This welcome monograph contains the 1872 text of an anonymous 19th-century dance-drama telling how Pedro de Alvarado conquered Quetzaltenango in 1524. One of the two indigeous leaders—Tecum Umam—prefers death to defeat, but the other—the Quiché king Quecab (an anachronism, sisee he reigned c. 1470)—prefers to accept Christianity. The latter’s instant conversion supplies the happy ending to a “folk” drama that for at least a century has made the rounds of Guatemalan church plazas on titular saints’ days.
Each of the players rents his costume and mask for about $15 from a morería, pays a maestro some $2 for eight rehearsals, and spends approximately $5 for liquor, incense, and other offerings to insure a successful performance. The music, as transcribed by Jacinto Amezquita in March, 1957, consists of 21 sones in A flat major for chirimía (shawm) and drum. European influence betrays itself throughout in the symmetrical phrases and the implied tonic-dominant seventh harmony.
A grant from Tulane University made possible the summer’s field work in Guatemala (1957) from which the present excellent study emerged. Professor John E. Englekirk served as faculty advisor. Even if priests nowadays leave this dance-drama alone, the dogma in Quecab’s dream that precedes his conversion (page 262), the biblical and classical allusions (page 225), and the palabras cultas such as esquivo, maña auxiliar, fisgas (note 34) forbid our supposing that the Conquista text welled up spontaneously from the unlettered folk. Its best days are now past: “Como la gente se va civilizando, ya no creen que estos bailes sean necesarios” (page 238).
