indians

of Mexico have a certain amount of respect and admiration for Malinche because

of the power she had with the Spaniards" (1980:34). Cordry is right about the indigenous respect for Malinche's "power." Very

few scholars, however, have recognized that this indigenous respect for La

Malinche may be felt not for Cortis's mistress but for an entirely different figure represented by the Malinche of the dances. Alain Ichon at least suggests such a

possibility. Describing the danza de los santiagueros among the Totonacs of the Sierra de Puebla, Ichon remarks conventionally that the boy who plays the "son"

Harris, Moctezuma's Daughter 151

of Santiago, named Gallinche, "represents La Malinche, Cortes's companion and translator" (1969:347). A few pages later, however, he admits that the Malinche of the dance, unlike the "treacherous" Dofia Marina, is always "benevolent" and suggests that she may denote the Aztec "goddess of water." "The character of La Malinche," he adds, "would be worthy of an extended study" (1969:351).

Adrian Trevifio and Barbara Gilles have gone further. In a recent article on the history of the danza de los matachines, they state categorically that Malinche's role in the "matachines dances of northern New Mexico ... is inconsistent with the scholarly consensus that she represents Cortez's Mexican Indian ally and translator" and ask whether she might not represent "a super- natural being of some sort,

.... a syncretized form of the Virgin Mary and one

or more of the female divinities of the Nahuatl people, such as Tonantzin" (1994:121-122). In an earlier essay, Trevinio and Gilles were more specific. Malinche, they wrote,

originally represented a goddess of water and of the abundance of the earth. She was regarded by some as queen of the spirit realm. In this role, and as the elemental complement to an Aztec sun god, Huitzilopochtli, who was also the god of war, she was the guardian of the spirits of warriors who had died in battle. In legend, she has frequently been personified as an Aztec or Pueblo Indian princess or queen. [Trevifio and Gilles 1991:4]

We shall return later to the details of both Ichon's and Treviiio and Gilles's suggestions. For the time being, it is worth noting how easily scholars have been misled by the name shared by the Malinche of conquest history and the Malinche of the dance, despite evidence that should have given them pause. Malinche's appearance in dances such as la conquista, la pluma, los matachines, and tenochtli (Cordry 1980:220-221, 226-228), which represent in varying measure the encounter between conquistadors and indigenous peoples, no doubt contributes to the confusion, for Cortes, too, figures in many of these dances. But Malinche also appears in dances-such as Mexico's negritos and acatlaxqui dances or native New Mexico's buffalo dance (Lange 1959:325-328, cf. 274-277, 301-304)- that make no overt reference to Cortes or to the events of the conquest. Moreover, I know of no instance in which her role in the conquest dances is, in fact, that of Cortes's mistress and translator. Rather, she is linked to Moc- tezuma. Frances Toor, for example, noted that, in Oaxaca's danza de la pluma, "Malinche ... does a solo dance with Moctezuma and seems to be his companion rather than Corts' " (1947:347). In a text of la conquista de MIxico from Cuilapin (Oaxaca), Frances Gillmor found, to her surprise, that "Malinche is the name given to Moctesuma's wife" (1943:18). And in New Mexico's danza de los matachines, Malinche "is often said to be Montezuma's daughter" (Harris 1994b:158). Treviiio and Gilles add that, "in the matachines dances of northern New Mexico, La Malinche brings Montezuma back to life... [and] joins in the battle against European dominance" (1994:121).

The link between Moctezuma and Malinche in folk performances in the Americas is a longstanding one. Domingo Juarros mentions several danzas and


encamisadas (nighttime masquerades) that enlivened the festivities surrounding the dedication of the cathedral in Guatemala City in 1608. One series of dances, identified as "the tocotin, chichimequillo and talame" and said to be "in the style of the Mexican chiefs," was performed by a group of eleven boys of noble birth. They were divided into two teams of four, each with its own captain, and were together led by a dancer who "represented the Emperor Moctezuma." Although the account makes no mention of Malinche in this instance, it does so on the final night of the festivities, when a grand encamisada flowed through the streets and into the main square. The parade was led by "a great number of Indians" in their richest dance costumes and regalia, playing "drums, kettle-drums, trumpets, marimbas," and other instruments. They were followed by several dignitaries, a triumphal float, and, at the heart of the masquerade, some 30 clergy, divided into four "nations" dressed as "Indians, Turks, Spaniards, and Moors." The account singles out, for the richness of their costumes, "those who represented the Grand Turk and the Sultana, Moctezuma and La Malinche"

(Juarros 1981:398-400). Not only does this indicate an early date for the popular connection between Moctezuma and Malinche, but it implies that the relationship between them, like that between the Grand Turk and the Sultana, was understood to be that of husband and wife or father and daughter.

Moctezuma and Malinche

It is Malinche's link to Moctezuma, and specifically her identification as Moctezuma's wife or daughter, that allows us to follow Trevifio and Gilles's lead in seeing that the Malinche of the dance has more to do with indigenous mythology than she does with the narrative of the conquest. The two, as we shall see, are not mutually exclusive, but Malinche's role is certainly far more

complex than students of the dance have generally imagined. To pursue this lead, however, we need first to understand the role of Moctezuma and his

"wives" and "daughters" in the construction of Aztec or Mexica history and

prophecy. Just as the Malinche of the dance is not the Malinche who traveled with

Cortes, so the Moctezuma of the dance is not (or not only) the Moctezuma whom Cortes fought. Susan Gillespie, in her book The Aztec Kings, has shown that the Moctezuma of the conquest narrative is one of several Mexica rulers who share what she calls a "structural equivalence" (1989:60). In the dynasty that is said to have governed Tenochtitlan from its foundation in the 14th

century until the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, Gillespie identifies three such

kings. Known as Acamapichtli, Moctezuma the Elder, and Moctezuma the

Younger, they were the first, fifth, and ninth kings respectively of the Teno- chtitlan dynasty. Moctezuma the Younger was on the throne when Cortes landed (Gillespie 1989:7-8). "The royal dynasty of Tenochtitlan," Gillespie reminds us, was, like so many aspects of Mexica history, "conceived as a

repeating cycle" (1989:123). Within this cyclical design, Acamapichtli and the


two Moctezumas were "boundary figures" (1989:164), marking a transition between one cycle and another.

The three "boundary figures" are uniformly separated from one another in the dynastic narrative by groups of three kings and share the distinction of being, each in his turn, the sole representative of his generation. The intervening kings, by contrast, are said to be brothers or, less commonly, uncles and nephews, all relatives, according to Mexica concepts of kinship, of the same generation. Only the first, fifth, and ninth kings are said to be either the son of the previous ruler or the father of the next. Moctezuma the Elder, as the link between the first and second cycles, is understood to be both. The Tenochtitlan dynasty thus unfolds in a pattern of 1-3-1-3-1, with Acamapichtli and the two Moctezumas being, each in his turn, the sole surviving bearer of the dynastic seed (Gillespie 1989:13-16).

Other narrative details link these three kings to one another and, further, connect the dynasty that they dominate to previous dynasties and to the gods of the Aztec pantheon. Not all of these details are essential to an understanding of the role of La Malinche in the danzas. Three points, however, do warrant close attention.

First, according to Gillespie (1989:200-210), this intricately patterned, cyclical reconstruction of Mexica history was, like the prophecies that foretold the European arrival (Todorov 1984:74-75, 85-86), wrought retrospectively in order to enable its authors to cope with what Nathan Wachtel has aptly called "the trauma of the conquest" (1977:33). For the conquest could then be explained as part of an orderly series of cycles, each of which ends in defeat and announces a new beginning, and the conquered race could be consoled by the belief that future cycles promised, yet again, a resurgence of Mexica power. More specifically, the details of the cyclical narrative mandated the return of "a king perhaps named Motecuhzoma," or, at least, of his structural equivalent, as a "messiahlike figure" who would "defeat the Spanish and initiate a new Indian hegemony" (Gillespie 1989:166, 201). It is often this Moctezuma who is featured in the danzas. In 1835, for example, Ignacio Zufiiga explicitly identified a dance in Sonora as a dramatization of "the passage of the Aztecs, and the coming of Moctezuma, whom they await as the Jews await the Messiah" (1835:7; translated in Johnson 1971:182).

Second, each of these boundary figures derive their "power," as Gillespie puts it, "in the sense of legitimacy of rule," from a female relative, "even though only males appear in the pictorial king lists" (1989:20). These women therefore play a crucial role in the renewal of the cycle, the perpetuation of the dynasty, and the Mexica vision of the future. The Malinche of the danzas recalls one (or all) of these women.

Third, the ruler of Tenochtitlan was not only "a descendant of dynastic founders who had divine qualities," and "the steward of an ethnic historical tradition that was in fact a recapitulation of the cosmogony," but, more specifically, "a mortal representative of Huitzilopochtli" (Gillespie 1989:215). This means that the essential female relatives of the royal "boundary figures" in


the Tenochtitlan dynasty correspond, in the narrative of the gods, to one or more of the goddess companions of Huitzilopochtli. Trevifio and Gilles are therefore correct when they suggest that the Malinche who is the wife or daughter of Moctezuma may also be "the elemental complement to an Aztec sun god, Huitzilopochtli" (1991:4).

We will pursue the role of "these key women" (Gillespie 1989:xl) shortly. First, however, it is worth exploring a little further the indigenous belief in the return of Moctezuma. Such an expectation can be amply documented. Victoria Bricker writes of an armed rebellion in highland Chiapas in 1712, in which the summons to resist the colonial regime included the assurance that "the Emperor Montezuma was being resuscitated and would help the Indians defeat the

Spaniards" (1981:60). She notes, too, that, in 1761, the leader of an indigenous rebellion in Yucatan, Jacinto Uc, added to his own name those of Moctezuma and of Canek, the last Maya king. The official report of the rebellion states that he was crowned "Re Jacinto Uk Canek, Chichin Motezuma, which in transla- tion means King Jacinto Uc Canek, Little Montezuma" (Bricker 1981:73). In 1900, Frederick Starr came across Otomis in the Sierra de Puebla who "believe that Montezuma is to come again. Meantime, from him come health, crops, and all good things." Each year, a feast is "given in his honor, of which he is believed to partake" (Starr 1908:250). In such instances, Moctezuma takes on some of the attributes of what Gillespie calls his "structural equivalents" among the gods (1989:166). Alain Ichon notes that, among the Totonacs of the Sierra de Puebla, the earth god is called "Montizon, a deformation of the name of the Aztec

Emperor Moctezuma" (1969:128). Similar legends abound among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, who share

the Aztecs' cyclical view of history and often identify Moctezuma with the Pueblo hero Poseyemu (Parmentier 1979). Several writers have recorded the conviction of the natives of Pecos and Jemez Pueblos that Moctezuma will "return to deliver his people from the yoke of the Spaniards" (Gregg 1954:188- 189; see also Weigle and White 1988:70-73; Parmentier 1979:619). According to Nod1 Dumarest, the people of Cochiti Pueblo, too, believe that Moctezuma has a "divine mission" of "working miracles" and that "one day he is to reappear in the world and to deliver his people from the yoke of their conquerors." Dumarest also notes that Moctezuma has a consort: "Malinche, the wife of Montezuma, had the same power of working miracles" (1919:229-230; see also Benedict 1931:191-192). In a similar vein, Teresa VanEtten has recorded the

story, which she first heard in San Juan Pueblo, ofMoctezuma asking the people to dance los matachines in his memory. "His people," she was told, "still look to the east when they dance. They hold their hands up, looking to the east, and wait for Montezuma's return." In this version, too, Moctezuma has a beautiful

wife, Malinche, and together they rule "the Indian people" (1985:53-60). Finally, Frank Applegate retells the story of how, when "Pose Ueve" became

the cacique of Pecos Pueblo, he "assumed the name of Montezuma." Shortly afterward, "the Great Spirit revealed to [Montezuma] that he should marry the

youngest daughter of the cacique of the pueblo of Zufii, ... whose name was


Malinche." Moctezuma and Malinche ruled their people wisely and eventually traveled southward, founding a new capital "where Mexico City now stands" and ruling together over "the great country of the Aztecs." Moctezuma and Malinche, Applegate adds, are "the hero and the heroine" of the danza de los matachines in the Native American pueblos of New Mexico (Applegate 1929:171-176).

For a cacique's daughter to link one dynasty to another by marriage and thereby legitimate her husband's rule is, as we have already hinted, a central motif in Aztec mythology. We return, therefore, to the female relatives of Gillespie's "boundary figures" in the Tenochtitlan dynasty. Legitimate transition from one cycle to the next, as the dynasty began and as it was periodically renewed, came, Gillespie writes, through "a woman, a queen, who held the right to endow rulership" (1989:17-18). The link between the dynasties of Tenochtitlan and Culhuacan, through whom the Aztec rulers claimed their inheritance from the Toltecs, "was embodied by a woman, a Culhua princess," who is usually portrayed as "either the mother or the wife of the first king, Acamapichtli" (Gillespie 1989:21). Likewise, according to the postconquest narrative, the son of Moctezuma the Elder did not inherit the throne but was passed over in favor of Moctezuma's daughter. The cyclical pattern demanded that the dynasty be regenerated after the death of the boundary figure and that the principal agent of regeneration at this critical juncture should be a woman (1989:17-18). Had it not been for the Spanish conquest, the same event would have occurred following the death of Moctezuma the Younger. The daughter of Moctezuma, therefore, according to this cyclical account of Aztec history, is "the final hope for the resurgence of indigenous culture in the face of inevitable destruction" (1989:22). As the daughter of one ruler or Moctezuma, she is also, of course, the wife of the next. It is this role that is ordinarily played by La Malinche in the danzas that portray the conquest and its aftermath.

Like Moctezuma, this figure, too, has "structural equivalents" among the queens of previous dynasties and among the goddesses of Aztec mythology, tracing her roots ultimately to the mother-earth deity who appears under such names as Toci, Tonantzin, Xochiquetzal, and Coatlicue and who is identified in the codices as "our beginning" and "our end" (Gillespie 1989:60-62, 93). Moreover, the relationship of Acamapichtli to the Culhua princess who legiti- mated his rule of Tenochtitlan is "reproduced in the marriage of Tenochtitlan's tutelary deity, Huitzilopochtli, to the mother-earth goddess, Toci, tutelary deity of Culhuacan" (1989:55). Although we do not need to trace the details of these links, it is tempting to note in passing that "sexual ambiguity (male inside, female outside) ... is an important aspect of the Aztec mother-earth deity" (Gillespie 1989:61), and to wonder if this partially explains the tendency to have a male dancer in female clothes represent Malinche. During the Aztec feast known as Ochpaniztli, according to Sahaguin's informants, a man put on the flayed skin of a sacrificed woman, and others would then "beautify" his face with cosmetics and dress him in a woman's blouse and petticoats. Thus adorned, he represented, like the victim whose skin he wore, the "mother of the goddesses" (Sahaguin


1992:131-136 [lib. 2, cap. xxx]). It is, of course, common practice in ritual folk dances elsewhere to have males dance female parts (Louis 1963:250, 344) or to wear costumes that recall feminine dress (Amades 1951:34), but in Mexico the

practice of casting a male dancer in the role of Malinche may have more to do with the fact that she connotes, at least in part, an earth deity of ambiguous gender, in whose honor ritual cross-dressing was customary.

One more point needs to be made, at this stage, about the link between Moctezuma and Malinche. This concerns the place of Cortes in the cyclical narrative of Mexica history. The historical Malinche, or Dofia Marina, was by no means Cortes's only indigenous mistress. Among his other conquests was

Tecuichpo, the daughter of Moctezuma the Younger. More commonly known

by her baptismal name Isabel, she bore Cortes a daughter, Leonor Cortes Moctezuma, also known as Marina (Gillespie 1989:106-109). This coincidental

link, through Cortes, between Isabel and Malinche may have implications for our study of La Malinche's role in the danzas. For the time being, however, we need only recall that Moctezuma's daughter "was the ultimate manifestation of

[the] crucial female who functioned to continue the cycles of time and space by linking their male elements" (Gillespie 1989:115), and note that her union with

Cortes may well have suggested (or been intended by the Spaniards to suggest) to the Aztecs that Cortes was the boundary figure who marked the beginning of a new cycle and who was, therefore, the legitimate ruler (Gillespie 1989:227). The indigenous faith in Moctezuma's return belies Cortes's claims and casts him instead as a usurper.

La Danza de la Pluma

We can now focus our attention on two of the dances in which both Moctezuma and Malinche appear, the danza de la pluma and the danza de los

matachines, pausing first only to acknowledge an interpretive lens through which I have found it helpful to view such folk dramatizations of conquest and conversion (Harris 1992, 1994a, in press). In his book Domination and the Arts

of Resistance, James Scott draws a distinction between "public" and "hidden

transcripts" in unbalanced power relationships. While the public transcript,

according to Scott, records what may be said openly by the powerful and the

subordinate alike, the hidden transcripts of the two groups generally contain

what each may say only in the absence of the other. Thus, the hidden transcript of the subordinate group "represents a critique of power spoken behind the back

of the dominant," and that of the powerful represents "the practices and claims of their rule that cannot be openly avowed" (Scott 1990:xii). But Scott also

recognizes the "tremendous desire and will" (1990:164) of subordinate groups to express publicly the message of the hidden transcript and therefore describes, too, "the manifold strategies by which subordinate groups manage to insinuate their resistance, in disguised forms, into the public transcript" (1990:136). The condition of the hidden transcript's public expression, he adds, "is that it be

sufficiently indirect and garbled that it is capable of two readings, one of which


is innocuous" (Scott 1990:157). While no single interpretive lens is sufficient to understand the complexities of even a single folk performance, Scott's argument at least alerts us to the possibility that the conquest dances in which Moctezuma and Malinche appear may insinuate a hidden transcript of resistance into an "innocuous" public transcript of conquest and subordination. I have argued elsewhere, at greater length, that this is the case with the danza de la pluma and the danza de los matachines (Harris, in press). What follows is a necessarily abbreviated account of these two dances, focusing particularly on the roles of Moctezuma and Malinche.

The danza de la pluma is performed in several villages in Oaxaca. Some observers (e.g., Arroyo and Martinez 1970) believe that it originated in the 16th century in Cuilapin, where it is still performed each year for thefiesta del santiago on July 25 (Sleight 1988:126-131). But the most impressive version of the dance in recent years has been that of the village of Teotitlin del Valle, where it is performed for at least three fiestas a year, including lafiesta de la preciosa sangre during the week of the first Wednesday in July. It was at this fiesta that I saw the dance in 1994 (see Figure 1). The public transcript of Teotitlhn's eight-hour epic danza de la pluma represents the conquest of Moctezuma and his soldiers by the army of Cortes. The hidden transcript reverses the outcome.

Earlier accounts of the dance had prepared me for some elements of the hidden transcript. When Frederick Starr saw the dance at Juquila, he remarked on the difference between the fine costumes of the Indians and the plain ones of the Spaniards. "In dress and armament," he wrote, "the white men ... present a truly ridiculous appearance" (Starr 1896:167). Frances Toor, who saw the danza de la pluma at Zaachila, was sure that this contrast was intended to disparage the Spaniards. "Moctezuma and his captains," she observed, "looked and danced like gods," but Cortes "was accompanied by a lot of small boys, stiffly dressed in blue uniforms." Although "Cortes and Christianity conquered," Toor concluded, "the Conquest was a lie." Aesthetic victory clearly belonged to the Indians (Toor 1926:5-6). When I saw the dance in Teotitlin, the conquistadors wore black military uniforms, trimmed with gold braid. Moctezuma and his soldiers, by contrast, wore brightly colored, indigenous costumes topped by an enormous, circular headdress, about three feet in radius, made of thousands of soft downy feathers in radiating, colored tiers.

Not only did the Indians have the better costumes; they also had the better dance steps. While Moctezuma and his courtiers engaged in elaborate whirling dances, leaping high in the air, kneeling, and circling, Cort s and the Spaniards never broke into anything more complicated than a march. The Aztecs, too, held the playing area for a greater proportion of the time, while the Spaniards spent much of the dance seated quietly on a wooden bench near the church door. The disparity of ages was also significant. Cortes was represented by a middle-aged man and his second-in-command (Pedro de Alvarado) by a boy of about 13 years of age, but the rest of the Spanish soldados were played by small boys. While Moctezuma, too, was played by a middle-aged man, his soldiers were represented by young men in their late teens or 20s. With their elaborate


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Figure 1. The danza de la pluma, Teotitlin del Valle, Oaxaca,July 1994: (left to right) Malinche, Moctezuma, and Dofia Marina.

headdresses further extending their height, the adult Indian warriors dwarfed their tiny Spanish enemies. The 16th-century Spanish justification for the conquest of the New World depended, in part, on the notion that the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas were like children and needed the civilizing government of mature Europeans. For the Indian performers to assign all the Spanish roles but that of Cortes himself to children was quietly to reverse this argument.

The appearance of both La Malinche and Dofia Marina as distinct characters in the drama also signaled something other than a conventional Spanish reading


of the conquest. Jeffrey Cohen, who saw the danza de la pluma in Teotitlin in 1986, merged the two in his account of the dance, describing "two young girls dressed as Malinche" who "guide" Cortes and act as his "consort and translator" (1993:150-151; personal comm., 27 July 1994). Starr made the same mistake 90 years earlier (1896:166). In fact, the two girls are distinguishable in dress, name, and role. One wears a stylized indigenous costume and is called La Malinche. She represents Moctezuma's wife and remains loyal to Moctezuma throughout. The other wears a Spanish costume and is called Dofia Marina. It is she who temporarily transfers her allegiance to Cortes. An earlier witness to the Teotitlin danza de la pluma speaks clearly of "two little girls" playing separate parts: "Sehuapila (from the Nahuatl cihua, 'woman', and pilli, 'noble') and Malinche. In this play it is Sehuapila who goes over to the [Spanish] side and is then called Marina. Malinche stays with Moteczuma as his wife" (Gillmor 1983:104). In the text, too, of the Cuilapin danza de la pluma published by Arroyo and Martinez, the parts of "Malinche, the wife of Moctezuma," and "Dofia Marina [or "Socapile"], the guide and translator for Hernin Cortes," are clearly distin- guished (1970:9). So they were when I saw the dance. Cohen, while noticing that "the two Malinches" were dressed differently (1993:152), missed their distinct referents. In the danza de la pluma, then, postconquest indigenous myth reckons with the Spanish narrative of the conquest by insisting that the Malinche who is the wife of Moctezuma resembles, but is not identical to, the Dofia Marina who is the mistress of Cortes. Even the latter, as we shall see, begins and ends the dance by the Aztec ruler's side, united temporarily with the Spanish claimant to the throne but eventually (and properly) with the rightful heir, the messianic Moctezuma.

But the most striking evidence of the dance's hidden transcript, as I saw it, lay in its conclusion. Some observers had suggested that Moctezuma might occasionally gain the military victory. Gillmor cites a text from Cuilapain (Loubat 1900) which "ends with the defeat of the Spaniards," but she then reasons that the text "must have been missing the last page or two" (Gillmor 1983:104-105). Parsons reports that, in the danza de la pluma she saw at Santa Ana del Valle, "the usual order" of victory was reversed. "Having Montezuma get the better of Cortes was an innovation of a nationalistic 'revolutionary' character," she explains (Parsons 1936:256). And Cohen states that "Cortez's triumph is short lived. In the last act of the dance Moctezuma is resurrected. Dancing a final time the Spaniards and the Aztecs battle again. In the end it is Cortez who- is vanquished. [Dofia Marina] rejoins Moctezuma and the danzantes dance as a group in the open plaza. With pre-contact order restored the dance comes to an end" (Cohen 1993:150).

I saw neither resurrection nor overt indigenous victory, although both were implied. The last episode noted on the orchestra's official "list of dances [bailes]" was a "funeral march" for the defeated Moctezuma, but, as this concluded, I was advised not to leave, for there would be two more bailes. Moctezuma and his soldiers replaced their headdresses. Moctezuma returned to his throne, and Malinche sat beside him. Spanish soldiers and indigenous warriors together


formed two parallel lines stretching away from Moctezuma across the dance floor. The first of the unofficial bailes was an exuberant sequence performed by Malinche and Marina, at the end of which Marina returned to Moctezuma and sat beside the restored Aztec monarch. She had returned from Cortes to her indigenous origins. The baile itself was explained to me variously as representing "reconciliation" or "joy."

The final and thematically conclusive baile was a danza de los negritos. Parsons had mentioned such a closing dance in Santa Ana del Valle but had assigned it no meaning (1936:256). What I saw was quite clear. The two negritos, so named because of their black wooden masks, had been the "sacred clowns" of the performance. One, linked to the Spaniards, wore red, yellow, and black. The other, linked to the Indians, wore red, yellow, and green. When the Indians had defeated the Spaniards during the episode of the noche triste, the Indian negrito had captured and displayed the defeated Spanish negrito. When the conquistadors finally conquered Tenochtitlan, the Spanish negrito had paraded the Indian

negrito in defeat. Now, between the parallel lines of Indians and Spaniards, the two negritos engaged in a brief mime involving chairs and bandanas. It ended with the Indian negrito suffocating his Spanish counterpart by pressing him hard against the ground with a chair. The Spanish negrito imitated death throes and

lay still. The final image of the entire eight-hour danza de la pluma, therefore, was one of Spanish defeat. We were meant to infer, from the mimetic action of the negritos alone, a third confrontation between Cortes and Moctezuma, ending in the latter's victory. The public transcript could not tolerate such an outcome, but the hidden transcript embedded in the danza de los negritos could allude to its absence.

While the performers, then, did not directly enact the resurrection of Moc- tezuma, as they had when Cohen saw the dance, they no less clearly signaled, in the two unlisted bailes, the Aztec king's restoration to his throne, his two female companions at his side, and his ensuing triumph over invading forces. This was not a rewriting of 16th-century history, for the Zapotecs of Teotitlin do not believe that Moctezuma the Younger rose from the dead and defeated the historical Cortes. Rather, the Moctezuma, Malinche, and Cortes of the finale are the structural equivalents of their namesakes in the earlier part of the dance. Moctezuma represents the messianic king who, as Gillespie puts it, will "defeat the Spanish and initiate a new Indian hegemony" (1989:201). Malinche signifies the necessary queen, embodiment of the mother-earth goddess, who will

provide Moctezuma with his legitimacy. And Cort's connotes whatever foreign power the future Moctezuma will defeat.

Cohen, however, accords Moctezuma's resurrection a more immediate appli- cation, understanding it to speak to the tension between the nation-state of

Mexico, "symbolized by Cortez and his men," and the local Zapotec commu-

nity, represented by the Aztecs:

The finale of the dance and the banishment of Cortez are a metaphor through which the people of Teotitlin del Valle construct an alternative world. This is not a world where the Indian is


subordinate to Mestizo, nor is it a place where Indians are thought of as relics of an indigenous, ancient past. Generated from the success of the danzantes, this new world is Zapotec, with Teotitlin del Valle as its center. The Mexican state (signified by Cortez and his men) is-at least for a moment-banished. The world is purified and returned to its indigenous glory. [Cohen 1993:150]

This may well be the case. Folk theatre is remarkably flexible in its ability to sustain multiple historical (and prophetic) referents in a single action. But if Cohen is right, then the Zapotec vision of"an alternative world" draws heavily on older, native expectations that Moctezuma will return to initiate a new cycle of indigenous rule. That such a faith should be enacted in bailes pointedly omitted from the official list of dances is, of course, entirely consistent with Scott's understanding of the relationship between public and hidden transcripts.

La Danza de los Matachines

The danza de los matachines tells a similar story, albeit in an abbreviated form. It generally lasts less than an hour and may be danced several times in a single day. It is, moreover, the only ritual dance performed in both Hispanic and Native American communities in New Mexico. In the Hispanic communities, such as Alcalde (Parsons 1929:218-219), Arroyo Seco (Rodriguez 1994), and Bernalillo (Sinclair 1980:62-66), the dance is understood in terms of its public transcript, according to which it dramatizes in general "the triumph of good over evil, Christianity over paganism" (Kloeppel 1968:7), and in particular the conversion of Moctezuma (Champe 1983:84). In the Native American pueblos, although the public transcript officially remains intact and the performance of the dance is embedded in the liturgical calendar of the Church and its accom- panying ritual, a hidden transcript of indigenous resistance emerges. For there the dance may also be read as a dramatized victory of indigenous "ghost warriors," led by the messianic Moctezuma, over intrusive "foreign cultures" (Treviflo and Gilles 1991:15). In both cases, as Sylvia Rodriguez has shown in the case of the Taos and Arroyo Seco matachines, particular performances also make reference to local politics and ethnic relationships (Rodriguez 1991, 1994).

Common to all versions is a cast of characters consisting of the monarca, who is said to represent Moctezuma; 10 to 14 danzantes, who represent his "soldiers"; Malinche; one or more abuelos or abuelas (grandparents or ancestors), whose function is similar to that of the negritos in the danza de la pluma; and a toro (bull), who is the enemy of Moctezuma and Malinche and is variously designated in the public transcript as "evil," "paganism," or "the Moors" (Sinclair 1980:65) and in the hidden transcript as Cort6s (Morrison 1992:23) or "oppressive ... foreign cultures" (Treviiio and Gilles 1991:15). Despite the habitual assertion of scholars that here, too, "Malinche . . . represents Dofia Marina, Hernan Cort&s's mistress" (Gutibrrez 1993:58; see also Champe 1983:12), Malinche is uniformly described by the performers, even in the Hispanic communities, as the wife, daughter, or even sister (Parsons 1929:219) of Moctezuma. Rodriguez


astutely observes that "the upper Rio Grande Malinche resembles Cortez's famous Indian mistress, the mythic traitor and mother ofmestizos, in name only" (Rodriguez 1991:247), and Enrique LaMadrid adds, "Malinche ... is no traitor here" (1995:5). Although formerly played by a boy (Kurath 1949:91-93), Malinche is now played by a young girl, ordinarily dressed in a white, first-com- munion dress; in Santa Clara Pueblo, where the dance is accompanied by native drums rather than the more common Hispanic guitar and fiddle, she wears native dress (see Figure 2).

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Figure 2. The danza de los matachines, Santa Clara Pueblo. New Mexico, December 1994: In Santa Clara, Malinche wears indigenous dress.


I saw the danza de los matachines in Bernalillo in August 1993 and in the Native American pueblos of Picuris, San Juan, and Santa Clara over Christmas 1994. In Bernalillo, the dance is given a Catholic interpretation. According to Richard Kloeppel, a former leader of the Bernalillo matachines, the dance tells the story of the conversion of Moctezuma to Christianity, through the agency of his daughter Malinche, and the incorporation of the Aztec people into the Catholic Church (Kloeppel 1968). After Moctezuma leads his "soldiers" in a joyful opening dance, he sits on a chair to one side. Led by the abuelo, Malinche approaches him. The conversion of Moctezuma begins when Malinche faces the Aztec king and each circles his or her extended right hand in alternating directions over and under the other's hand. There follows what Champe calls "the pantomime of the struggle forward," during which the monarca, now risen from his chair, moves slowly from one end of the line of danzantes to the other, lunging forward with one foot and dragging the other to join it, while the abuelo massages his knees (see Figure 3). Champe speculates that this is intended "to symbolize Montezuma's struggle to accept Christianity" (1983:84). The bull, dressed in the demonic colors of red and black, is enraged and attacks the converts until he is shot and killed by the abuelo. Following the dance, a triumphal procession wends its way to the parish church, where the "converted" matachines take an honored part in the fiesta Mass. But even the Bernalillo dancers are not entirely satisfied with this reading. One of the men playing the part of Moctezuma confessed to me that the meaning of the dance was difficult to ascertain and that "we need to do more research."

Two scholars who have conducted extensive research into the history and meaning of the danza de los matachines are Adrian Trevifio and Barbara Gilles. Resisting the prevailing notion that the dance was introduced to the Americas by the Spanish (Champe 1983:1-6; Kurath 1949; Robb 1961), Treviiio and Gilles instead trace the history of the danza de los matachines to prehispanic dances in which the Aztecs celebrated military victories over rival tribes (Trevifio and Gilles 1994). In particular, they refer to what John Bierhorst has called "the Aztec ghost-song ritual":

The Aztec ghost-song may be described as a musical performance in which warrior-singers summon the ghosts of ancestors in order to swell their ranks and overwhelm their enemies. In the more elaborate examples the full ritual seems to have assumed the proportions of a mock battle, where singing, dancing, and drumming were equated with martial deeds. In response to the music, ghost warriors from paradise, led by ancestor kings, supposedly came "scattering," "raining," "flying," or "whirling" to earth. [Bierhorst 1985:3-4]

Consistent with this tradition, Trevifiio and Gilles read the danza de los matachines as a dramatized victory of indigenous ghost warriors, led by Moctezuma and Malinche (see Figure 4), over outside invaders.

Whatever may be the historical roots of the dance, such a reading of its present form better accounts for the matachines' continued popularity among the Pueblo Indians, who can no more be expected to "celebrate the conquest"


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Figure 3. The danza de los matachines, Bernalillo, New Mexico, August 1993: The abuelo massages Moctezuma's legs after the latter's "conversion."

(Kloeppel 1968:8) than can the Zapotec feather dancers of Teotitlain del Valle. Richard Trexler's influential but misleading insistence that all folk dramatizations of the conquest in colonial Mexico and its territorial heirs constitute a

"military theatre of humiliation" in which the indigenous performers "exhibit their [own] defeat" attends only to the public transcript of such performances (Trexler 1984:197, 207). The presence of a hidden transcript in native versions of the danza de los matachines is suggested not only by the pairing of Moctezuma and Malinche, in keeping with indigenous legend, but also by the "Indian


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Figure 4. The danza de los matachines, Picuris Pueblo, New Mexico, December 1994: Moctezuma and Malinche (front center) lead the danzantes.

tradition" reported by Dumarest and others that "this dance was instituted by Montezuma that the descendants of his race might have the pleasure of mocking their conquerors" (Dumarest 1919:86; see also Jaramillo 1941:50; VanEtten

1985:57). A dance whose public transcript appeals to the Catholic faith of the

conquistadors' descendants while simultaneously enacting a hidden transcript in which Moctezuma rises from the dead to lead indigenous ghost warriors to

victory over those descendants is a splendid vehicle for discreet mockery of the Indians' conquerors.

A brief reading of the San Juan Pueblo danza de los matachines, which I saw on the day after Christmas, 1994, will illustrate my point. After several minutes of dancing, Moctezuma (the monanka) moved backward between the two rows of danzantes and each pair of dancers knelt as he passed. While the dancers remained in a kneeling position, an abuelo escorted Moctezuma to a chair at the far end of the rows. The king was dead. When the time comes for Moctezuma to leave the physical world, Trevifio and Gilles write, he is led "out of the dance area and to a place of honor in the spirit realm" by the abuelo, who

represents not, as the word is usually translated, "a grandfather" but "a guardian ancestor spirit" (1991:11). The chair denoted Moctezuma's place of honor, and the kneeling position of the danzantes appeared to signal the death of his warriors. I took this opening phase of the dance to represent, in a highly compressed form, the entire period covered by the public transcript of the danza de la pluma: the life of the Indians before the arrival of the Europeans and the

subsequent death in battle of Moctezuma and his soldiers. What followed concerned his resurrection.


Malinche then wove her way through one line of danzantes after the other. "As the queen of the spirit realm," according to Treviiio and Gilles (1991:12), Malinche was thus purifying and uniting the warrior spirits who had died

honorably in battle. When she approached the seated Moctezuma, the entire drama focused briefly on the small space around the monanka's chair, where "the circling motion of La Malinche's extended arm [brought] Moctezuma back to life" (Treviiio and Gilles 1991:13). Rising from his chair, Moctezuma moved with difficulty between the rows of kneeling warriors. One of the abuelos massaged his legs. Avoiding any reference to religious conversion, Treviiio and Gilles offer what is to my mind a much more persuasive explanation of this

episode: "Montezuma arises and begins the journey back to the world of substance. He slowly stretches his legs and makes cautious steps, trying to regain control of his physical self. He has been in the spirit realm for a long time. El abuelo rubs Montezuma's legs to reduce the stiffness." Finally, the revived Moctezuma called on the ghost warriors to join him in battle. Two by two, the danzantes rose from their kneeling position to perform "the whirling motion that indicates travel between the spirit world and the world of substance"

(Trevifio and Gilles 1991:14). After two more sequences, in which Moctezuma led his revived warriors in

intricate and joyful dance patterns, there followed the confrontation with the bull. The toro, who until now had only occasionally skirmished to one side with the abuelos, was led into the playing area itself. As well as his bull's head and hide, the toro wore a sweatshirt with the word SAINTS emblazoned across the front. I suspect the choice was not accidental. In Jemez Pueblo, in 1993, I observed Dallas Cowboys T-shirts worn in performance to connote American

military aggression (Harris 1994b:156), and I suspect that the New Orleans Saints sweatshirt was chosen, in this instance, to link the toro with the religious pretensions of the conquistadors and their descendants. The bull now confronted Moctezuma, Malinche, and each of the ghost warriors in a series of brief, stylized battles. When the last dancer had fought the bull, the abuelos gave chase.

Capturing the bull, they laid him on his back and covered him, from his neck to his knees, with a sheet. One of the abuelos produced a plastic laser beam, which emitted electronic beeps. While the other abuelo lifted the bull's legs, the one armed with the toy laser crawled head first between the bull's legs under the sheet. There the abuelo pretended to perform surgery, from which he finally emerged with two large nuts that he displayed triumphantly to the crowd. The bull had been castrated. It was a humorous, but nonetheless very powerful, image of the defeat of the intrusive invader.

The final episode was a joyous dance in which Moctezuma, Malinche, and the warriors celebrated their victory. Although the fiesta had begun the night before with vespers in the Catholic church, the dance itself had offered no hint of indigenous conversion to Christianity. Rather, the defining moment of the dance had been the castration of the small boy, dressed as a bull, who represented the conquering "saints" of Spanish and Anglo cultures. It was thus an apt prelude to the performance, the next day, of the pueblo's "most important public ritual,"


the Turtle Dance (Sweet 1985:42; see also Parsons 1929:179-185). The matachines dance in San Juan may well be read, therefore, not as a celebration of conversion to Christianity but as a cleansing of the pueblo, through the intervention of Malinche and the consequent victory of Moctezuma and his ghost warriors, for the

subsequent unimpeded performance of pre-Christian ritual.

La Danza de los Santiagueros and La Danza de los Negritos

Although of interest in themselves, these readings of particular conquest dances are ancillary to my main purpose in this article, which is, it will be remembered, to explain the role of La Malinche in Mesoamerican danzas. I have

argued, in this respect, that La Malinche does not represent, as is so often assumed, the mistress of Cort&s, but the wife or daughter of a past, present, and future king, usually named Moctezuma, and therefore, too, the goddess or

"queen of the spirit world," commonly known in prehispanic Mexico as Toci or Tonantzin, who accompanies the deity whom Moctezuma himself represents, most often named Huitzilopochtli. With regard to this argument, two questions remain. First, what is Malinche's role, in dances such as the danza de los santiagos or the danza de los negritos from the Sierra de Puebla, where she appears without Moctezuma? And, second, why does the Malinche of the dances share her name with the historical Malinche who was Cort&s's translator and mistress?

We may begin to answer the first question by looking at Ichon's account of the danza de los santiagueros in the Totonac community of Pantepec, in the northern Sierra de Puebla. The dance, as Ichon describes it, dramatizes the victory of"St. James [Santiago], mounted on his little white horse and assisted by his son Gallinche (La Malinche)," over "the Roman soldiers and their captains under the command of [Pontius] Pilate" (1969:341). The confusion of historical and mythological referents implies, according to Ichon, a variety of Christian victories: Spaniards, fighting under the banner of Santiago, over Moors; the resurrected Christ over Romans (and Jews) governed by Pilate; and, since Pilate wears an elaborate devil's mask, the victory of Christ over the devil. Moreover, he writes, the victory of Cort&s over Moctezuma is also "discreetly indicated by the presence of Gallinche, who personifies La Malinche, Cortes's companion and translator" (1969:347).

Christian victory may well be the public transcript of the dance, sanctioning its performance on the feast day of Pantepec's patron saint, John the Baptist (June 24). But as we have seen, folk theatre rarely accords unequivocal victory to the dominant culture, and the danza de los santiagos is no exception. In Cuetzalan, for example, on the western slopes of the Sierra de Puebla, the victorious santiagos wear red masks decorated with golden disks and the defeated pilatos wear pink or white masks with rosy cheeks and black beards. Although the names proclaim a Christian victory, the masks reveal a hidden transcript that speaks instead of the triumph of the Sun and his warriors over pale-faced Spanish conquistadors (Harris 1993:99-107). If, as Ichon suspects, the presence of La Malinche in the Pantepec danza de los santiagueros signals a reference to the


Spanish conquest, it is far more likely to signify a reversal of that conquest than it is the historical victory of Cortes over Moctezuma. Ichon has been misled, in this respect, by his conventional identification of Malinche with Cortes's "companion and translator." For if, as I have argued, the Malinche of the dance is the companion of Moctezuma rather than Cort&s, then the Santiago of the Pantepec dance, as the father of Gallinche, also represents, in any reference to the events of the conquest, Moctezuma rather than Cort6s. Cortes, if he appears at all, is represented by Pilate, who wears the mask of a devil. And the

conquistadors are suggested, as is so often the case in Mexican folk theatre, by their "structural equivalents," the Roman soldiers of occupation. Reference to the Spanish conquest, therefore, is not to the historical victory of Cortes over Moctezuma, but, as with the danza de la pluma and the danza de los matachines, to a resurgence of the vanquished.

Ichon does, however, tease out a hidden transcript of a different sort. Reminding us that in the New Testament the apostles James and John were surnamed "Sons of Thunder" (Mark 3:17), he notes that, among the inhabitants of the Sierra de Puebla, Santiago "is considered as one of the principal gods of Thunder"

(1969:350). In the danza de los santiagueros, he suggests, Santiago "embodies... the god of the storm and of the rain, that is to say Tlaloc himself." The presence at his side of La Malinche is explained by the fact that she is sometimes identified, in

syncretic fashion, with "the goddess of Water and the companion of Tlaloc." Ichon observes, moreover, that the "recitatifs" of the drama refer on several occasions to

Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war and of the sun, and may intend, when they do so, to designate Santiago. He concludes, therefore, that the danza de los

santiagueros is, in essence, a seasonal ritual: "The combat and the victory of Santiago over Pilate symbolizes ... the victorious struggle of the god of the storm and of the rain-or of the fecundating Sun-over the subterranean gods of Death and Fire" (Ichon 1969:351). Ichon may well be correct in his conclusion that the

Pantepec danza de los santiagueros bears traces of an original fertility rite. Pinto draws a similar conclusion about Guatemala's baile de los huaxtecos, in which La Malincia appears as the daughter of an unnamed king and engages in "light-hearted sexual play" with the male characters (1983:79-80). Once again, therefore, we have found signs that the Malinche of the danzas is the companion both of Moctezuma in his struggle against foreign domination and, as the goddess of water and of the abundance of the earth, of his structural equivalent among the gods, in this case Tlaloc or Huitzilopochtli.

Traces of an original fertility rite have also been found in the Sierra de Puebla's danza de los negritos, a dance unrelated except in name to the concluding baile of Oaxaca's danza de la pluma. Cordry, for example, calls Puebla's danza de los

negritos "a crop-fertility dance" (1980:250), and Ichon is certain that it is "a

fertility rite symbolizing the arrival of the rains, and the death and resurrection of the corn" (1969:363). The dancers wear black velvet trousers and jackets, richly embroidered, and wide-brimmed hats, adorned with mirrors and strings of colored beads. With the exception of two clowns, they are generally unmasked (Leyenaar 1988:195; but cf. Danza 1952:27-29; Rosoff and Cadaval


1992:40). La Maringuilla, played by a man in a woman's dress, is a central character in los negritos, and, as in the baile de los huaxtecos, engages in sexual mimicry with the male characters. In both the danza de los negritos and the related acatlaxqui dance, she carries a snake. This may be wooden (Ichon 1969:358; Danza 1952:24-27) or, on occasion, it may be live (Toor 1947:534). The dance often ends, after the snake has been "killed," with the winding of colored ribbons around a central pole (see Figure 5), in the manner of the English maypole dances.

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Figure 5. The danza de los negritos, Cuetzalan, Puebla. October 1988: Malinche, played by a boy in a dress, stands at the foot of the pole.


The reputation of the historical Malinche, the repeated sexual innuendo, and the significance of the snake in both Christian and Freudian narrative have prompted several scholars to misread the dance as an attempt to "kill 'evil' sexual instincts in women" (Cordry 1980:197; Toor 1947:534). But as Ichon points out, snake dances are traditional among many Native American peoples and are generally linked to the invocation of rain and the growth of corn. For the Totonac negritos, he reports, the snake "represents ... lightning, rain, and corn" (1969:362). In this scheme of things, Malinche is "the mother of the serpent" and, once again, the goddess of water and fertility, responsible for sending rain and nurturing corn. She is also, as we have now come to expect, the wife of the leading male dancer (Tata Mariano or el caporal), with whom she rules or

"parents" the negritos. In the Sierra de Puebla, this pre-Christian rite has disguised itself, for performance on a Catholic feast day, as the dramatization of a popular legend of a snake-bitten African slave brought back to life by the compassion of his mother, Maringuilla, and the dancing of his peers (Santiago 1988:19-20). "Given the political handicaps under which the bearers of... folk culture habitually operate," as Scott astutely observes, "the condition of its public expression is that it be sufficiently indirect and garbled that it is capable of two readings, one of which is innocuous" (1990:157).

These brief readings of the danza de los santiagueros and the danza de los negritos explain Malinche's role in those dances in which no overt reference is made to her traditional partner Moctezuma. If Moctezuma is included among the several referents designated by Santiago, Tata Mariano, or whatever other name is given to the dance's "hero," then Malinche retains her role as the Aztec ruler's essential female relative and as his partner in the struggle against foreign domination. But even if this is the case, her primary role in these dances seems to be that of the goddess of water and fertility, the female counterpart to Moctezuma's structural equivalent in the Aztec pantheon, the god of life-giving sun or rain. Her two roles are, as we have seen, complementary. In the various danzas de la conquista, her role as Moctezuma's wife or daughter comes to the fore. In those dances that bear the clearest traces of pre-Christian fertility rites, her role as goddess of water is more prominent. In neither case, however, is she the mistress and translator of Cortes.

The Name of Malinche

Why, then, does the Malinche of the danzas share her name with the historical figure who was Corths's translator and mistress? We have already hinted at one

possible reason. In the cyclical narrative of the Aztec royal lineage, legitimacy was passed from the last king in one cycle to the first in the next through a

linking female. Cortts's claim to authority over the Aztec empire was vested, according to this scheme of things, in his liaison with Moctezuma's daughter, Isabel. But Isabel was overshadowed in the popular mind by Cortes's other

indigenous mistress, Marina/Malinche. Structurally equivalent, in the sense that both were linked to a real or aspiring "boundary figure" (one as Moctezuma's


daughter, and both as Cortes's mistress and the mother of a potential heir), they may have been merged into a single figure in the folk mythology of Aztec kingship that found expression in the danzas. The name of one became the name of both, such that the daughter of Moctezuma and the "wife" of his successor (be he the usurper Cortes or the messianic Moctezuma) all came to be known as Malinche. Just as the name of Moctezuma the Younger was given, in the postconquest reconstruction of Aztec history, to his structural equivalent in the previous cycle (Gillespie 1989:167-170), to the founder of the Aztec empire (Applegate 1929:175), and to the messianic king yet to come, so the name of the false Moctezuma's mistress was given to her structural equivalents, the wives or daughters of each of the legitimate "Moctezumas." One practical advantage of this maneuver, of course, was that it offered an acceptable public transcript for the dances of the conquest. Many a folklorist, as we have seen, has misread the presence of Malinche on the winning side to mean that a dance was dramatizing the victory of Cortes. No doubt other officials and outsiders have been induced to make the same mistake.

Another factor may be that the reputation of the historical Malinche for treachery and sexual promiscuity provided a convenient public transcript into which to insinuate the hidden transcript of a pre-Christian fertility rite. The kind of sexual mimicry required of a dancer representing the goddess of fertility could then be explained as a disparaging reference to the "sin" of Malinche, and the dance characterized not as sympathetic magic designed to induce crop fertility but as an attempt to exorcise the evil sexual instincts of women in general and of La Malinche in particular. If the goddess's structural equivalent among the Aztec royalty was already being referred to as Malinche, in her capacity as wife or daughter of Moctezuma, then so much the better.

There is also the matter of the similarity of the historical Malinche's name to that of "the principal deity the Spaniards brought to New Spain" (Gillespie 1989:116), the Virgin Mary, for both Maria and Marina become Malinche as they are translated into a hispanicized form of Nahuatl. There is some question as to whether Cortes's mistress and translator was originally named Malinal, after the day in the Aztec calendar on which she may have been born, and then renamed Marina at her Christian baptism, or whether, having been baptized Marina, her Christian name was then rendered in Nahuatl as Malintzin. Frances Karttunen thinks the latter more likely (1994:6). In either case, Marina would be pronounced Malintzin in Nahuatl, "tzin being a Nahuatl suffix showing respect and the r of the Spanish, not present in Nahuatl, being converted to 1; Malinche would hence be the Spanish corruption of Malintzin" (Cypess 1991:33). The baptismal name Marina, in other words, whether or not it corresponded to an original indigenous name, became Malintzin in Nahuatl and Malinche in hispanicized Nahuatl. Maria becomes Malinche by the same process: r becomes 1, the glottal stop between i and a becomes n, and tzin (hispanicized as che) is added as a mark of respect (Carochi 1983:9). Since Maria was the name of the woman most closely associated with the Christian man-god Jesus and was often accorded far more devotion than he in Spanish Catholic


ritual, it is not surprising that Jesus and Mary were seen by the Indians as the Christian structural equivalents of the Aztec god-king Moctezuma/Huitzilopo- chtli and his female complement (Gillespie 1989:116-120). The name Malinche may, therefore, have been given to Moctezuma's wife or daughter and to her structural equivalent among the gods because that was the form in which the name of her Christian counterpart was rendered in hispanicized Nahuatl. If this is the case, the initial sharing of names between Cortes's mistress and the semidivine Aztec princess who appears in the dances may have been coincidental, being derived independently from the similar but distinct Spanish names Maria and Marina.

It is possible, of course, that the name of Moctezuma's companion in the danzas may be derived, not from the Christian mother-figure Maria, but from an indigenous Mexican goddess. Motolinia reports that the Indians of central Mexico worshipped a "goddess of water," Matlalcuey, alongside the male god of water, Tlaloc (Motolinia 1990:185 [trat. 3, cap. 16]). Moreover, as Brundage notes, the "majestic and isolated mountain" straddling the present-day borders of Puebla and Tlaxcala, which was originally named after Matlalcuey, is now named La Malinche (Brundage 1979:157; see also Trevinio and Gilles 1994:122). The mountain, therefore, offers an illuminating parallel to the Malinche of the dances. Demonstrably linked to a preconquest goddess rather than to the

companion of Cortes, it nonetheless now shares its name with the latter.

Finally, there is the extraordinary coincidence of names between Ma- rina/Malinche and the man-woman figure in the English Morris dances, May games, and mummers plays (Harris 1994c). Although the English character sometimes appears under other names, such as Bessy or the Dame, her most

frequent designation is Marian or Molly. In both May games and Morris dances of the Elizabethan period, for example, while the "king" or leader of the

company was called Robin Hood, the sole female character was called Maid Marian (Wiles 1981). Robin Hood seems to have been the name assigned to the

May king or summer lord of an old "king-game," while the character of Maid Marian was "famed as a dancer" before she became part of the Robin Hood

legend (Wiles 1981:5). They seem to have met first in the Morris dance. Sometimes Marian became the more informal Molly, such that in East Anglia, for example, the dancers were known simply as the Molly dancers (Helm 1981:52). When she strays into the sword dances or mummers plays, she is

commonly known as Molly or Sweet Moll (Helm 1981:34-36). Other elements of the English folk-dance tradition, such as the maypole, the fool, and the

hobbyhorse also appear in the Mexican danzas. The relationship between the English and the Spanish American dances and,

in particular, between the Marina/Malinche of Mexico and the Marian/Molly of England deserves a more extended study. All we can say here is that there is at least a possibility that Marina/Malinche and Marian/Molly share common roots in a continental European male-female dance character whose name, as it traveled to England, became Marian/Molly and, as it traveled to Mexico, became Marina/Malinche. The English Morris dances and Spanish American


danzas such as the danza de los matachines are remarkably similar in structure (Forrest 1984), and both arguably have some of their roots in Spain. Although the relative proportions of Spanish and indigenous influence in the Mexican danzas can be argued, the presence of some Spanish elements is certain. And the Morris dances are, at least in name, moriscos (Moorish dances), not because they are Moorish in origin, "a theory which ignores the fact that nothing like the English dance has ever been found amongst the Moors" (Helm 1981:50), but because the Spanish version often features Moors in conflict with Christians.

One link between Malinche and Marian may be the Marion of the French pastourelles, especially if, as Jones (1931) has argued, the pastourelles had their origins in the ancient May games of central France. Marion may well have traveled to England in the May games themselves (Chambers 1903:175-176), for it is in just this context that we find her dancing in Elizabethan times. Indeed the very name Maid Marion, being a corruption of May Marion, lends support to this seasonal link. In 1582, the Puritan Christopher Featherston complained of "men in woman's apparell, whom you do most commonly call maymarions" (Hutton 1994:131). If Marion also traveled through Spain and to the Americas in this fashion, it would go a long way to explain the interweaving of ribbons around a pole, after the manner of the European maypole dance, in so many of the Mesoamerican dances in which La Malinche appears (Champe 1983:52 ff.; Leyenaar 1988:195-206; Rosoff and Cadaval 1992:40; Rodriguez 1991:240). In Spain, men "who in dancing imitate the appearance of women and, contrary to nature, represent May queens and demons [qui in saltatione femineum habitum gestiunt et monstruose se fingunt et majas et orcum]" were known as early as the eighth century (Zink 1972:93). Although nowadays the "purified" Spanish May games are dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the woman played by a man in Spanish folk dance is most often called by the generic title la dama, there is at least one instance where such a character is still called Maria. In the Catalan mascarada del vell i la vella, when the old woman (la vella) is given a proper name, it is, according to Joan Amades, "Maria, that is to say, mother [mare]," for "she seems to embody the sense of the earth mother" (1951:33, see also 82-83).

Further work must be done, but the popularity of Marian/Molly in England, the common link of the French Marion, the English Maymarion, and the Mesoamerican Malinche to maypole dances, and the existence of a Spanish folk dance "earth mother" of ambiguous gender named Maria or mare provides at least indirect evidence that the name of the "female" character in the European dances that reached Mexico may have resembled the Spanish name (Marina) of Cort&s's mistress. If this were the case, then the character in the danzas would be known as Malinche, not by way of reference to Dofia Marina, but as the hispanicized Nahuatl form of the name of the man-woman in the imported dances.

There are, therefore, a number of possible reasons why the Malinche of the danzas should share her name with the historical Malinche of the Spanish conquest. Their effect is cumulative rather than mutually exclusive. While we may never know the precise origin of Malinche's name in the dance, we are at


least freed from the pressure to equate her, because of a common name, with a historical character to whom she makes only incidental and distracting reference. When the Malinche of the conquest narrative is represented in the dances she is given her Spanish name of Dofia Marina. When the name Malinche is used, the dancer represents the wife or daughter of a past, present, and future king, usually named Moctezuma. Malinche and Moctezuma, in turn, represent companion indigenous divinities or rulers of the spirit world. The Malinche of the dances emphatically does not represent Cortes's mistress and translator.

Note

I have spelled Moctezuma and Cortes thus except when quoting authors who have chosen variant forms of the two names. Translations from Spanish, French, Latin, and Catalan are my own unless otherwise stated. I am deeply indebted to Adrian Trevifio and Barbara Gilles for their help in

enabling me to understand the relationship between Moctezuma and La Malinche in the danza de los matachines and, by extension, in the Mexican danzas in general. I am also grateful to Edward Abse, Jeff Cohen, Annabella Gonzalez, Mike Kloeppel, Martha Liebert, Philippe Perez, Barry Sell, and Eleanor Friend Sleight for their help in providing information or insight along the way. Any errors that remain in my understanding are, of course, mine and not theirs. Finally, I am profoundly thankful, both for their art and, in many cases, for their friendship, to those whom I have seen dance the danza de los santiagos and the danza de los negritos in Cuetzalin, Puebla, the danza de

la pluma in Teotitlin del Valle, Oaxaca, and the danza de los matachines in Bernalillo, Picuris, San

Juan, and Santa Clara, New Mexico.

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moctezumas daughter the role of la malinche in mesoamerican dance

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