In their book Máscaras (1981, pages 86 and 87), Jaled Muyaes and Estela Ogazón wrote of the masks worn in the Danza de los Xantolos—”The masks are of two different types… The more elaborate masks are characterized by their anthropomorphic realism and fine workmanship.” Today I will discuss those Viejo or Xantolo masks that are attractive and realistic in design.

Dinah Gaston, a Canadian, moved to Mexico in the 1990s in search of adventure and folk art. Roaming in the Huasteca, she was offered a group of masks in this anthropomorphic style. I found them particularly interesting because they appeared to be by the same hand as those in last week’s post, although they are Viejos from the Xantolos performance, and not Juanegros. I purchased this group—one male and four female masks—in 2002.

Actually Dinah’s life has many dimensions (see link that follows).

https://youngalbertawriters.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/act-out-theatre-with-dinah-gaston-weeks-12/

Here is the male mask. He mainly differs from last week’s group because he is younger looking and lacks obvious stigmatizing features.

This mask depicts a handsome gentleman.

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My wife Lucy and I had visited Jaled Muyaes and Estela Ogazón just prior to November 1, 2001 for a very special reason; we planned to attend Todos Santos in Hidalgo and Estela had asked to accompany us. She had, of course, made this trip many times before with Jaled, but he was content to stay at home. As it happened, we saw Xantolo dancers but we did not see Juanegros. On our return, Jaled brought out a box containing an unusual set of masks. These were Juanegros, he said, but they resembled the characters in the Manueles dance, in that the rivals were accompanied by their parents, and all had Caucasian faces. So the set included two younger men, one serious and the other silly, along with two older couples. There was not a mask for the woman being courted and I don’t know if that character was masked or unmasked in the dance. Jaled did not know the name of the place where these had been made and used; he could only say that they were from Hidalgo or Veracruz. Later I picked up another pair of the parent masks, which were obviously by the same hand, on EBay™, and one of those had HG7 written on the back. We will later observe that these masks are similar in style to those of El Higo, Veracruz, so HG may be code for El Higo. They are obviously rare and unusual. Here is the mask of the serious suitor.

One can’t help noticing that these suitors are depicted as old and worn, with gap teeth and oversized noses.

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In the last two posts you have had the opportunity to see classic Juan Negro and Pañol masks from Veracruz. This week I will present some additional masks from the Juanegro dance in the Mexican states of Hidalgo and Veracruz that demonstrate the unusual and interesting range in their designs. Most of these will be singletons—a Juan Negro without a matching Pañol or vice versa.Here is a link to yet another variant of the Juanegro performance, in Hidalgo. These masks are really different!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVaKR-vQ6zU

I will begin with a Pañol mask that includes a wonderful new feature.

I have only seen this one, wearing his heart on his chin! Also notice the stylish hairdo—with a sideburn on one side and fuller hair on the other. I bought this mask from Jaled Muyaes and Estela Ogazón in 1999. It was found in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. As you will see, this almond shape is one of the typical Hidalgo styles for Juanegros masks.

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Last week we examined two sets of highly traditional Juanegro or Cuanegros masks, along with two unusual masks that might have been worn by the Viejo and the Malinche. Today I will show three more pairs of masks. As you will see, these demonstrate modest variations from the traditional style. All three sets have the “box” form; these masks are unusually deep.

What you may notice already is that this mask has the usual features, but they are carved in low relief, such that the edges almost disappear after several coats of paint. These masks came from Tantoyuca, Veracruz.

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According to the brief description that was provided by Jaled Muyaes and Estela Ogazón in Máscaras (1981, pages 90 and 92), the Danza de Juanegro (or Cuanegros) was derived from an earlier, precontact dance, Coatl Negro (Black Snake). In the Juanegro dance, Pañol (el Español, the Spaniard) or el Patrón (the hacienda owner) competes with Juan Negro, his black foreman, for the love of a woman. She flirts with each of them. The point of the dance is that the although the Spaniard should inevitably win such a power struggle, things don’t always turn out as one might expect. In Tigers, Devils, and the Dance of Life: Masks of Mexico (1999, pages 30 and 32), Barbara Mauldin reports that the desired female avoids marrying the Spaniard, waits for Juanegro to be emancipated, and then elopes with him. She also notes that this dancer usually wears a kerchief over her face in lieu of a more formal mask. Here is a traditional mask of Juan Negro.

I bought this Juan Negro mask, paired with a very similar mask of Pañol, in 1987, at the insistence of my friend, Barbara Cleaver. She underscored the remarkable patina, despite the reality that these masks were only danced during one fiesta each year—Todos Santos (All Souls or the Day of the Dead).

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This is the last in a series of ten posts about dance masks from Guatemala; this week I will show some terrific Diablo masks. Next week I will return to Mexico with an assortment of Juanegro masks from the Mexican state of Veracruz.

According to Brown and Rossilli (2008 Volume 1, Pages 551 and 552), Diablos appear in dances in several areas of Guatemala, and these dances exhibit considerable variety. Those authors showed many attractive and interesting Diablo masks. I have four Diablo masks from Guatemala in my collection, and I also have photos of some excellent additional masks from private collections, so I will present a representative sample.

Robin and Barbara Cleaver sold me this mask in 1995; it had previously been in the personal collection of Spencer Throckmorton. This is another of those “Moro” masks, much like the old red one in an earlier post, but this one has been converted to a Diablo by the addition of goat horns. This is one of my favorite Guatemalan masks. This style of Diablo mask is found in Totonicapán.

Like the red Moro and and the Pedro Portocarrero masks, this one has no mustache or beard. As previously noted, such masks can represent male or female figures, but this one does have a male hairline. It is finely carved.

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This week I will discuss Xacalcojes and some other masks, next week will focus on Diablo masks from Guatemala, and that will complete this series of posts about Guatemalan masks. On September 21 I will initiate a series of posts about Juanegros masks and then Xantolos masks, both used during the celebration of Day of the Dead in the Huasteca area of Mexico.

The Xacalcojes dance features masks that are very different from those you have seen in the preceding posts. They seem mysterious and exotic. Here is a very old one from my collection. I bought this mask from Spencer Throckmorton in August 1995.

The upper lip of this mask is curved and beveled, in sharp contrast to the rectangular  shape of the sides and floor of the mouth. This results in an ambiguous expression, which is desirable because the mask is meant to express sadness and then happiness. The tip of the nose was broken and patched.

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As you may know, Spain had been ruled by Muslim conquerors for many centuries and the last Moorish armies were driven from Spain in 1491. It was claimed that the Spanish armies were led to victory by Santiago, the reincarnation of Saint James the apostle. The Spanish celebrated the defeat of the Moors by creating a dance drama—Los Moros y Cristianos, which they taught to the Indians of the Americas to emphasize the power of the Christian God. This performance was quickly adopted in Guatemala. According to Barbara Bode, in The Dance of the Conquest in Guatemala (1961), the Moros y Cristianos “became the inspiration for plays that adapted the theme of conquest to the New World and to local heroes” (page 211). On the basis of this history, that the Moros y Cristianos came first and the other dances later, 20th century North American mask collectors have assumed that the older masks could only be from the Moros y Cristianos dance. To further simplify, every older mask of an archaic style has simply been called a “Moro.” Here is one of those “Moro” masks. The mask of Don Pedro Portocarrero  in last week’s post was a more recent example of this form.

I bought this mask from Robin and Barbara Cleaver in 1992; they had obtained it from Spencer Throckmorton. In his 1988 book, Guatemalan Masks: The Pieper Collection, Jim Pieper speculated that such masks, with their extremely dark patinas, might be 150 to 200 years old. While this may be so, definite proof is lacking. As I noted last week re the Pedro Portocarrero mask, this version that lacks a mustache or goatee can represent a male or a female figure. These masks are very beautiful. Similar masks appear in Pieper’s 2006 book, on pages 149 and 184.

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Last week we looked at a number of masks that could have been worn in either the Toritos or the Conquest dances in Guatamala. Today I will discuss just a few more masks from the Conquest dance that are less likely to have appeared as Vaqueros in the Toritos dance. These fall into two groups—those masks of Conquistadors from areas that have a distinctly different design from the Toritos masks and those masks that represent the Quiché Indians who oppose Alvarado and the Conquistadors in that dance. I will begin with a mask worn by Alvarado’s adjutant, Don Pedro Portocarrero. I got this mask from Spencer Throckmorton in 1996; he reported that it was from Coban.

This mask is carved in an older style that one finds on earlier Moor masks. Rather than the stylized sideburns carved in high relief that you saw on the Alvarado mask in last week’s post, these sideburns were carved more artfully in lower relief. There are masks that look something like this one in various Guatemalan dances, and sometimes these are worn by  a female figure. The hairline on this mask is masculine, but many similar masks have gender ambiguous hairlines. There are other masks with these features that are obviously male, because they have a mustache and/or a goatee. The second mask in last week’s post was like that.

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Last week I showed Torito (bull) masks from Guatemala. In this dance, the bull dancers interact with Vaqueros (cowboys). However, many of the masks worn by the Vaqueros are also used in La Danza de la Conquista (the Conquest dance), which portrays the invasion of Indian Guatemala by a conquistador,Pedro Alvarado, along with his Spanish soldiers. As if that is not sufficiently confusing, some of the same masks are sometimes worn for the Moros y Cristianos dance (the Moors and Christians) and similar masks are used in the Venado (deer) dance. Those masks that could represent either Vaqueros or Conquistadors (or deer hunters) will be the subject of today’s post.

My discussion of these masks and their various roles will begin with a dramatic mask of Pedro Alvarado, with rosy cheeks. The leader of the Vaqueros, in the Toritos dance, wears virtually the same mask, but with a less menacing expression. In other words, a more neutral mask than this example could easily be used for both dances, while this one would be a stretch as a Vaquero.

Because Alvarado is such a heroic (or infamous) figure in the history of Guatemala, the mask worn by this character may seem particularly desirable. Joel E. Brown has noticed that we collectors have a tendency to promote our masks to the highest rank possible, wishing for example to call every yellow haired Spaniard by Alvarado’s name (2008 Volume 1, pages 1-8). Brown has learned that the Alvarado masks are marked by carved features that depict frowning. You encountered this feature in my post about the Patrón and Patrona masks that are used in the Patzcar dance; the white faced masks have swirling brows or hair but those with red or brown faces are marked by carved frowns (July 27, 2015. Also see Brown- Portfolio 2009, pp. 54-57). Well, note the V-shaped carved ridges over the round holes for vision; this mask has those carved frown lines, so this is indeed likely to represent Alvarado.

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