Look back to early 1900s for origins of Fiesta, Entrada
Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared in The New Mexican’s Pasatiempo magazine on Sept. 9, 2011.
In addition to the burning of Zozobra, one of the most memorable aspects of the annual Fiesta de Santa Fe, as it is performed today, is the re-enactment and reimagination of an episode in the so-called peaceful reconquest of Santa Fe in 1692, 12 years after the Pueblo Revolt.
The climax of this event is the Entrada, or ceremonial entrance of Don Diego de Vargas, the Spanish colonial captain general who was appointed two years earlier to the post of governor of the lost province of New Mexico. Latter-day de Vargases are accompanied by a group of men representing people the historical records tell us were on the 1692 expedition: royal officials, the town council, standard-bearers, foot soldiers and friars.
The whole group is dressed in costumes evocative of 17th-century garb, including waistcoats and loose-fitting shirts, and for the soldiers, high leather boots and metal helmets. Once de Vargas and his entourage enter the Plaza, they re-enact negotiations with a man representing the Tesuque Pueblo cacique for the resettlement of Santa Fe. De Vargas informs the Pueblo leader that all the rebellious natives will be pardoned if they return to the Catholic Church, and by the way, they must also accept the Spanish yoke once again. In the end, the cacique states that his people also love peace and that he will accept the return of Spanish colonial and Catholic authority.
Then the Fiesta gets underway, complete with carne adovada burritos, mariachi music, and the Fiesta Court’s de Vargas, his 16 men, a queen, princesses and an Indian princess.
As Sarah Horton writes in The Santa Fe Fiesta, Reinvented, published by the School for Advanced Research, since World War II, the Fiesta has increasingly focused on expressing Spanish roots and Catholic devotion. The application for queen requires both a Spanish surname and Spanish background.
Since their refounding in 1956, the Caballeros de Vargas have played a key role in the Fiesta as a Catholic confraternity devoted to the image of the Virgin Mary, La Conquistadora, “Our Lady the Conqueror.” They organize Catholic Masses and arrange for processions of the Marian image’s twin, dubbed “La Peregrina,” or the Pilgrim, from the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis to the Rosario Chapel and elsewhere about the city. All of this can be interpreted as a reaction of the city’s Hispanic populace to the increasingly secular and bohemian nature of the city.
In today’s Fiesta, La Conquistadora and her traveling double contend with and offer a counterpoint to Zozobra. This Fiesta troika was absent a hundred years ago, when the Fiesta de Santa Fe was reinvented.
The earliest celebrations of the teens and ’20s of the past century were staged by Santa Fe businessmen and boosters as promotional events showcasing eras of Santa Fe’s history, from the Pre-Columbian era to the Conquest period, the Santa Fe Trail period, the Mexican American War and modern Santa Fe. Zozobra was not burned in public until 1926, queens were not crowned until 1927, and La Conquistadora played no role in the Fiesta until 1958.
Santa Feans trace the city’s Fiesta to a decree of 1712 by Spanish colonial authorities, to the effect that a religious and civil festival should be held, in part, to commemorate the reconquest of Santa Fe 20 years earlier. No one knows if any fiestas, as such decreed, were held during the remaining century or so of the Spanish colonial era, or during succeeding Mexican and Territorial periods.
According to Elizabeth DeHuff, writing for The Santa Fean in the summer of 1941, the first modern Fiesta was suggested in 1911 by members of the Santa Fe Club, a private social club. DeHuff named the Rev. James Mythen, rector of Holy Faith Episcopal Church, as the instigator. A Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce committee organized the event, chaired by Arthur Seligman, later governor of New Mexico.
The kernel of what we today recognize as the Santa Fe Fiesta took place on July 4, 1911, in conjunction with Independence Day commemorations and was called the De Vargas Pageant. The pag- eant included the re-enactment of the entrance of de Vargas, played by George Armijo. Beginning at Rosario Chapel, the mounted procession rode through the hills and down to the Plaza. Armijo was accompanied by dozens of riders dressed as Spanish soldiers and friars, as well as about a hundred Pueblo Indians, dressed in Native garb, with four governors sporting Plains Indian-style feather bonnets.
By 1919, the De Vargas Pageant was renamed Fiesta, moved to September (as called for in the decree of 1712), and featured parades and events commemorating the tricultural history of Santa Fe. There were Pueblo Indian dances, processions of men dressed as Spanish colonial friars and conquistadors (now with metal helmets and other armor) and parades with floats devoted to such themes as prehistoric trade, traders and wagons of the Santa Fe Trail.
One common thread that links these early celebrations is the use of costumed impersonators representing both named and generic historic figures. All did their best — or were asked to do their best — to look their parts. The Pueblo participants dressed how outsiders expected Indians to look, with Plains Indian feather bonnets.
Costumed re-enactors were a common feature of public festivals in the U.S. of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At several of the World’s Fairs of this era, such as at the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, living Natives were brought in and required to dress and “act Indian” in mock villages. The same was true in St. Louis in 1904.
Just after the first modern Fiesta here in Santa Fe, Edgar Lee Hewett, Nusbaum and others planned the exhibits for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. There were sham cliff-dwelling ruins and an entire Native Southwestern-style pueblo (think Taos Pueblo in Southern California), where a score of San Ildefonso Pueblo and Navajo Indians lived for months. In addition to exhibits devoted to ceramics (Maria and Julian Martinez were there), there were Eagle Dances and Navajo weaving demonstrations.
In Santa Fe in 1883, there was a costumed de Vargas procession held during the Tertio-Millennial Exposition, erroneously commemorating the 333rd anniversary of Santa Fe. But we should perhaps look south of the border for other inspirations for the costumed reenactors in the Fiesta de Santa Fe.
In September 1910, Mexico celebrated the centennial of its independence from Spain. The Mexican wars of independence began in 1810 and lasted until 1821, when Gen. Agustín Iturbide was proclaimed president of the regency, and later emperor of Mexico. A century after those wars began, another imperial figure, Porfirio Díaz, who had ruled Mexico for more than 30 years, planned a month of celebrations of the independence. Foreign nations sent delegations and gifts. The prestigious International Congress of Americanists met in mid-September in Mexico City, with important anthropologists and archaeologists in attendance — many of whom were friends of Hewett, Sylvanus Morley, and other Museum of New Mexico and School of American Archaeology staff members.
The celebrations culminated Sept. 15 with speeches, banquets, exhibitions and most importantly for our story, the desfile histórico, or historical parade. The parade narrated Mexican history with costumed re-enactors who represented three epochs: the events of the conquest, the era of Spanish domination and the independence period. Photographs of the event show marchers dressed in armor — not so dissimilar to our own, more modest, de Vargas Entrada. There were also many people dressed as Aztecs, including a float with Montezuma, the star-crossed ruler whose domains and people the Spanish had laid waste to and devastated.
In the early 20th century, many Santa Feans had close ties to Mexico. Hewett’s School of American Archaeology had projects in the Southwest as well as in Mexico and Central America. It seems plausible that photographic images and newspaper accounts of the Mexico City parade reached those in our capital city who devised the early Fiesta, not to mention Hewett and his staff learning of the festivities from colleagues who attended the scientific congress.
By 1919, Fiesta had successive parades of historical re-enactors representing the different periods in Santa Fe’s history. Unlike today’s Fiesta, with its exclusive focus on the de Vargas episode, those parades celebrated all the epochs of Santa Fe’s past.