War and Music and Dance in Honduras

War and Music and Dance in Honduras

By Wendy Griffin February 2015

Mythical Battles at the Beginning of the World

Baile de los Gigantes—Maya Chorti Indians

Although the oficial line for this dance is that it is the story of the Beheading of John the Baptist, according to Rafael Girard a Swiss anthropologist who studied the Maya Chorti for 40 years, it is actually the reenactment of the battle of the hero twins against the Giants which led them to have to go to Xibalba, the Mayan hell, part of the Popol Vuh. Although this dance is mainly done by the Guatemalan Maya Chortis who dance it for the Patron Saint’s Fair of St. John the Baptist (beginning on the summer solstice), the patrón saint of the old parish of Jocotan, Guatemala, it is known by the Honduran Maya Chorti.

Dances that Remember the Spanish Conquest and the Visit of Doña Marina or la Malinche with Hernan Cortes in 1524.

La Huasteca—Maya Chorti

The name in Nahua of this dance probably comes from the fact that the main personage of the dance la Malinche was an Aztec princess who was obtained as a slave girl by Hernan Cortes in La Huasteca área of the Gulf of Mexico in Mexico. Although there are Huasteca Mayas, at the time of conquest La Huasteca área which includes Veracruz was about 70% Nahuatl speaking.   Dr. Brent Metz describes this dance as a conquest-drama story. Although principally done by the Guatemalan Maya Chortis in the Department of Chiquimula, the Honduran Mayan Chortis also know the dance. Both of these dances are only fleetingly mentioned in David Flores’s La Evolución Historica de La Danza Folklorica Hondureña. Like El Baile de los Gigantes it was traditionally danced at the Patron Saint Fair.

El Guancasco of Mejicapa, Lempira and Gracias, Lempira, Honduras

During the Patron Saint Fairs in Western Honduras, now known as a Lenca área, most towns which were colonial pueblos de indios do a ceremony of two villages coming together and they do dances in honor of the peace between these two communities which had previously been at war. Although Western Honduras and other places where the dances are done including South of Tegucigalpa and in the El Paraiso Dept. bordering with Nicaragua, often one of the towns has a Nahua name (Mejicapa-the place of a lot of Mexica—the Aztecs’ name for themselves) and the other a Spanish or Lenca name. The current Guancascos are thought to be sincretic ceremonies including elements of pre-Columbian traditions and other elements required by the Catholic Church to be changed.  The importance of large town dances in Mexican Nahua culture is well documented with Hernan Cortes writing that the payment of musicians and dancers and those who organized games were part of the tax structure and government payments at the time of the Conquest. Nahua speaking Pipiles also had large dances. The importance of large dances in Guatemalan Mayan culture was highlighted in the colonial period, and continues to present. The cofradías in the Lenca communities were responsable for organizing the Patron Saint’s fair of which a large dance was generally part of it.

In the Guancasco of Mejicapa and Gracias, the figure of La Malinche, Don Hernan Cortes’s Nahuatl-Mayan-Spanish translator also is prominent. The dance has been described without pictures in Manuel Chavez’s book Como Subsisten Los Campesinos? (How do the Peasants Subsist?) and with pictures in David Flores’s La Evolución Histórica de la Danza Folklórica hondureña. One of the Characters in this dance is the Chichimeca (the people of the Dog Tribe); however instead of being pejorative the Chichimeca is an eloquent speaker who tells traditional poetry known as ”bombas” at different times of the dance.

Guancascos can also have the dance of Moors and Christians which is a day long dance showing the battle between the Moors who are fighting against the Christians, taken from a medieval play about Charlemagne’s defense of Europe against the Moors. Spanish monks introduced the dance and play to substitute pre-columbian dances which they found of an objectional nature, and also to teach the Christianity always wins over the pagans. Variations of the dance have been reported from Mexico to Chile. Although there is a play known with words in Honduras, most Honduran groups—Lencas, Maya-Chortis and Garifunas perform it principally as a dance accompanied by instrumental music, with the Garifunas adding a few Vivas.   The reason for the loss of the words includes that some groups do it with masks like the Maya Chorti of Ocotepeque so words can not be Heard behind the masks, and that when the dance was introduced not only did most of the groups were not able to read Spanish, but they probably did not even speak much Spanish.   This dance of Moors and Christians  during a Guancasco or meeting of two towns during the Patron Saint Fair is called the paisanazgo (the dance of my paisanos) among the Lencas of Lepaterique (Place of jaguar in Lenca,Jaguars being the tótem animal of the Lencas) and Ojojona (Oxoxona which is the twin city of Santa Ana de Cerro de Hula, whose name appears not to be Lenca.) The Patron Saint Fairs of the Lencas and the Maya Chortis sometimes today and definately in the mid-twentieth century included in addition to dancing and the offering of food and drink, the sacrifice of turkeys or ducks, either as part of a Compostura such as among the Lencas of Yamaranguila or as the Indian versión of Carrera de Cintas, replacing ribbons (cintas) with live ducks which were killed as they were taken off the rope where they were hung. In Eastern Honduras, the day of St. John the Baptist (summer solstice) was remembered by playing the game of burying a female chicken up to its neck in the ground and giving blindfolded boys machetes and one by one the boys would try to chop the head off the chicken.  In Pre-Columbian times these types of large dances such as among the Pipiles, were often accompanied by human sacrifice, but chickens, turkeys, or ducks now replace these for the sacrifices of the summer solstice, the Patron Saint’s Fair, and the beginning of the rainy season.  The sacrifices at the end of the 240 day sacred calendar November 2 are now usually squash dishes (ayote, which they say is shaped like ahead) offered by the Maya Chorti at a tzikin or by throwing ripe tomatoes which squish by Ladino children, also called tzikin. The figures of Pipil gods of yuca and bark cloth paper faces or of Straw with bark cloth paper faces in the AgaltaValley were also called tzikin, and from that came the Pech Word for church sikinko (the place of the saint figure or tzikin).

The Description of Lenca and Maya Chorti and Garifuna Moor and Christian (Tiras) dances are in Evolución Historica de la Danza folklorica Hondureña. The Garifuna Moors and Christians dance with other photos is also in Wendy Griffin and CEGAH’s Los Garifunas de Honduras.  A video of the Garifuna Moors and Christian dance from Trujillo, Honduras is available from Monico Productions, which has an Internet site. The instrumental music of Moors and Christians (Tiras) among the Garifunas was also on the Lanigi Garifuna (Heart of the Garifunas) cassette that accompanied the song book by the same name.  I was told by US piano player Mike Montano that the music the accompanies the Garifuna Moors and Christians is an 1890’s dance tune from the US.  It is played by a musical group (conjunto) that includes either a saxophone or trumpet, a bass drum (bombo), and a snare drum. A Garifuna drum is generally not used for this dance. There are numerous Honduras This Week articles about the different Honduran Guancascos and also the Garifuna Moors and Christians Dance. The dancing and playing the musical instruments is considered as one of the forms of sacrifice or service, as is the giving of food, drink, organizing the games like partesanas or carrera de patos, offering prayers and preparing oneself to offer prayers. Part of the video about Red Comal on the Internet shows part of a Lenca compostura, described by Anne Chapman in Los Hijos de Candela y Copal about the Lencas and in David Flores’s book.  The Word Compostura comes from the Spanish verb “componer” to fix that which was broken, or to make an agreement when there was a disagreement, so it is the Lenca ceremony to restore harmony, necessary when there has been War or when people have violated the laws of the spirits, which leads to illness.

Like the other Garifuna dances, the Garifuna women’s dance clubs organize the presentation of the Moors and Christian Dance, which in Trujillo includes shutting down a main road for four or five times over a month to dance (the initial parts of the dance are called Embajadas), and for the last day the road is closed all day long. Among the Garifunas, the dance can be during the Patron Saint’s Fair,but in many communities it has its own day like the Tuesday of Carnaval or Mardi Gras before Ash Wednesday in Trujillo or during Holy Week in some other communities like Santa Fe.   

Afro-Honduran Songs and Dances About the Experiences related to them being forcefully brought to the Americas or to Honduras

John Canoe (Yan Canu)

Both the Black Bay Islanders and the Garifunas did dances known as Yan Canu. They were both danced around Christmastime.  There are two versions of the Garifuna dance Yan Canu, one of which is done only by Belizean Garifunas and is danced with a red British army uniform with a feathered hat.  The Bay Islander dance was done in rags. The name is believed to come from the name of a British slave trader in Ghana John Canby.  The dancer accompanied by musicians goes from house to house dancing in the patio and scaring the children.  People pay him money and he goes away.

Gunchey
On the Smithsonian Folkways CD Traditional Music of the Garifuna (Black Carib) of Belize, this genre of song is spelt Gunchai

This Garifuna genre of songs is accompanied by a dance similar to a quadrille and is the only Garifuna dance danced in male-female couples. The songs are slow in the melody and fast in the drums. The songs like “Generali” tell the experiences of the Garifunas on the Island of St.Vincent in defeating the French forces which wanted to take over half the island in the mid-18th century. There is a season to dance this dance –after the Christmas season dances have ended on 15 January and finishing on the Saturday of Glory, the day before Easter Sunday. It was danced during the day on the weekends and after the older people danced they would eat cake. The cake had a bean in it and whoever got the bean had to make the cake the following week, probably based on a similar custom with the roscón del rey cake the Spanish ate for Three Kings Day.  This seems to be a case of taking the enemies’ dance and celebrating the victory over him by dancing triumphantly in celebration his own dance.

The Gunchey Dance is the central dance of the yellow-white-black (the colors of the Garifuna flag) gala of the New York City Garifunas for Garifuna-American month (11 March-12 April). It is quite raw to see the dance now in Honduras although the teachers of the Socorro Sorrel School in Trujillo have organized a Gunchey group for the teachers, the older people of Sangrelaya have their own Gunchey group, and I have seen one elementary school group I think from Limon present it at InterDepartmental Garifuna dance festival in Trujillo.  I think one of the Gunchey songs “Saucei” is on the Lanigi Garifuna cassette recorded by the Sangrelaya women’s dance group.There is a mention of the dance in Wendy Griffin’s Los Garifuna de Honduras and in David Flores’s La Evolución Historica de la Danza Folklorica Hondureña.

Wanaragua (Dance of the Warriors) or Mascaro
There is an example of this dance on the Smithsonian Folkways CD Traditional Music of the Garifuna (Black Carib) of Belize. The photo on the cover of the CD is also of men dressed for this dance. 

This Garifuna dance is also called Yan Canu, but it has a different historical story behind it. The Garifunas were being attacked by the British in the Second Carib War on the island of St. Vincent and the wife of Chief Satuye, Barauda, asked her husband what are you men going to do about the English? Maybe you should give me your pants and you wear skirts? That scene is shown in the Garifuna in Peril movie. Chief Satuye decides to dress up his warriors as women, which is why they wear flowered shirts with ribbons and feathered hats,skirts and slips, and white gloves and they put scarfs on their hair and a mask (always with European type faces with pink cheeks and mustaches), and they went and danced close to the English so that they could spy on them and know what they were doing and their position, but the British would not be concerned, because it was only women dancing. The dance is done beautifully in the Garifuna in  Peril movie but is also shown in La Historia de Corozal, andSambo Creek,but one version is without costumes. In Trujillo this dance is specifically done on Christmas Day and New Years Day.

On these same  days the Indio Barbara (Barbarian Indian) game (no music) is also played in Garifuna communities, and it remembers the conflicts of the red skinned Barbarian Indians in breechcloths and painted red with anetto seed and red clay dissolved in oil, an insect repellant, armed with a bow and arrow and speaking no mutual language having just a whistle (the use of whistles in war in Honduras by the Indians has been confirmed in archaeological and ethnohistorical documents).    

Yarumein (Island of St.Vincent in Garifuna)

This is a women’s song in the genre of hunguhungu. It tells the story of the Garifunas being rounded up the British at the end of the Second Carib War in 1796, and then in 1797 put on boats, and then being sent into exile and looking for the other Garifunas. As they approached Honduras in April 1797 the Spanish did capture one ship of the British bringing the Garifunas to Roatan and took it to Trujillo, so in fact it was necessary to go and look for the other Garifunas who then rescued and joined their fellow Garifunas on the island of Roatan, North of Honduras.This song is considered the National Anthem of the Garifunas. It opens most Garifuna women’s dance group sessions to dance, and most other Garifuna events like the Bicentenial celebrations of arriving to Honduras. Two of the women dancer wear ropes tied in lassos attached to their waists and they are the police or soldiers responsible for rounding up the Garifunas. I have seen this performed even with a British pith helmet for one of the police rounding up the Garifunas. The dancers also make the movements of paddling away by canoe.  The dance is described in Evolución Historica de la Danza Folklorica Hondureña by David Flores and in Los Garifunas de Honduras by Wendy Griffin and CEGAH. Recorded versions I know of include that by Honduran Garifuna male singer Aurelio Martinez and his traditional band Lita Ariran (Black Rooster), available on the Garifuna Coalition of New York City website and on Lanigi Garifuna cassette by the Sangrelaya women’s group with the words only in Garifuna in the accompanying songbook. There are probably many other versions. This song sung by the women and Garifuna drums to accompany it played by the men are never lacking in any Garifuna protest.

There are probably other Garifuna songs related to these themes like La Balsa maybe about escaping from slavery on a raft between Barbados and St. Vincent. Garifuna anthropologist Joseph Palacios of the University of West Indies, Belize says that if you collected all the Garifuna songs you could probably know their history much more completely.

There are also versions of the Spanish name of the dance Punta that originally there were two generals, and the other general was killed and defeated and the people said we would dance from punta to punta, referring to the places in the Honduran coastal geography where the land sticks out like punta Caxinas (Puerto Castilla), Punta Betulia, Punta Cameron, etc. Punta is a song danced at wakes, so if there was a wake for the death of an enemy, what you would dance is punta.  Four examples of the Punta songs are on the Smithsonian Folkways CD Traditional Music of the Garífuna (Black Carib) of Belize, which is still available for sale. The women on the cover of the CD are dressed to dance Punta. See also the GariTV.com movie "La Historia de Punta". 

Modern Resistence Songs

Maya Movement Songs by the Guatemalan Maya Chorti about the Guatemalan Civil War. Collected by University of Kansas Anthropologist Dr. Brent Metz.

Miskito Indian songs of Resistance. Most of the popular ones seem to be from the Contra War period, but some of them seem to be from the original Sandino War of the US against Sandino in the Nicaraguan Mosquitia. Anthropologist David Price recently wrote that the US is returning to counterinsurgence updating the manual based on the original Sandino War in the 1920’s, so it is just the Miskitos are maintaining their resistance with the same songs that that war inspired. These songs were collected by MISKIWAT, whose president Jairo Wood is now the high school principal in Brus Laguna. There are examples of Miskito music available from the Smithsonian’s Folkway Records and there is a video of an older Miskito man playing Miskito music on the MASTA Miskito Federation website, but in general the meaning of the songs are not made available. 

An interesting story of using music and dance to remember someone who died in battle among the Miskitos is the Parayapti organized in Lakatabila, Honduran Moskitia by Miskito teacher Cecilio Tatallon in honor of the death of the last Miskito king Henry Clarence at the end of the 19^th century. At least 12 different genres of very traditional Miskito music and their accompanying dances were done in the 1990’s for these 3 days of celebrations and possibly the last Miskito drummer was 92 years old. The Last Miskito King died because of the invasion of Nicaraguan President Zelaya’s forces entering the Mosquitia to annex it finally to Nicaragua and renamed the Department Zelaya. Photos of some of these dances and not very detailed descriptions of the dances and music and a better description of what Parayapti usually was are in David Flores’s La Evolución Historica de la Danza Folklorica Hondureña. In Ronny Velasquez’s book about Miskito song and dance, done with Miskito Indian Nathan Pravia, the Parayapti ceremony is called Sihkru. In Charles Napier Bell’s 19^th book Tangweera or life among Gentle Savages he also describes this ceremony done at one year after the death of a person among the Miskitos as Singkru. The modern Sinhkru Tara, noted on the MASTA website, held binationally alternating its location between Nicaraguan and Honduran Mosquitia is now a conference held on International Day of the Indigenous People 9 August to reflect on the situations facing the Miskitos, although probably a cultural afternoon is included in the program.   

Ladino Songs of Resistance related to the 2009 coup against Honduran President Mel Zelaya are available on the Vos el Soberano website.  That coup inspired art, poetry, and apparently song.

Corridos by the Honduran Indians about the Death of their 20^th century leaders

One of the most well known of these corridos which are accompanied by guitar is Corrido a Vicente Matute who was a Tolupan or Xicaque Indian slain in the late 20^th century.  The founding of the all Indigenous CONPAH (Confederación Nacional del Pueblos Autoctonos de Honduras) was done in 1992 Yoro, Yoro, the site of the Xicaque Federation FETRIXY on the anniversary of his murder, shortly after Columbus Day.    Since his death 50 Tolupan leaders have been murdered, mostly over land disputes or disputes relating to mining in their area. Just in one year, maybe two years ago, the community of Subirana, Yoro buried three different presidents of village council.

A really nice use of a protest song as a music video is the song to the Rio Gualcarque, which is the River the Honduran government wants to Aguazarka Dam on and the Lencas of COPINH are protesting at Rio Blanco, Intibuca for the last two years trying to prevent the entrance of the heavy equipment to build the dam. The music video is on Vimeo. At the end there is just a small note listing the names of the two Lencas, one a woman with 5 young children, who died in 2014 in confrontations of the Lencas at Rio Blanco and the Honduran government forces, with the added note, they would have liked to have heard this song if they were still alive.

The Pech Indians native of the Honduran rainforest in NE Honduras feel that the violence is not only against them but also against the animals that they depended on. The modern song by Pech teacher Angel Martinez in Pech tells of this-- “Who were our relatives? The Animals, the white collared peccary, the deer, the peccary, were our relatives and neighbors and now they are all gone and we are worried”.   The song is popular at Pech events where it is accompanied by guitar and traditional Pech instruments and was popular at the Central American Linguistics conference in Tegucigalpa.

 If the Pech have forgotten most of the old Pech songs,they are now writing new ones in Pech,and if the Xicaques and Lencas have mostly forgotten their traditional language, they are writing new songs in Spanish. Garifunas living in the US have been known to record punta songs written in English, and many Honduran Garifunas compose songs in Spanish.

A really nice use of a Garifuna composed song in Spanish is the “Tristeza es natural” (Sadness is natural) theme song of the Garifuna movie El Espiritu de Mi Mama (The Spirit of My Mother—It has English subtitles). The Garifuna girl in the movie becomes pregnant by a white American soldier who is stationed in the Honduran Mosquitia during the Contra War, and she goes to look for him in the US, but he does not even recognize her in the US and has a new girlfriend. Her deceased mother bothers her in dreams in the US until she goes home to Honduras to do a dugu ancestor ceremony, and becomes reconciled to her traditional culture, and her new life as a single mother. This movie is available for sale on the Garifuna in Peril website www.garifunainperil.com.