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Matachine Aguelo: A Life Outside the Theater, The

Western Folklore, Winter 2001 by Steele, Thomas J

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Upon entering the house, this uncanny being cracked his whip in the air and demanded to see the children. When the parents presented them, the Aguelo announced his mission, which was to determine if the children were well-behaved and knew the catechism and the ordinary prayers of the Catholic religion. He now began to question them, quizzing each of them individually, scolding them when they didn't respond well, and continually cracking his whip in the air. Some of the smaller children were so deathly afraid they could scarcely open their mouths.

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The first part of the ritual concluded with the admonitions and threats of the Aguelo, making some of the children dance "Las Palomitas-The Dove" solo as a punishment and even whipping others. But with the children under seven (the traditional age of reason and responsibility), the Aguelo was ordinarily very kind and tolerant.

After the children had prayed an Our Father or a Hail Mary, much like penitents praying their assigned penance after having gone to the sacrament of confession, the Aguelo became playful and led the dancing of "Las Palomitas." Occasionally there was a tambourine, but the monotone chant usually had no more accompaniment than the cracking of the Aguelo's whip. It consisted of one line with accents on the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth syllables and another of two identical hemistichs, each one made up of four syllables, the first unaccented and the other three accented:

!Baila, paloma de Juan Durundun!

[Dance, dove of Juan Durundun!]

!Durun dun dun, durun dun dun!

!Baila, paloma de Juan Durundun!

!Durun dun dun, durun dun dun!1

The more satirical youngsters sometimes improvised verses in an attempt to take revenge on the Aguelo if he had whipped them the year before.

For the children's parents, the Aguelos offered help in religious instruction and a pleasant diversion. If the children anticipated the Aguelos' arrival with fear and trembling, their elders looked forward to it eagerly. They usually took part in the event and knew which neighbor took the part of the Aguelo. For the help and diversion they offered, the Aguelos got some little delicacies from the families-sopaipillas, empanadas, puddings, sugar candies, even at times money. Sometimes the grownups paid the Aguelo not to whip a child who didn't know his prayers very well but who promised contritely to know them perfectly the next year.

As visitor to the Hispanic family, the Aguelo appeared in the late-Advent context of a novena of masses, performances of "Las Posadas," or at least bonfires. By itself, the Aguelo character operated at a very low level of moral reasoning, so low indeed that because all the adults eagerly anticipate the Aguelo's appearance, his arrival demoted the child beneath the familial-- communal level of honor and shame and made the child a shunned individual, seemingly isolated and abandoned to survive on his or her own. Having been forced to confront his moral derelictions and sheer mortality and made to undergo a passage into a threatening world of the utterly uncanny, the child was left with scarcely any family support other than (perhaps) a subconscious grasp that though the adults had looked forward to the arrival of the Aguelo with delight, they were normally so loving that the child's short-range prospects would somehow be all right. The child soon emerged from the little ritual by way of a highly ambiguous dance into restored and even enhanced status within the family, and the period of reconciliation and return was sometimes marked with satiric lampoons that were directed against the ogre in its presence and yet never punished.

Matachine Aguelo: A Life Outside the Theater, The

Western Folklore, Winter 2001 by Steele, Thomas J

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