Mexican Dance Masks [Wall Text] Page: 1 of 1

                                
MEXICAN DANCE MASKS

Mexican dance masks represent a living survival of an ancient
tradition by which man and his gods meet in a public and popular activity,
Today many of the masked dances are continued primarily for entertainment,
but they often retain implied meanings related to history or ritual,
A good example of the fusion of pre-Columbian beliefs with European-
influenced imagery is found in the pair of Dwarf masks from LaParota, Guerrero,
These masks are in appearance bearded Europeans carved in a naturalistic
manner that relates to Spanish-derived church art. In meaning and actual
dance use, they reflect a virtually pure pre-Columbian tradition. The masks were
used in rain-related dances, in which they were carried by boys, so that they
appeared as large, disembodied heads floating a few inches above the ground.
These rain dwarf dancers emerged from caves, the entrances of which were often
mist-shrouded. The ancient beliefs held that the rains originated from caves,
or that the cave was the specially favored abode of the rain gods as well as
being the entrance to the Underworld. The rain god had as helpers small versions of
himself, thus the dwarves at the same time appear as authoritative images, for
which the modern equivalent is the bearded Spaniard.
A different kind of cultural fusion, with an ironic twist, is represented
by the widely occuring Dance of the Moors and the Christians. This dance was
brought to the New World from Spain, where it had been a popular festival
performance dramatizing the long struggle between the Christian Spaniards and
the Islamic invaders from North Africa, who had finally been totally repulsed
in the same year as Spain reached the New World, 1492. In the New World this
dance continued on the surface to represent the victory of the Spanish under
their patron Santiago Matamoros (St. James the Moor Slayer), But to the Indian
converts who were performing the dance, it was seen as well as a story of their
own conquest by the Spaniards. This ambivalence of meaning continues today, and
can be seen in the fact that the entire performance is treated less as a victory/
defeat situation and more as a satirical and farcical display of combat itself.
Another way in which the two cultures meet in masks is in the frequent
fusion within the mask design itself of human and animal elements. This was very
much a characteristic of pre-Spanish masks, as can be determined from their
representation on surviving pre-Columbian art objects. In the Museum's collection,
in fact, may be seen one of the rare surviving examples of an actual mask, this
one made of turquoise and shell mosaic on wood (it is displayed in the
pre-Columbian galleries at the far end of the building), This fused animal/
reptile/man imagery is an immediate and visual way to suggest complicated
conceptual interrelationships between natural forces, nature spirits that may
also be alter ego familiars of man, and man himself.