Carrying the Word: The Concheros Dance in Mexico by Susanna Rostas

Abstract

Carrying the Word: The Concheros Dance in Mexico Susanna Rostas . Boulder : University Press of Colorado , 2009 . 303 pp. In spite of the growing popularity and visibility of Conchero dance in Mexico and beyond, the practice has received very little attention. The only other extensive treatment of the Conchero dance written in English is Martha Stone's At the Sign of Midnight: The Concheros Dance Cult of Mexico (1975). Susanna Rostas's Carrying the Word makes an important contribution in this regard. Although I am unclear about the exact duration of her fieldwork, Rostas apparently spent an extensive amount of time, immersing herself in the practice of the dance to become her “own informant” (p. xvii). Her ethnographic descriptions are the strength of this study, and personally I would have liked more in this regard. After the introduction, the remaining nine chapters are divided into three parts. Part I serves to provide context for the Conchero dance practice. Rostas does an excellent job of clearly describing the complex, hierarchical organization of mesas (individual dance groups), the various roles within mesas, the loose and changing confederations or associations among mesas, and the way that obligations to vigils and dances, undertaken by individuals and mesas, work to grow the numbers of dance practitioners. In the four chapters comprising the second part of the book, Rostas writes that her aim is “to analyze what dancers are doing … and how they experience it” (p. 67). But as she observes in her introduction, “experience is notoriously hard to get at” (p. 4), and in the end Rostas does not fully succeed in this effort. She provides a good survey of the literature and approaches to ritual and performance and argues for a process-oriented rather than event-oriented approach. She advocates thinking in terms of a “dialectical process” (p. 82) between ritualization as “conventional action” and performative as the creative or “more self-expressive side of the activity” (p. 73). In Rostas's formulation, the oscillation between ritualization and performative can produce (for experienced dancers) “a state of flow” that can produce an experience of transcendence (pp. 84–85). In the third part of the book, Rostas focuses on issues of power: power struggles and identity politics, both of which come into play among and within mesas, particularly at the death of a charismatic leader. The ninth chapter focuses on a survey of the complex and often contradictory archive of “Oral Tradition, Myth, and History” surrounding the dance. And if some are still searching for origins, they will not find it here. Rostas observes the “tension between Indianism—the desire for the dance to have indigenous and possibly even pre-Columbian origins … and orthodoxy or Catholicism,” which links the dance “to the Catholic Church and thus possibly [locates it as] Hispanic in origin” (p. 167). There are numerous myths and oral traditions drawing on each of these origin narratives, which are complicated by the way that indigeneity has been appropriated as constitutive of Mexican national identity. It is this site of tension and contradiction that is of most concern to Rostas, which becomes clear in the final chapter and epilogue as she works to distinguish between two types of dancers and dance practices: the Mexica and the Concheros. In a broad generalization, she associates the former with Indianism and the latter with Catholicism. Rostas writes, “The Mexica dance the same dances as the Concheros but give them a different ethos, have a somewhat different perspective on their origins and raison d’êntre, and are much less interested in spiritual attainment” (p. 191). Ultimately Rostas argues that the Mexica and Concheros “have little in common” as communities (p. 213). Yet, she locates the Mexica dance as an appropriation of the Conchero dance and acknowledges that the Mexica form has had tremendous impact on the Conchero practice. The affect has been so profound as to cause her to question: “Will the Concheros’ dancing become with time much less to do with inner spirituality, the quest for self-knowledge, and the emergence of religiosity? Will following the word continue to lead to the attainment of a transcendent state … or will it become more like the dancing of the Mexica, which is concerned with external attainment and identity politics” (p. 210). Although some will certainly take issue with Rostas's assessment of participants’ motivations as well as perhaps her treatment of “inner spirituality” and transcendent states, this work makes an important contribution to the field as it raises issues that continue to concern anthropologists, such as accounting for experience, analyzing states of consciousness, and assessing the relationship between ritual and performance, cultural continuity and change, tradition, and authenticity.