The mulatta, the bishop, and dances in the Cathedral: race, music, and power relations in seventeenth-century Puerto Rico.(Fray Francisco Padilla)(Report)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Cayetano Coll y Toste, a Puerto Rican physician and historian, wrote "Los bailes de la Catedral" (The Dances in the Cathedral). In it, Fray Francisco Padilla, bishop of Puerto Rico, writes to the king of Spain in 1691:

 
   The fathers of the Dominican Friars have complained to me that the 
   dances occurring during Christmas Eve in the Cathedral degenerate 
   into an annoying noise toward the morning. Your Highness knows that 
   in Peru we also have those dances; the practice comes from Spain, 
   and it is important to proceed cautiously so as to avoid causing 
   any harm to religious sentiment. On a large rug, six children [the 
   choirboys, called seises] danced religious dances; they were 
   dressed in white and crowned with flowers. Next to the altar was a 
   musician, dressed in black, playing a harp. [After the priest 
   dismissed the mass], two men dressed in black, with guitars, 
   replaced the harpist at the side of the altar. Six young mulatto 
   girls, around fifteen years old, took positions on the rug before 
   the altar, dressed in white gauze, crowned with flowers, and 
   holding tambourines in their right hands. The mulattas began to 
   dance to the music of the guitars; their movements were correct, 
   but a voluptuous and sensual air permeated the crowd there. When 
   the dance and the villancicos ended, the audience applauded. At the 
   end of the offering, the people gathered in different places inside 
   the temple to dance fandanguillos con zapateados [stamping 
   fandanguillos]. (Coil y Toste 1928, 175-178) (1) 

Subsequently, according to Coll y Toste, the bishop issued an order forbidding the dance in the church.

Coll y Toste presents us with a vision of late seventeenth-century Puerto Rican social and cultural life through the eyes of an author who lived in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The bishop's description clearly establishes the event's importance both in terms of occasion and place: it is Christmas Eve, and we are in the cathedral. Obviously, the festivity, the liturgy, and the music and dances performed were of great significance for everyone there, including his eminence. Moreover, it shows clearly how Catholicism in general and popular religious fervor in particular had become part of everyday colonial life. The letter shows the bishop wielding his authority over what seems to him an inappropriate display of popular religious devotion and festive celebration. By pointing out that such practices were taking place, the document presents a clear indication of the general practice of such expressions not only in Puerto Rico but also in the Spanish territories of the Americas and in Spain itself. The narrative implicitly refers to the population's composition as a mix of people of different classes and ethnic backgrounds. The letter also suggests that the ecclesiastical authorities had both a racialized and a gendered view of dance practices and bodily movements. Finally, the direct reference to sacred and popular musical practices points to the intersection of local habits and global influences.

All of this could be deduced from a close reading of Cayetano Coll y Toste's narrative were it not for the fact that it is not based on an archival document. Music historians and cultural studies scholars in and outside Puerto Rico have treated this story as the description of an actual event, although no document corroborates the ritual described (Rosa-Nieves 1951; Munoz 1966, 23-26; Malavet Vega 1992, 114; Quintero Rivera 1998, 74; Mendoza de Arce 2001). However, in these postmodern times, the story may be considered an exercise in the use of the imaginary to grasp a construct of the real through a discursive complex. Cayetano Coll y Toste was not alone in what I have come to call an early postmodern endeavor. Along with sociologist and human rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois (1925) and anthropologist J. Eric S. Thompson (1965), he was trying to create a particular assemblage of the past by using the imagination as a vehicle for constructing historical memory. In other words, he placed verifiable facts in a fictional contest so as to create a feel of the times: Bishop Padilla--fact; dances in San Juan Cathedral by mulattoes and mulattas--fact; this particular event--not verifiable. For the purpose of this article, however, I will use the document as a map, or better yet, as a diorama through which I intend to understand a time and way of life about which, as George Duby put it, we historians can only dream (Duby and Lardreau 1988).