Breaking a Mexican Tradition That Excludes Women, to Keep It Alive in Brooklyn

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/nyregion/mexican-dance-tecuanes.html

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On a sidewalk in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, outside Saint Michael’s Church, Maritza Xalanda, 13, asked for her mother’s help to tie on a giant mask, completing her costume as an old man with a bulbous nose and a long white beard.

She and about a dozen other children were gathered at the end of June with their parents to perform la danza de los tecuanes — the dance of the jaguars — a Mexican dance mixing native and Catholic traditions.

Maritza, while paying homage to her cultural heritage, is at the same time bucking hundreds of years of traditions.

Decades ago, when the first Mexican immigrants arrived in New York from the central Mexican state of Puebla, they brought with them the dance, which has indigenous Chichimeca and Zapotec roots.

Typically only men have performed los tecuanes, which re-enacts a jaguar hunt, and only elders played the music on a high-pitched reed flute and a drum. Women and children participating was seen as a taboo.

But many stuck to the old ways, limiting participation to men. Then, three years ago, Jeffrey Pérez started Los Tecuanes de San Juan Bautista, a Borough Park-based dance group.

Mr. Pérez, 45, who is originally from Chinantla, Puebla, but has lived in New York since 2004, had long been a loyal follower of the dance and wanted to teach his Brooklyn-born daughter and young son about its significance.

His son, now 10, learned to play the rhythmic flute music by ear and hoped to play accompaniment, which was frowned upon because of his age. His daughter, Ashley, now 13, wanted to learn the choreography, but no group would welcome them.

Feeling snubbed, Mr. Pérez struck out on his own. His group now has 30 dancers: Twenty are women and girls, and 10 are men and boys.

“I wanted my kids to learn where they are from,” Mr. Pérez said, remembering how he taught his son — also named Jeffrey — how to play the flute through videos on YouTube. Now his whole family is involved, including his wife, Antonia Morales, who sometimes plays the part of the bull.

Adalberto Vázquez, 38, who works in a packing factory, has been involved with the Tecuanes since he arrived in New York in the mid-1990s. He now dances with Mr. Pérez’s group after another group he was involved in disbanded.

“The dance back in Puebla discriminates against women,” Mr. Vázquez said. “The idea was always that women are a distraction for men.” But now, he said, among a new generation of immigrants, the participation of women has become more important.

“To keep the tradition alive, we need to involve whoever is here,” he said.

On performance days, the dancers wear oversized, brightly-colored wooden masks. On June 30, the church was celebrating St. John the Baptist and the dancers led a procession of the church’s icon down Second Avenue and 48th Street to a feast at an event space in an industrial warehouse.

Maritza’s mother, Adriana Castillo, made sure her daughter’s costume was a snug fit before showtime. Earlier Ms. Castillo had helped her dress in a black blazer and black pants embroidered with the color of the Mexican flag to wear with her distinctive mask.

In the face of growing media attention around President Trump’s immigration crackdown and derisive comments about Mexico, Ms. Castillo said she wanted her young daughter to honor her Mexican ancestry. She travels every week from Queens to Brooklyn with five of her seven children for dance practice.

“When you come to the United States, you suffer a lot of racism because you’re Hispanic,” said Ms. Castillo, who has lived in New York for 20 years and works in a laundromat. “All I want is for my children to be proud of who they are, so they know all the good things about being Mexican and see the culture as something positive.”

The dance features a series of characters — a devil, a witch, a dog, a bull, a goat and a donkey — that fight the jaguar, who is struck down in the final clash with death, a character played by a dancer wearing a skull mask.

The main figures weave in and out of the lines of dancers, who wear old-man masks like Maritza’s. The masked men represent landowners and farmers. Ms. Castillo sometimes joins in to play the witch.

Instead of reserving the dance for a once-a-year, primarily religious event to celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe, as others do, Mr. Pérez’s group performs regularly for the community. It brings the dance to dozens of events each year, like Cinco de Mayo celebrations, quinceañeras and parades.

Mr. Pérez, a house painter, manages the Tecuanes’s Facebook group and sends reminders about rehearsal and performance dates. He also imports the handmade masks from Mexico. In addition to directing the others, he plays the jaguar, flicking a long whip at his rivals during the battle scenes.

There are now at least half a dozen groups in New York City that practice the dance, and some of the other groups also accept women. But inclusion is not something that is promoted or made central like it is for the Tecuanes, participants said.

Nancy Ramos, 14, has been involved in the group since it started. She plays one of the old men, stepping rhythmically in lines paired off with other dancers. She, her two sisters and her aunt attend regularly.

She danced in another group, but it would only perform once a year. “Here we get to design our costumes and personalize them,” Nancy said. “And there are more girls here, which makes it more fun.”