Today’s subjects are masks from the area of  Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, Michoacán that can be used in two distinctly different dances. On Christmas Eve, immediately following the Midnight Mass,  they are worn during the performance in the church of the Danza de los Viejos (the “Old Ones”), and such performances continue the next day.  Then on January 7th and 8th they are used in the Dance of the Curpites. In nearby towns it is the well known Viejito (Little Old Men) masks that sometimes play these dual roles, but always with the Viejitos or Little Old Men name. In an attempt to keep things clear, I will refer to Curpite masks when I mean masks that can dance as Viejos or Curpites.

Here is a typical Curpite mask in the style similar to that found in Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, which I purchased on EBay™ in 2005. It came without provenance, however, it resembles a mask in one of Janet Brody Esser’s books—Máscaras Ceremoniales de los Tarascos de la Sierra de Michoacán (1984, page 61, Figura 6). That mask was carved by Luis Contreras of Neuvo San Juan Parangaricutiro in 1974.

Here is that EBay mask. It is handsome and very well carved. There is an attached wig, of horsetail mounted on the crown of an old hat, and this is decorated with tinsel, ribbons and a square mirror, all typical features of a Viejo or Curpite mask.

A Curpite mask always has a male face. In Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro and some other villages, the Curpite mask will have a mustache. In this case, and probably often, the Curpite mask will have a mustache carved in relief. The mustache on this mask is particularly beautiful.

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The Pastorela performance had its origin in medieval Europe, having been introduced by the Roman Catholic church as a teaching and conversion device. It portrays a very simple Christian message—”Beware of the devil, who is constantly tempting you to sin.” In this play there is at least one Hermitaño figure, a religious hermit. In the European tradition of Christian mysticism, some ascetics withdrew from society to better focus on their desire to commune with God. A very famous European mystic was Saint Francis of Assisi. The Hermitaño figure appears to have been modeled on such mystics. However, the hermit of the Shepherd’s Play is also a comic figure, alternately joking and serious.

Another character from the European Pastorela tradition was Bato, the foolish shepherd. In this drama, Bato seemed to personify ordinary humans who are susceptible to temptation, prone to sin, and therefore perceived by the Church as at risk for eternal damnation. In North American and Mexican versions of the Pastorela, this character is called “Bartolo.” In the drama, the devils are constantly tempting Bartolo, he appears to be gullible, and the Hermitaño is constantly advising Bartolo to resist the devils’ wiles. Angels and archangels also participate as necessary, to limit the devils’ power. As I noted in earlier posts, these characters have been expanded, so that one finds entire corps of Hermitaños, squadrons of shepherds, shepherdesses, or “ranchers,” and choirs of Angelitos.

Today I will include two more Hermitaño masks and then three that were worn by the Bartolo character.

Here is the first Hermitaño. I got this mask from John Kania and Joe Ferrin, of Santa Fe, in 1998. It is from Panindícuaro, Michoacán, the principal city of a municipio of the same name, which is about 50 miles west of Morelia.

This is a finely crafted mask, with almost all features carved in relief. It appears to be the work of a santero (a carver of saints), and must be fairly old, perhaps from the middle of the 20th century or earlier. The wood has split and cracked.

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Lagos de Moreno is a colonial city in the northeast corner of the Mexican state of Jalisco. It lies near the border between Jalisco and Guanajuato. So these masks and those from the last month or so all reflect a regional Pastorela tradition. Of course today’s masks also reveal how such a tradition can have a variety of expressions, from one town to the next and from one carver to another. I do not know the name of the carver of today’s masks, but he certainly has a distinctive and impressive style; I would call him a great master. There are some additional Diablo masks by this hand in the book by Bill LeVasseur—A Catalogue of Another Face of Mexico Mask Museum—a devil on page 116 with the face of an unknown creature and a wonderful ape-faced devil on page 121. Today’s masks, three Diablos and an Hermitaño, were collected in Lagos de Moreno by Jaled Muyaes and Estela Ogazon, and I believe that they probably collected Bill’s devils there at around the same time, or perhaps he found them there himself. I purchased this set of masks from them in July of 1998. The first is a typical mask of a human faced devil, and it probably represents Satan.

Magenta colored velvet has been applied over the eyebrows, above the upper lip, and over the chin. There is also a cloth tongue. There are goat horns and pointed leather ears.

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Today we will examine four more of these larger Pastorela Diablo masks that were collected in the Mexican state of Guanajuato.

The first mask,  which I purchased from Robin and Barbara Cleaver in 1999, was simply identified as an impressive Pastorela mask from the Mexican state of Guanajuato. It does pack quite a punch, doesn’t it?

This mask does not have the usual openings for vision, instead the dancer looks out through the large open mouth.

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Today we will examine three large masks that were either found in Guanajuato or they were attributed to that state. As you will see, some could actually be from Michoacán.

The first of these was collected in Guanajuato by Jaled Muyaes and Estela Ogazón, and I purchased this mask from them in July, 2001. However I now see that it looks very similar in style and design details to the pair of masks by Emiliano Fernández, of Angahuan, Michoacán that we saw in my post of August 7, 2017.

For example, it has the same style of eyes, ears, spotted green open-mouthed snakes, mouth, and back design.

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The first of today’s Pastorela Diablo masks, from Puruandiro, Michoacán is exceedingly large and ornately decorated. It also demonstrates a feature that was once more common on Michoacán Diablo masks—the presence of a ball between the devil’s teeth. I purchased this mask from Jaled Muyaes and Estela Ogazon in 2003. In sharp contrast, the next mask is very small. I bought this on EBay™, also in 2003. It came with little provenance, but it was said to be from Michoacán. In Barbara Mauldin’s book, Tigers, Devils, and the Dance of Life: Masks of Mexico (page 87, right), there are two smaller Diablos from Michoacán that have this general appearance, one said to date to the 1930s and the other to the 1940s, and both were from the collection of Alexander Girard. Here are today’s first two masks together to illustrate the contrast in size.

The very large Diablo has five snakes—three in a row crawling down the nose and two more curling over the eyes. All five are garishly painted.

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This week we will examine several more older masks from the Mexican state of Michoacán. These three are all from Tarascan Indian towns.

Such impressive older Diablo masks are not so easy to find, and a year went by between the time I bought the first one and then the second. I had never realized until I sat down to write this post that, although the first appears to be older than the second, they are by the same carver. I will begin with one that I bought from Jaled Muyaes and Estela Ogazón in July, 1997. I wrote down that Emiliano Fernández was the carver and neglected to note the name of his town. Then when I saw how obvious it was that he had also carved the second mask, I finally learned the name of the town—Angahuan, in the Municipio of Uruapan.

Angahuan is a short distance from a nearby smouldering volcano, Paracutín.

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/mexico/angahuan/attractions/volcan-paricutin/a/poi-sig/1467715/361675

Here is this old and wonderful Diablo carved by Emiliano Fernández. I have no information about its age but I believe that it dates to 1960 or earlier. It could easily be much older than that. The wooden horn is an obvious replacement. I call your attention to the delicate and artful carving, for example that of the eyes and vision openings. This is the work of a great master, but he worked at a time when such artists had only limited exposure to the larger world.

In this example the two snakes are crossed rather than intertwined. Note that one can see carved eyes on the snake to the viewer’s left.

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Many older Pastorela Diablo masks from other areas of Michoacán are larger than those we have examined thus far. Furthermore, the Pastorela Diablos from Guanajuato are also generally larger, more or less on the same scale. Some of these larger Diablo masks are characterized by prominent intertwined snakes that are wrapped around the entire face of the mask. Over the next few weeks I will show a number of these larger masks from Michoacán and Guanajuato, at least three each week.

The first mask was collected in San Nicolás Obispo, a town in the Municipio of Morelia.  Morelia, the county seat of that municipio, is a Spanish colonial city in northern Michoacán. All three of today’s masks come from this northern area, where there are few Tarascan Indians and the inhabitants are mostly Mestizos. The Pastorela performance was introduced by missionaries from Spain, supported by Spanish settlers, and adopted by the Tarascan Indians. It is paradoxical that such Spanish traditions are sometimes maintained most strongly by Mexican Indians, while the Pastorela has remained popular in Michoacán’s Mestizo communities as well. Unfortunately I have not found video recordings of the Pastorela in these northern towns.

I purchased this mask from the Cavin-Morris Gallery (in Manhattan) in 1995. I feel certain that it was carved in the mid-20th century, and probably collected in the field circa 1970. A pair of rather large snakes loop around the face. Vision openings for the dancer are tucked unobtrusively between the oversized carved and painted eyes. One of the snakes does double duty as the devil’s nose.

The tongue on this mask is a separate wooden element that is nailed to the lower jaw.

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Today we will look at some additional masks from La Cañada,  a fertile valley in the mountains of northern Michoacán. This valley contains a string of eleven towns— the “Once Pueblos.” According to Robert C. West, in Cultural Geography of the Modern Tarascan Area (1948, pages 18-22, 25), La Cañada is one of several “resistant cores” in Michoacán where the Tarascan Indians have maintained a dense presence and continue to speak their traditional language. Chilcota, the town where the masks in last week’s post were collected, is the county  seat of this Municipio, also named Chilcota, and today’s masks will certainly remind you of the pair that I featured last week. We will see masks from three neighboring towns in today’s post—Tanaquillo (or Tonoquillo, per West), Ichán, and Santo Tomás, all originally collected in these towns by Jaled Myaes and Estela Ogazon. I purchased them from Robin and Barbara Cleaver in 1988.

To get you in the proper mood to appreciate these masks, here is another Pastorela video, this one from Ichán, where one of today’s masks was collected in about 1987. We may be seeing the same Diablos that were featured in last week’s video. It begins with a child Angel (an Angelito) delivering a stern lecture to Luzbel (Lucifer, aka Satan), to the effect that God will defeat all evil. Luzbel replies  ferociously that he intends to rule the world. We see how vividly children in México are drawn into their (Roman Catholic/Tarascan Indian) experience of Christianity! In passing, you may not be aware that in the Roman Catholic tradition Angels are considered to be without gender, so all of these child angels are referred to as Angelitos, whether portrayed by boys or girls. These Angelitos (and Archangels, such as San Miguel) pass a portable microphone from one speaker to the next, so you can determine who is talking by looking for the microphone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BASMLsAcC-w

And here is a Diablo mask collected in Ichán. It is at least 30 years old and probably more, but we see similar masks in contemporary use in the video.

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In Michoacán and Guanajuato, masked devils commonly appear as major characters in the Pastorela performance. Here is a brief synopsis of the Shepherds’ Play, La Pastorela. An Angel appears to Shepherds in their fields, telling them of the birth of Christ in a stable in Bethlehem. The Angel urges the Shepherds to go and pay homage, which they agree to do. The Shepherds enlist a holy but wisecracking hermit, el Hermitaño, to accompany them. As they travel, the Shepherds are approached by a band of Diablos—who are named for and promote “the seven deadly sins,” such as lust, gluttony, … The Diablos attempt to dissuade the Shepherds from continuing their quest, offering them the riches of the world if they will only turn back. Some of the Shepherds, such as Bartolo, are susceptible to such offers and waver in their resolve. The Hermit must exhort them to continue, and there may also be further visits by angels to clear the path of the obstructing Devils. The play ends with the sequence familiar to many North American Christians, as the Hermit and the Shepherds file down the aisle of a church and approach the creche containing the infant Jesus. Here is a video from Carapan, Michoacán featuring a magnificent corps of Pastorela devils, first just one and they build up to six. You will observe that, because the Pastorela is a European import, the “dance” or play comes down to an exchange of orations between the devils, the archangel Michael, and other players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__uw44Vv_kg

As you will see, there is great variation in the Diablo masks found within Michoacán. Today I will focus on the masks of one unusual and distinctive carver from Chilcota, Michoacán. His masks are highly distinctive, yet they also reflect the style of this region—La Cañada—which also includes the town of Carapan.

In Lo Efímero y Eterno del Arte Popular Mexicano/ The Ephemeral and Eternal in Mexican Popular Art, published in México City in 1971 as a two volume set in either Spanish or English, Volume 2 is devoted to photos of masks and dances. On page 466 of Volume 2 there are photos of two rare and unusual Pastorela Diablo masks from Michoacán, plates 396 and 397. Plate 396 reveals a canine faced diablo with huge wooden fangs, an oversized extended tongue, and a miniature devil crouching on the bridge of the nose. A footnote only tells us that this mask was from the “Danza de los Diablos (?)” in the Mexican state of Michoacán. I have never seen one like this, except in this photo, but it is certainly from the Pastorela dance. Plate 397 shows a devil with a bull’s face, with seven tiny devils’ heads in a line across the forehead. This mask was photographed in the collection of the Museo Regional de Artes Populares de Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, but the note says nothing further about its provenience. I have two masks of this style in my collection and I have seen another that is identical to one of mine. Today’s post will feature my two examples. I purchased both of them in June, 1988. These masks were found in Chilcota, Michoacán, 1n 1987. I do not know the carver’s name.

The first one has an ambiguous face. Is this a dog or a bull? Perhaps this ambiguity is purposeful, to create a frightening and evil appearance? I bought ths mask directly from Robin and Barbara Cleaver.

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