Border, no border
Taos Azteca dance group bonds with Mexican tradition
AT ABOUT THE TIME WHITE artists had begun to settle in Taos to capture in oil paintings a romantic vision of a way of life they believed as fast disappearing, the first solid border barriers were being built between the United States and Mexico.
What this did was to end centuries of free movement between indigenous cultures, ceasing the regular interplay of traditions, and commerce that resulted in ancient examples of coral, sea shells, tropical bird feathers and ceremonial artifacts unearthed in ancient Southwestern Puebloan cities such as Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde and others.
Still, the interplay continues. Perhaps not in the way it used to, but in a way that has made the connections of vital importance to maintain ethnic and tribal identity.
Such was the case when Tanya Vigil of Taos began an Aztec dance group that came to be known as Izcalli en Nanantzin, which means Resurgence of Our Mother Earth. Vigil founded the group in 1981, but under the name Grupo Taoseño. That changed in 1986 when the danzantes met Capitan Moises Gonzales Barrios, a native of Mexico City, according to a 2018 story by Teresa Dovalpage in the Taos News.
Ixcalli en Nanantzin is still going strong and just returned from a trip to Querétaro, Mexico where they participated in a very large ceremonial involving many other dance groups. Between Sept. 12-15 they took part in an all night velacíon (vigil), flor y canto (flower and song) ceremony, and three days of dance. Traveling from Taos were group members Capitana Tanya Vigil, Patricia Corral, Katherine Chavez, Chanda Valadez, Lisa Thomson, Daniel Herrera, Audra Herrera, Savanah Herrera and Michael Vigil.
“I was chosen by my teacher, maestro Moises Gonzalez Barrios,” Tanya Vigil said of the Taos group’s origins. “In 1986, I met him on the Pima Reservation and he emphasized going down into Querétaro to ask permissions from the elders down there, the Capitanes Generales, to do this dance. So, I had never even heard of this city, Querétaro (a city in central Mexico, northwest of Mexico City), but for me, I feel my connection goes beyond borders.”
The ceremony in which they took part was called la Santa Cruz De Los Milagros or the Holy Cross of Miracles.
“We celebrate five days of celebra tion in honor of the Holy Cross of Miracles. What we do is, we dance, we stay up for an all-night vigil. And then we dance for three-and-a-half days on cobblestone streets in Querétaro, to honor la Santa Cruz.”
Corral, who is the fire carrier for the Taos group, said the ceremony is rooted in a conflict between the native Chichimecas and invading Spanish colonists. These were “tribal groups that were from the Querétaro area and into the north all the way, probably to New Mexico today.” She said some were nomadic, others were farmers, and they were hunters and gatherers. “And so there are lots of different people given this name of Chichimeca,” she said.
Corral explained that when the
Spanish came in, they found the Chichimeca living there and many battles ensued as the Spanish tried to take over their land and to gain Christian converts. “The Chichmecas were very good warriors, hard-working people and so they would not back down,” Corral said. “So, there were lots of battles … then, finally, on the day that we commemorate, there was a big battle that happened and the both sides had lots of warriors and soldiers lost, dead on the fields there, and all of a sudden there was an apparition in the sky.”
In the Spanish version, the warriors and soldiers saw an apparition of St. James (Santiago), who they believed to be a savior of the colonists. “At that time … both sides laid down their arms and cried, ‘He is God.’”
“The indigenous version,” Corral said, “is that it was a celestial cluster, something bright that happened in the sky in the shape of a cross. So, they laid down their arms and at that point, the Chichimecas who, of course already had their traditions of dance and ceremony, began incorporating Catholic traditions. Well, by force, of course, because they had to in order to be able to continue their traditions. If they didn’t incorporate that Catholic side, they wouldn’t have the ceremony at all.”
The message, Tanya Vigil said she brings home to Taos is that the connections between the American Southwest and Mexico need to remain bound in respect and that the indigenous people of both places share so much history and bloodlines that cannot be ignored.
“I think that there were no manmade borders, that we all are connected,” she said. “As far as myself being a mestiza, and maybe that’s a word that a lot of people don’t use anymore, is that we are one with the people from Mexico.”
Vigil added, “And so I feel that knowing that we are connected, all of us and that we do have our tribe and we don’t need to claim anybody else’s tribe because we do have ours. And we all are related.”
As she displayed photographs she took on the trip, she pointed out some startling similarities. “You can see that it can be anyone that’s from any of the Pueblos up here. The only thing that ever prevented that was a border.”