Preserving genízaro culture for future generations
Los Comanches de la Serna to perform New Year’s Day
Los Comanches de la Serna, a group of drummers and dancers led by Francisco “El Comanche” Gonzales, 81, gave a presentation to the Taos Municipal Schools District board of education on Dec. 7.
Last year, the dancing group was asked to perform at a land grant committee meeting in Talpa, where, according to Gonzales, District 13 state Sen. Bill O’Neill was “moved” by their performance and mission. The senator provided $50,000 to the La Merced Cristóbal de la Serna land grant for “cultural enhancement” purposes.
“That’s what we’re working on now,” Gonzales said, adding that, when the group presented before the school board on Dec. 7, they went with the intention of forming a partnership with the district’s Visiting Artist Program, an awardwinning program that has exposed elementary school students to over 60 local artists in the past 17 years.
An educational entity itself, Los Comanches de la Serna seeks to perpetuate the Comanche dances and traditions for future generations. The Comanche have long existed in New Mexico, but among the modern dynamic of society, Gonzales is concerned for the security of the tribe’s historic culture. He hopes Los Comanches de la Serna will help to counter that.
“It allows us to keep part of the beauty of what New Mexico is,” Gonzales said. “And that’s what Comanches de la Serna are doing. We are perpetuating one of the many facets in what I call the diamond of New Mexico. Because the diamond of New Mexico — it includes folklórico music, flamenco, ranchera, even western music; and they all play a very beautiful part in the state of New Mexico — you don’t find it in other states like you do” here.
Gonzales said mentorship like Los Comanches offers is important, but emphasized that parents must also encourage their children to participate in genízaro traditions as well. The Comanche tradition has been passed down from generation to generation, and its philosophy remains central to
Gonzales and his dancers. But it is challenging to preserve those traditions because so many of them have been altered or even lost due to modern societal conflicts.
“Many of the things that were a beauty in our communities here have been lost because of the change that occurs in our schools and in our social structure,” Gonzales said. “For example, we used to dance on the 25th of January, [Conversión de] San Pablo [feast day], but if you go dance on the 25th, everybody’s working.”
Gonzales, a genízaro who “recognizes himself as a Comanche,” also said the history of the Comanche has been diluted, which he feels has not been given proper treatment in educational settings. But Gonzales maintains hope for the future of the Comanche culture, and his hope finds itself in the foundations of his dancing group.
Gonzales believes that Los Comanches de la Serna has existed in some form or another for many generations. Long before he became the leader of the group, Gonzales danced with the group, a tradition he began practicing when he was 3 years old. He recalled a formative experience in the 1960s when he watched a Comanche dance on New Year’s Day .
“The great joy was to open the door early in the morning and listen to the drum beats as they started from Llano Quemado,” Gonzales said. “And it was a beautiful sound because there’s the silence, but then the drum beats excelled beyond. It was just music to our hearts. And then I went to church that day and committed to God, knowing that I danced to honor the birth of Christ, [and] that I would continue to perpetuate this facet of our community.”
Since finding his vocation, Gonzales has performed with the dancers every New Year’s day, breaking his streak just once when he was ill. Los Comanches de la Serna will be performing their annual New Year’s dance this Sunday (Jan. 1) at the San Francisco de Asís church in Ranchos de Taos.
“My children, their children and the neighbors and their children — they kept on going, and that’s the beauty of it,” Gonzales said. “It is not hip-hop. You know, the evolution of song and music and dance change, right? Well, the thing is that in ours, we don’t change because of the fact that the chants have a significance, and the dance itself? The dancer has to feel the song and what it means.”