Yes, there were devils in N.M.
Daniel Chacon’s (“For these devils, it’s curtains,” Nov. 16) and Justin Horwath’s (“Neither devils nor rooms at Las Posadas,” Dec. 11) articles are missing some important features. For example, I’ve been told that about one-third of Las Posadas performed along the Rio Grande corridor to Mexico included a devil, not an innkeeper as your accounts claim.
The particular version (which I participated in) was painstakingly extracted in detail from a version previously performed in Galisteo, but long since abandoned. It included a devil. There may have been few, or no other, posadas being performed in the Santa Fe area in the early 1970s.
As I recall, the motivation to import a posadas to San Antonio Street was for a novena in celebration of defeat of a big apartment complex that would have destroyed the neighborhood. It was so well-performed here (burro and all), bigger and bigger crowds came, forcing it to be moved to the Plaza. However, its integrity was overseen by local historians Orlando Romero and Thomas Chávez.
Over time, it got further tampered with, making it an appendage to holiday programs primarily to entertain tourists, sponsored by the Palace of the Governors; it no longer was a local event by locals for locals. The beautiful aria between Joseph and the devil and the real burro got lost.
The procession was moved away from Christmas Eve and the night before, as was traditional. New devils were promoted who not only didn’t know the words, but acted out increasingly obscene antics in order to gather laughs and outdo each other. That’s when traditionalists objected and forced this removal of the “devils in New Mexico,” under claims of inauthenticity. In other words, they threw out the baby with the bath water.