Dancing with the Virgin

Reviewed by: Dancing with the Virgin: Body and Faith in the Fiesta of Tortugas, New Mexico Paul Jordan-Smith Dancing with the Virgin: Body and Faith in the Fiesta of Tortugas, New Mexico. By Deidre Sklar. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Pp. xi, + 230, illustrations, notes, references, index.) In 1986, Deidre Sklar moved from New York City to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to engage in research on her doctoral dissertation. In Dancing With the Virgin, she gives us an engaging study of the ceremonial practices of the Las Cruces community related to the Fiesta of Tortugas and the veneration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as well a lyrical account of her participation in related communal religious activities. But she does more: she offers an account of the problems she faced as an ethnographer researching an essentially alien culture and as a Jewish woman of East European extraction encountering a Catholic Indio-Hispanic culture. Whatever else gave her entrée, Sklar's qualifications—and they are substantial—are her sensitivity to cultural differences, her sympathetic attitude toward her subjects, and her deep understanding of dance and the role of the body in the work of cultural expression. These qualities are evident throughout her book. As students of other people's folklore—that is, as outsiders studying insiders—we are forced to acknowledge the boundaries that separate us from our subjects. A significant part of our research is devoted to identifying these boundaries while also finding the means of crossing as many as possible without violating the trust between researcher and subject. Participatory fieldwork will always be open to subjective [End Page 497] questioning. Do my experiences correspond to those of my subjects? How can I tell? How can I differentiate what is idiosyncratic for me from what is shared by the members of the community to which I have been given provisional access? Can my analysis correct for differences between our cultures? Sklar's account is suffused with such questions, and their evident sincerity is felt again and again. To Sklar's credit, she does not indulge in such introspection to the point where her fieldwork and ethnographic presentation suffer. Instead, such questioning alerts her—and us—to the complex social dynamics of the Tortugas fiesta and to the role of the body in establishing the respective identities of the different groups involved. Although the corporation's semiofficial ceremony (referred to as the Danza) and the mestizo ceremonies (referred to as the Indio, Pueblo, or Tigua dance) differ in significant ways—the Indio dance lacks "meditative immersion" and is less focused on conversion—all are sponsored by the same community, and participants are drawn from the general population. Thus, no simple distinction can be drawn among participants. Moreover, significant stylistic distinctions differentiate the various pueblo groups, making comprehensive analysis a real challenge. Overarching these intricate differences, however, is the folk belief embodied in the ritual and its preparatory activities, such as a pilgrimage up Tortugas Mountain the day before the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe (December 12). The salient feature permeating all activities is sacrifice, in the sense of both ascesis (giving something up, such as comfort), and oblation (offering something up, such as one's inner life). The pilgrimage is long and hard; the dancing requires sustained energy; cooking and other preparations put strenuous demands on the body. At the same time, the participants—including Sklar, despite differences in belief—offer themselves in a deeper sense, through the meditative state that total engagement brings. Here, I think, Sklar penetrates to the heart of the ceremonies: not merely observing the external signs in others, but contemplating her own inner state, its relation to that of the other participants, and its limitations. This self-examination is also sacrificial, and as with all sacrifice, those of the researcher involve making choices between what is worthy to be offered up and what is not. The oblation of research lies in one's training and dedication to an impartial yet sympathetic study. The ascesis of research is more deeply personal and requires infinitely more delicate judgment. Sklar's work is exemplary in both regards. Paul Jordan-Smith Center for the Study of Everyday

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