The Voladores (Flyers’) dance ceremony amongst the coastal peoples of Totonacapan – an aquatic ritual (1)

16th Mar 2022

The {italicVoladores} (Flyers’) dance ceremony amongst the coastal peoples of Totonacapan – an aquatic ritual (1)

Mexicolore contributor Luisa Villani

To complement our earlier article on the Voladores ceremony (follow link below) we’re delighted to upload this bilingual article by Dra. Luisa Villani, suggesting a strong association between the ceremony and deities linked to rain, thunderstorms, wind and the ocean. This study is the product of the Postdoctoral Scholarships Programme of UNAM Mexico. Luisa Villani is a postdoctoral scholar at the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas of UNAM, supervised by Dr. Enrique Fernando Nava López.

Anyone arriving in Papantla at noon will be welcomed by the sound of drum and flute music – instruments played in the dance of the Flyers. Held at Papantla, home of the Totonac people, in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, the dance has become a tourist attraction: spectators are fascinated by the dance, performed daily in front of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and accompanied by the circular rotations of the dancers round the pole. However to the Totonacs the dance is not a spectacle but a sacred ritual in which forces of nature and climatic agents participate.
The dance of the Flyers, called Kgosni in Totonac, synthesizes some of the more general features of the Mesoamerican cosmos and its logical, numerological, iconographic and symbolic structures. The fact that it is performed throughout several regions of Mesoamerica, at different historical moments, shows that it exhibits a multitude of meanings.
It is not my intention here to elucidate each and every one of these, so I will simply spell out a few lines of Totonac cosmovision reflected in the dance and which led me to interpret it as an aquatic rather than solar ritual.

Background to the study and the dance’s mythical origin

Several scholars, amongst them Stresser-Péan (2005) and Nájera (2008) have assigned a solar character to the dance, which represents a fertility rite for the earth. The flyers might represent eagles descending from sky to earth or the souls of dead [warriors] accompanying the setting Sun on its path from dawn to dusk. However other writers, such as Ichon (1969), Williams (1954), Trejo (2000) and Gaona (1990), claim that the dance, at least among the Totonacs, shows aquatic characteristics.
According to Ichon (1969: 389) ‘The elders say that the Flyer, like the dance of the Santiagueros, is a dance “from the Water”, that is, it came from the sea, from the East, the domain of the gods. The legend tells that a man, looking for water on the hillside, came across a small upright mast amongst the wells, with Volador flyers in full swing around it. This is why people say the dance comes from Water. When a performer dies, he doesn’t go under the earth like other deceased but rather ‘into the Water’, that is, to the East, to rejoice with those that sent him’ (Ichon 1969: 389).

Similarly, Don Silvano de Zongozotla, as recorded by Leopoldo Trejo (2000: 80-81), relates a mythical story in which the dance could be the fruit of a petition made by the best youths of Papantla to the King of the Winds atop Cozoltépetl hill (cozol: shrimp and tepetl: hill) “The inhabitants of Papantla recall how they used to suffer badly from the winds which would destroy their crops; so they decided to make offerings to the hill named King of the Winds to ask for more favourable treatment. So they made their way to the hill to leave offerings, and created there what has come to be known as ‘the dance of the flyers’. They chose the best youths from Papantla and dressed them in feathers, like the headdress of Cozoltépec; they climbed a tree trunk so high they could see the hill of Cozoltépec; their flight symbolises the flight of the King of the Winds, Cozoltépec. From on high they performed a dance for him in honour of the King of the Winds. Ever since, the winds have been kind to the people of Papantla” (Trejo 2000: 81-85). The author stresses that in ancient times children were sacrificed on the hilltop in an appeal to the King of Wind to send his life-giving rains. Cozol – from which the name of the hill is derived – is known as the King of the Winds and is recognised throughout the region, from Tetela de Ocampo to Papantla.

This mythical tale is very similar to one told me by the grandparents of Tajín. Doña Isabela de Tajín recalls a time of drought, when a group of youths went to seek help from the King of the Winds; on their return they created a dance, the dance of the Flyers, which has enabled them to recreate the mythical time. Today, as in the past, they call on Wind-Storm to send rains so that the fields won’t dry out and nature can flourish again.
Whilst Zeferino Gaona (1990) informs me that this dance relates to the meteorological agency of wind and is performed to prevent cyclones hovering overhead and leading to such damaging hurricanes, the people of Tajín insist that the rain brought by Wind-Storm (hurricane) is vital, especially during the hot season (July-August), when the water dropped by the hurricane is uniquely key to maintaining the fields’ productivity.

Similarly Ichon (1990) speaks of the fear of drought motivating the flyers to start dancing, their aim being to banish this danger from the fields. However the inhabitants of the time failed to believe the threat, and one day the tecomate or platform on the Flyers’ pole was blown away with the five dancers atop it; they disappeared into the sky towards the East, the direction of Holy Rome. Days later they returned, to find the inhabitants had pulled down the pole and they were unable to perform. This led to them disappearing forever.
Leonardo Zaleta (2004) recounts a legend which still circulates in the Papantla region today, the origin of which is linked to the same motive of warding off drought:-
‘Some 450 years ago, in times of a severe drought which brought hunger and suffering to these peoples, the elders, through their wisdom, charged five virgin youths with finding the highest and sturdiest of trees, felling it and using it in a ritual that would be a plea set to music and dance aimed at pleasing the gods; in order to be heard by the Sun god this petition had to be enacted at the crown of the tree. Thus with humility and fervour the people prayed for generous rain which would once again bring fertility to the earth, the fields, the trees and all vegetation, turning them green with myriad flowers and fruits – and so ending the agony of hunger’ (Zaleta 2004: 22).

Although in this account the petition is directed at the Sun, the objective is the same: to seek plentiful rain in order to banish hunger and drought. A final version of this was told to me by an ex-Volador, Romualdo García Luna, from Tajín. Romualdo alludes to the Flood and to the generation of humans born after this event, who were to suffer the punishment of a drought sent by the gods.
The narrative opens at an unspecified time after the Flood, during which the 13 Grandfathers and 13 Grandmothers who survived began to worry and wonder why no rain was falling on the earth.

One day the Senior Grandfather dreamed of a strange sound. God commanded him to embark on a journey, in which he would meet someone in a distant land. He would travel through places afflicted by drought and dust storms. He must walk towards the rising sun in the East. The Grandfather obeyed and reached a town where he was able to rest. He enquired about the sound of the flute in his dream. He was told to carry on walking and eventually, on the rim of the hill, came upon a Grandfather playing the flute and a child whistling. This Grandfather told him that he too had dreamed of a dance, and that they would need to undertake a ritual. The ceremony would have to take place on the hilltop, and a woodcutter must fashion the heart of the pole so that it would move – that is, the rotating reel and a frame of vine. Four youths would fly from the top of the pole, directed by a fifth, the foreman. According to Romualdo, each flyer had to fulfil certain conditions, including fasting and abstaining from intercourse for a week prior to the dance.
Should these conditions not be respected in their entirety, one of the performers might fall ill and even die, a victim of the Owner of the Dancers, Seven Storms.

The rite and re-enactment of the myth today: San Juan Aktziní and the Flyers

The Flyers dance involves the re-enactment of myths associated with Hurricane – named San Juan Aktiní in this Totonac region – the Flood, and the season’s water cycles. Whilst it’s possible that some of the ancient meanings of the myth have been lost, some are successfully recovered through the interaction of myth and dance. Importantly, this process of ritual re-enactment of mythic time is realised through the participation of each performer and through each ritual action – not solely in the ‘flight’ itself.

Although Stresser-Péan points to a solar symbolism in the Voladores, he hints in his writings that each stage of the dance ritual also contains elements of an aquatic symbolism which, as I’ve shown in my doctoral thesis (Villani 2018a, 2018b), became subsumed under a solar ideology common throughout the Central Plateau.

The ritual begins the night before the tree is felled, in the house of the Foreman or Senior Volador, or if not in that of a ritual prayer specialist, as noted by España Caballero (1996) and Guy Stresser-Péan (2005). According to the former, who completed his field work in Cuetzalan in 1996, the Voladores gather in a semi-dark room in which they transport themselves back to the earliest days of creation, lit only by four candles (one in each corner) and a larger fifth candle in the centre of the room.

The second writer tells of the dream of the k’ohal, which in Teenek means Foreman/Captain, in which his bird spirit flies off to the Great Hill of the West, the hill of San Juan, and meets the Sevenfold King, in charge of receiving the setting sun at dusk.
As can be seen, the name San Juan features amongst the Teenek as well as the Totonacs. For the latter, San Juan is associated both with Wind-Storm, Aktziní, and with San Juan of the Mountain, dweller in the wilderness, owner of the Mountains and the woods, to whom offerings must be made before going to cut down the tree that will become the pole for the flyers, Tsakatkiwi (lit. ‘tree for flying’).

The elderly captain of Papalo describes the tree cutting ceremony as follows (Ichon 1990: 382): ‘The Foreman kneels at the foot of the tree, his face pointing East, and prays, whilst sprinkling sugarcane liquor on the ground. Together with his fellows he addresses the tree and Wind-Storm, and, if the terrain allows, they dance around the tree, accompanied by flute and drum.

The nature of this emblematic figure of San Juan is hard to ascertain: on the one hand he’s a naughty child who transforms into a hurricane on going to live in the Pyramid of the Niches, which is Wind-Storm’s house in Tajín; on the other hand he’s the owner of the Mountains and woods, to whom offerings must be made. He is related not just to the wind but also to the earth. These characteristics appear also to feature amongst the Teenek of Tamaleton and Tanlajás (Stresser-Péan 2005), where he is the god of the West, of fire and of the stars, a ferocious deity who constantly demands new victims.

The offerings of both Teenek and Totonacs are made equally to the earth and to the wind. Stresser-Péan notes that amongst the Teenek the offerings deposited in the hole dug out for the Volador pole are intended for the goddess of the earth and for Mâmlâab, earth lord and storm lord, inhabiting the East in his capacity as Triple King; he is a benevolent being, in contrast to Sevenfold King who is a ferocious god who has to be pacified.
Similarly, San Juan-Aktziní represents the destructive and ferocious face of the storm, and as a result the lesser storms, angels or Michaels, representing the benevolent face of the storm, must tie him up and hurl him to the bottom of the sea, in the East, where he abides and cries out every 24th June on his birthday, asking to be freed to let loose another flood.

In order to pacify this ferocious being, in the hole dug out for the Volador pole the Totonacs deposit a live black chicken (the colour reflecting the deity’s dark character), flowers, copal incense and liquor which the Senior Volador scatters to the four directions, both at the bottom and at the top of the pole.

Throughout all the phases of the dance, from the cutting of the pole to its final demise, a series of tunes and rhythms is played by the musician on flute and drum, underlining the importance of the ritual’s development. Alain Ichon (1990) suggests that in ancient times something like 24 melodies were played in the Jalpan-Apapantilla region, whereas today only half of these remain.

According to a collaborator of Stresser-Péan’s, Maximiliano, the pole might have been planted originally in the ‘sands of the sea’, in the mythical East, where every morning the sun appears to arise out of the depths of the sea. What’s more, Maximiliano told the French anthropologist that it was out of the sea that the prototype pole used originally by the ancestors from long ago had first stood erect. And Pedro Flores, another of Stresser-Péan’s collaborators (2005) claims that the pole represented a god of the forest, a being that merges somewhat with the great Mâmlâab, lord of all vegetation.

A further indication of the aquatic nature of this dance comes again from Stresser-Péan (2005: 67), when he describes the objects carried during the flight by the Senior Volador or k’ohal: in the right hand he holds a jug representing the ocean and the goddess of water, and placed on top of this is a white canvas symbolising the clouds. Both ocean and clouds are believed to be ‘worn’ by the goddess of the sea.

At Tajín I was told by the Grandparents that the flyers are the four winds or storms of the four corners of the world, whilst the Foreman would be the Senior, head Storm Wind. It turns out that this dance was performed during Corpus Christi in the smallholdings of Papantla, and it has been suggested that it took the place of an ancient ceremony in honour of the gods of Lightning (Stressner-Péan 2005). The highlight, at the top of the pole, performed by the Foreman and then by the Voladores is another key part of the ritual, loaded with religious meanings. I refer here again to my own research (Villani 2018a and 2018b:-
‘Before the start of the flight spiralling round the pole, a dance is performed calling on the god of Wind to offer forgiveness and protection’, in the words of Domingo García García (1980).

Ariel de Vidas Anath (2003: 473) notes that in the Huasteca region of Veracruz the flyers descend to the ground in spiral formation to the rhythm of music. The dance is preceded by a number of rituals, including limpias (spiritual cleansings), fasts, sexual abstinence and offerings to ‘the one that will thunder’ both at the foot of the tree that will be felled to become the pole and later when the pole is erected in a public square. At the same time, just as in the Veracruz version, the San Luis Potosí version includes the sacrifice of a bird. In practice the dance captain – the musician – plucks the feathers from a turkey at the top of the pole and throws them to the four winds.