Dancing with the Virgin: Body and Faith in the Fiesta of Tortugas, New Mexico. - book review

Deidre Sklar. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 230 pp. B/W illus. $45.00/ 29.95 [pounds sterling] (hbk), $16.95/11.95 [pounds sterling] (pbk). ISBN 0-520-07910-8 (hbk), 0-520-22791-3 (pbk)

Deidre Sklar has produced an unusual ethnology, the result of her in-depth study of and participation in an annual three-day festival in honour of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The fiesta is a complex and evolving mixture of Roman Catholic and native elements perpetuated over the years by a close-knit group of people in Las Cruces, New Mexico. But this book is also an account of her own interior journey, from her childhood as the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York, to an academic, engrossed for ten years in learning to understand a completely foreign culture.

In some ways, this book is structured as a chronology of the fiesta. Yet this is not a dry academic recounting of what took place. Instead, the author digresses constantly as each event in the three-day celebration triggers a string of memories; of the participants, how she came to know them, and the things they did together that aided her under standing of some small part of the fiesta. In other ways, it reads almost like an autobiography, as she writes of her growing friendships with the local people, and tries to reconcile their different views with her own understanding of the fiesta. She often speaks of her difficulty in committing this work to paper, as if she were betraying a confidence in disclosing the thoughts of her friends. Yet she is also forthright about disclosing her own misgivings and difficulties during the research process.

On the whole, the book is more personal than analytical, although Sklar does include descriptions, photographs and diagrams of the public performances. Peppered with anecdotes that give the flavour of the lives of the participants, it is the narrative of what goes on behind the scenes that makes her study so captivating. Through her observations we can see the inner workings of the group. How coming together to prepare for and produce the fiesta, its dance performances, the pilgrimage and related religious observances serves to build a close network of interrelations within the Catholic community. She also discovers friction between those closely aligned with the church and those who follow native belief systems. For them, participating in the fiesta but not participating in the preparations is a way of remaining autonomous. For the Catholics, even the most humble acts, such as cleaning and serving food, seem to bring a sense of closeness to the Virgin. Everything from dancing to chopping onions is done "for the Virgin" as an act of devotion on the part of the participant, performed out of a sense of obligation and duty. What both groups agree on is the importance of continuing the old traditions, although they disagree as to what they are and how this should be done.

As Sklar gains insight over time, the dance performances transform, in her eyes, from simple, repetitive choreography to a form of spiritual communion with the Virgin of Guadalupe. Her title, Dancing with the Virgin, is a phrase used by one of her informants as he tried to explain what the dancing meant to him. Sklar sees the trancelike state of the dancers and, from talking with them, she begins to fathom the depth of their spiritual experience during the dance.

Even as she becomes deeply involved in the behind-the-scene preparations for the fiesta, she has difficulty feeling comfortable participating in some of the public aspects of it. She is most unnerved by the pilgrimage, with its pilgrims herded together in long, silent lines. To her, this felt more like a forced march than an act of devotion. Yet, after speaking with people who made the journey, she acknowledges how much climbing the mountain meant to them.

Gradually, the reader is drawn into the story she tells and becomes drawn also to the people of Las Cruces who act as her mentors. Watching, participating, asking questions, learning, Sklar comes across not so much as an outsider, scrutinising the local customs, but the new person in town, eager to become part of the community and make friends. The general impression is that this was not written by an outsider, but rather it is the tale of someone who, despite huge cultural differences, gradually became an insider, if only for a while.

One small disappointment: a concise overview of the fiesta at the beginning of the book would have been useful as a quick reference and an anchor for the reader to hang on to in the sea of text that followed. However, after reading the book, one feels that such a depth of understanding could never be conveyed in a terse description of the public facets of the fiesta of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This is not a book to be dipped into, but should be read from cover to cover.

Elaine Bradtke, Folklore Society

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