Community Collections Spotlight: Sustaining and Reclaiming Cultural Danzas: Los Matachines y Los Comanchitos and Passing Down Tradition in Small New Mexican Villages

The following is a guest post by 2024 Community Collections Grant recipient Yvette Cohn Stoor on her project, Sustaining and Reclaiming Cultural Danzas: Los Matechines Y Los Comanchitos. The American Folklife Center’s Community Collections Grant program is part of the Library’s Of the People: Widening the Path initiative, which seeks to create new opportunities to engage with the Library of Congress and enrich the Library’s collections, allowing the national library to share a more inclusive American story. This post is part of the Of the People blog series featuring the awardees of the Community Collections Grant program since 2022.

I am honored to be an American Folklife Center Community Collections Grant recipient. I was born and raised in New Mexico. My father’s side comes from Taos in northern New Mexico, where he was raised with heritage from Jewish and Irish pioneers mixed with Spanish and Native American ancestry. My mother’s side is Spanish and Native American. Our Native American lineage was discovered after DNA testing and extensive research.

I have lived in New Mexico my entire life, living for the past 34 years in the East Mountains outside of Albuquerque. My maternal lineage connects to the original Land Grant settlers in an area known as Cañon de Carnué, present day Carnuel, and along the turquoise trail that runs north to Santa Fe. My great-grandmother, Delfiña Garcia neé Nuanes / Griego / Gurulé, was born, resided most of her life, and died in her home in Carnuel, New Mexico. It was through my maternal line that I was exposed to the traditions of the Danza de Los Matachines as a young girl.

After my semi-retirement from the defense avionics industry, I pursued my passion for genealogy and New Mexico history. Like many New Mexicans, I took for granted being raised in this very rich cultural environment. As I grew older and travelled more, it became evident that New Mexico was unique. There are areas of New Mexico that appear the same as they did hundreds of years ago and within many communities, the traditions are well preserved. I utilized my genealogical experience to serve on the Board of the New Mexico Genealogical Society as the Chairperson for an important program called, Primeras Familias de Nuevo México, which used primary resources to certify family lineages back to the year 1598. Since 2016, I have volunteered as the Land Grant Genealogist for the Cañon de Carnué Land Grant.

Over time, I have seen our traditions and ways of life slowly vanishing. However, some of these small villages are fighting to maintain their way of life and traditions. Witnessing this, I felt it important to document the historical preservation of these traditions and recognize my contemporaries who are working to maintain them. My goal for this Community Collections Grant project is a detailed preservation and explanation of these long-held traditional fiestas and the accompanying Danzas (dances).

During the past several months, my team and I have been documenting several fiestas celebrating the Patron Saints at the Mission churches located in the mountains east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. We have become familiar with the people in the communities and have gained an even greater appreciation for their spiritual devotion and dedication to maintain old traditions in challenging times and changing environments. Although there are short videos on social media about the tradition of the Danza de Los Matachines, we focus on the small Mission churches that are in more remote areas with greater focus on the roles, trajé (traditional dress), meanings, and importance to community.

It was meaningful for me to attend these smaller fiestas and realize they were unchanged from what I remembered as a young girl. The music, the number of dancers, the beautiful missions, the comida (food), all brought back a feeling of nostalgia, and more importantly the value and meaning of the tradition to these communities. These traditional fiestas are an annual highlight for these small villages, a celebration that brings familias (families) and vecinos (neighbors) together, presenting a welcome break from the hard work and monotony of weekly life, and they serve as a celebration of their shared faith and in honor of their village’s Patron Saint. Recent history has shown that dwindling participation and support has caused the demise of the Danza at certain locations, and presents the possibility that future generations may never get to experience the Danza and, more importantly, understand what they are seeing.

After beginning this project, it became apparent to me that many people are unaware of all the intricacies of the Los Matachines Danza and its story. As I interviewed more vecinos (neighbors), I found it fascinating that bits and pieces of the Danza were interpreted differently by different people and the meaning and their interpretations having changed over time. They emphasized the origin as well as that the meaning was very individual, and the bonding element was in sharing this history passed down from our antepasados (ancestors/ forefathers). This project seeks to document the tradition, its different meanings, and to honor those who devote themselves to keeping the traditional Danza de Los Matachines alive.

The second portion of the project focuses on the reclaimed Danza de Los Comanchitos. This Danza is based on the cautiva (captive) culture and the narrative of their descendants. In New Mexico, the blended culture of Hispanics and Native Americans is the result of interrelations dating as far back as the Spanish Conquistadores. Historically, it was common that during raids, primarily between Comanche and Apache peoples, Native American captives were taken and traded to Spanish and European communities for goods. Captive women and children were brought into families as servants to help plant and harvest crops, and perform household chores such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry. They were taught to adopt the Spanish / Catholic ways of living, the language and beliefs, and were gradually integrated into the New Mexican families. A collective memory of Danzas to welcome these captives into village life has been preserved, which includes pieces of the songs and prayers that were passed down. The inhabitants known to descend from this captivity often intermarried within these communities. Today, these New Mexicans are referred to as Genizaro.

With the establishment of larger settlements, such as Albuquerque, the governors founded perimeter villages made up of the Genizaro population. Native American raids were an issue for the larger villages, and these bordering Genizaro communities were used to provide a first line of communication and defense. Over many hundreds of years, the cultures blended and have preserved traditions from their identities. Today, many New Mexicans, through DNA and genealogical research, have discovered their cautiva roots and lineages.

The reclaimed Danza de Los Comanchitos de Las Sandias began in 2016 in Carnuel, New Mexico, acknowledging our inherited Native American blood and honoring our ancestors who were forced to sacrifice their way of life due to capture and trade. In addition to documenting these, the project is also documenting the Danza de Los Comanches de la Serna de Taos, New Mexico, which has existed for much longer and takes place on New Year’s Day at Ranchos de Taos.

By documenting these unique New Mexican traditions, this project seeks to create a permanent record of how the rich and vibrant communities are honoring their past and celebrating their present.