The Matachines Dance: Ritual Symbolism and Interethnic Relations in the Upper Rio Grande Valley

Sylvia Rodriguez's The Matachines Dance, Ritual Symbolism and Interethnic Relations in the Upper Rio Grande Valley, published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1996, is a comparative scholarly study of the matachines dance as performed in both Hispano and Pueblo communities of northern New Mexico, examining the genuinely disputed question of the dance's origin and the different roles it plays in the relations between the two communities that perform it. Rodriguez conducted fieldwork with both Hispano and Pueblo practitioners. Its strength is that comparative, dual-community approach, treating a contested question of origin as a live scholarly and community disagreement rather than settling it by fiat. Its limit is that a study covering two distinct community traditions in one volume necessarily treats each with somewhat less depth than a study focused on either alone would offer.