I decided to begin a series of posts about Mayo Pascola masks today. I hope that you like them.

In March 1988 I purchased my first two Mayo Pascola masks from Robin and Barbara Cleaver of Santa Fe, New Mexico. These masks had been brought North from Mexico by a Mexican “runner” (picker), Roberto Ruiz. Over time, Roberto turned out to be the original source of many other Yaqui and Mayo Pascola masks that entered my collection, but I first heard of him in connection with this pair. That same Roberto had collected two Mayo Goat Pascola masks that I bought very recently on EBay™, and included in my post of July 30, 2018. Masks supplied by Roberto were sometimes accompanied by information of variable reliability about the town of origin, the name of the carver, the estimated length of use, and perhaps even the name of the dancer who last used the mask, but in this case there was very limited information.

Here is the first of the Mayo Pascola masks that I purchased in 1988. It was said to have been found in La Bocana, in the Municipio of Etchojoa, Sonora. I eventually learned, from Tom Kolaz, that this mask had design features typical of a well known Mayo carver, Candelario Verduga, who had lived in La Bocana. He is deceased.

Here is a YouTube™ video from Pueblo Viejo, a Rio Mayo town that is just 5 km. north of La Bocana. You will see that Mayo Pascola dancers wear shirts, instead of dancing  bare-chested as Yaqui Pascolas do, but otherwise their dance accessories, costume, and style are quite similar to those of Yaqui dancers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK_S2r-nGEI

This is an older mask with great patina. I believe that it dates to the 1960s or 70s. It served me as a wonderful introduction to Mayo Pascola masks.

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When I purchased the Tusked Negrito mask (post of August 13, 2018) from the Tesoros Trading Company in Austin Texas, I also obtained two other masks there that appeared to be from the Sierra Juárez area of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, but obviously from other dances. Both had neck straps, one held by a metal staple and the other threaded through a hole in the chin. Since then I have also acquired two other masks, which appeared to be Cubano masks (Negrito masks that lack tusks), from the same region. Today we will examine those four masks, beginning with the Cubanos.

I have introduced you to Barbara Mauldin’s book—Masks of Mexico: Tigers, Devils, and the Dance of Life. On page 66 (the page facing the one about Tusked Negritos) there is a dance photo of the Cubanos dancers taken in 1964 in Tamazulapan, Oaxaca, wearing the same sort of elaborate costumes that are worn by the Tusked Negrito figures. There is also a photo of a Cubano (or Mulatto) mask from the collection of the Museum of International Folk Art. As you saw in recent posts, there are Negrito masks in the Sierra region that have snouts and tusks, and others which lack these features. It is the latter group that have sometimes been called Mulattos or Cubanos. Currently these masks have black complexions, although they may have been brown or black in the past.

Here is a link to an old photo from Tehantepec, Oaxaca, followed by a YouTube™ video of a Negritos (or Cubanos) dance group from Yalalag, Oaxaca.

https://huaracheblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/walter-reuter-tehuantepec.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yGAUDfXMV0

And here is a Cubano mask from this region that I purchased from Bob Ibold in 2004. It appears to have great age.

This is such a simple mask, and at the same time, such a superb old mask.

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Last week we looked at photos of Tusked Negrito masks from a collection that was probably created in the 1950s and 60s, and then I presented three Tusked Negrito masks that looked like those in a group photo. Today we will examine two additional pairs. I bought the first pair from Robin and Barbara Cleaver in 1995. They had obtained them from an older Oaxacan collection. There was an identical pair that the Cleavers kept for their own collection, but later sold to the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico; you can see those two in Barbara Mauldin’s book, Masks of Mexico: Tigers, Devils, and the Dance of Life (page 67), where she estimated them as having been made in the mid-1950s. Here are my two masks from that set of four. They are very similar to one another, and each has leather tusks, as do the other two in the museum collection.

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In 1975, Virginia E. Miller, Dudley M. Varner, and Betty A. Brown published an important article in The Masterkey, the Journal of the Southwest Museum (Volume 49, No. 2, April-June 1975, pp. 44-50)—”The Tusked Negrito Mask of Oaxaca.” The authors began by noting that these are but one example of a larger class  of darkly colored masks worn by “masked buffoons” who “act as clowns, masters of ceremony, and policeman during the ceremonies (page 44).” Tusked Negrito masks are used in Zapotec towns in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.”They usually appear in pairs accompanying the Plume Dance” and these masks can also be used in related dances in this region, sometimes in larger groups. There are similar snouted masks that lack tusks in neighboring communities. The authors speculate that the Tusked Negrito image may be a survival of some pre-Conquest tradition. In earlier posts I have shown other examples of masks worn by black-faced ritual clowns, such as Yaqui Pascolas and Negritos from the coastal Mixtec towns.

The Tusked Negrito article includes a photo of four Tusked Negrito masks from the Paul Pérez collection. Here is that image.

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/tusked-negrito-mask-oaxaca-masterkey-472740928

The Paul Pérez collection is currently available for viewing in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at Austin, and in the link that follows you can see color photos of three of those four masks—numbers 20, 78, and  81, plus several others (94 and 176). There are many other interesting masks in this collection, of which I would like to highlight just one more—#101—which would appear to be a rather rare example of a Chilolo mask from Oaxaca.

In May of 1996 I found a wonderfully worn Tusked Negrito mask in Austin, Texas, at the Tesoros Trading Company, an ethnographic arts store. Here is a link to that store; Tesoros is still there, although I don’t see any masks for sale on their website.

http://www.tesoros.com/homepage.html

Here is that mask. The wooden or leather tusks are missing, but the recesses that had held them are evidence of their earlier presence. Next week I will show you a nearly identical pair of masks with their leather tusks intact,but this week I want to focus on a variety of examples like the ones in the Pérez Collection photo.

Tusked Negrito masks tend to have snouted mouths. The tusks can be made from leather or wood.

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Inexpensive masks of paper or pasteboard (máscaras de cartón), formed over a pottery mold and then painted, have been made in Mexico for perhaps a century or longer. Máscaras Mexicanas, a book featuring photographs of Mexican masks, was initially published in Mexico City in about 1926, with a prologue by Roberto Montenegro. There are about 20 of these paper mache masks in the book, along with others of wood and pre-Conquest masks made of other materials such as stone. Moya Rubio included a selection of these masks in plate 188, on page 157 ( Máscaras: la Otra Cara, 1986). One occasionally sees pottery molds for sale that were said to have been used to manufacture such  paper masks. For example. here are some wonderful molds from the Medicine Man Gallery, in Tucson Arizona:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Conquistador-Mask-Mold-Mexico-c-1960/132056643965?hash=item1ebf30797d:g:fJUAAOSw8oFXy16s,

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Soldier-Mask-Mold-Mexico-c-1960/142236479256?hash=item211df46f18:g:sXwAAOSw9IpXy18X,

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Monkey-Mask-Mold-Mexico-c-1960/132056624325?hash=item1ebf302cc5:g:UtEAAOSwFdtXy1~G

Today I will begin with two paper masks from my collection, a favorite pair that I purchased years ago from a Saturday Market held weekly at the Plaza del Angel in the Zona Rosa, Mexico City. These two appear to depict story book figures, such as a Queen and a Witch. Here they are, photographed together.

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A cluster of four Pascola masks showed up recently on EBay™, for sale by Gallery West of Tucson. Two Yaqui masks bear telltale design details of my favorite Yoeme carver, Manuel Centella Escalante. He lived and worked in Potam, Sonora, but frequently traveled to the Yaqui villages in the Tucson area to participate in fiestas. The condition of the Yaqui masks might not appeal to all collectors. The other two, charming Mayo Pascola masks from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, are certainly in far better condition.

Here is the first of the pair I am attributing to Manuel Centella Escalante. Someone had scraped the paint on the face, probably in preparation for repainting, but then a Yaqui picker, Rodrigo Rodriguez, who was also a well-known mask carver, had purchased it in 1984, before it could be repainted. It was said to be the work of Antonio Faroi, a carver who is unknown to me. Roberto had bought it for Barney T. Burns. Barney sold it to a Tucson collector, who showed me the mask in 2004. Despite the scraping, there were enough of the original painted designs left to indicate that Manuel Centella had surely been the maker. Many years after that moment of recognition, when the mask had passed through other hands, I was  able to purchase in on EBay, in May 2018. I estimate that this mask was actually carved in the 1960s or 70s, roughly 50 or 60 years ago. I should note that my ability to spot this maker’s work had been vastly sharpened by the kind teaching of my friend, Tom Kolaz of Tucson, who is another great fan of Manuel Centella’s work.

Typical Manuel Centella features are visible, including the white triangles over the eyes, the large and broad nose (with white painted designs on a vertical line down the center), the graceful artistic white triangles under the eyes, the small carved teeth, and the chin cross of four small triangles with inscribed outlines. There would have been a similar but larger cross on the forehead.

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Recently several good masks by the late Pedro Huerta Mora of Cuetzalan del Progresso, Puebla appeared on EBay™. One of those masks may still be available there. The one I purchased combined most of my favorite features by this man, whom I consider a great master carver. I have a number of his masks already, but I was glad to buy one more, and I realized that I had never included any of them in this blog, although I did feature Pedro and his masks in my book. Pedro was one of several men I discovered in Puebla and Veracruz whose primary occupation was the making of caskets; mask-making was something these mascareros did as a sideline. Along with caskets, Pedro also made elaborate wooden crosses that served as grave markers. His son has carried on this business (caskets and grave markers), but I don’t believe that he has ever made masks. Here is the mask that I purchased in May (2018) on EBay.

This mask might serve as more or less an encyclopedia regarding typical features favored by this carver. Although each of his masks is unique, you will have the opportunity to see other masks by Pedro that share one or another feature with this one, such as the unusual relief carved band across the bridge of the nose, the elaborate lip design, the scalloped beard, the eyes, nose, and mouth designs, and the presence of margin lines, edges, or shelves across or at the boundary of the cheeks. In this photo and the next, these margins look like horizontal shelves or cheek bones, although other masks have more subtle marginal lines.

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Recently there have been a number of Juanegro style masks offered on EBay™, but most of them strike me as decorative or reproduction masks. I was pleasantly surprised to find one Juanegro mask that did seem traditional and authentic. It looks to be by the same hand as a number of Juanegros from Tantoyuca or Tepecintca, Veracruz in my collection that were originally collected there by Jaled Muyaes and Estela Ogazón, probably in the 1970s. Here is the recent arrival.

This mask of Juanegro, the African foreman who challenges the Caucasian Hacienda Owner for the hand of a female of the household, is only slightly different in design details from several other Juanegros masks in my collection.

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In the last month or so a number of interesting masks were offered for sale on EBay™, and I saw some that I could not resist. One of these was another Moro Chino mask from Guerrero. I had shown two of those in my post of May 14, 2018.

https://mexicandancemasks.com/?p=12254

There I had referred you to an excellent series of photos of Moros Chinos masks in Changing Faces: Mexican Masks in Transition (1985, edited by Lori Jacobson and Donald E. Fritz). The new arrival from EBay is identical in design to one of those masks (plate 5 on page 23) and almost exactly the same size. They are in the style used in Mochitlán, Guerrero, and surely by the same hand.

Then, as I was sorting out other masks from the Moros y Cristianos dance, I discovered four more of this style that I had forgotten that I had. So this week I have five more Moro Chino style masks to show you, beginning with the one from EBay.

This mask, like many, is a little crooked. The eyebrows and mustache elements are not only rectangular in shape, but also they are additionally stylized, with vertical grooves (a feature favored in Mochitlán).

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Today we will look at two pairs of masks from San Bartolo Coyotepec, Oaxaca—masks of Kings and Queens. These were danced in Los Jardineros, a local variant of the Moros y Cristianos dance drama. There is a dance photo taken by Ruth Lechuga in 1977, along with another pair of these masks, in Barbara Mauldin’s book—Masks of Mexico: Tigers, Devils, and the Dance of Life (page 65). There is another dance photo on the cover of Danzas y Bailes Populares: Arte Mexicano, authored by Electra L. Mompradé and Tonatiúh Guttiérrez and published by Editorial Hermes (Barcelona, 1976). On p. 126 those authors explain that there is a Christian King and Queen, a Moorish King and Queen, and their respective courts. In Mexican Masks, Donald Cordry also described these Jardineros masks (pp. 120-123, Plates 169 and 170). He illustrates that stilt dancers in Santa María Roala, Oaxaca wear similar masks, but with straw hats rather than crowns (Plate 137, page 97). Cordry translated Jardineros as “gardeners,” but it is probably more accurate to recall the persistent importance of the Jardin (or Zocolo) as the elegant town square in Mexican cities such as Cuidad Oaxaca, where prominent citizens would promenade in the evening, to see and be seen. The Jardineros portray those who occupy royal gardens. In the present era, musicians play in the evening  for those in the Zocolo as couples still promenade.

Here is a Youtube™ video of a children’s performance of the Jardineros from San Bartolo Coyotepec, Oaxaca.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC1GpWdmV3E

I obtained these Jardineros masks from the Gary Collison estate in 2008. Gary had gotten them from Bob Ibold. They were made from cloth that was pressed into shape over molds. Then the masks were coated with beeswax in order to make them more durable, and they were fitted with metal grommets for the secure attachment of cords or straps. The first pair were coated heavily with wax, front and back, while the second pair has no more than a light wax coating on the face, but the same heavy reinforcement of the back. I don’t have an explanation for this variation. Here is one of the heavily waxed masks, with a male face to portray a King.

The heavy wax coating gives the mask a smooth appearance.

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