Dance of the Devils and the Hatajos de Negritos

In doing research about Afro-Peruvian music and dance, I've learned about the Dance of the Devils and the Hatajos de Negritos.

We spend a certain amount of time on the Hatajos de Negritos in the documentary, A Zest for Life.  You should even expect to see some video clips from this celebration on the DVD.  It's a 300 year old set of dances accompanied by music intended to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus.  It starts on Dec. 24 and ends on Christmas day, but then there's another celebration on 12th Night (Jan. 6) to commemorate the arrival of the wise men at Bethlehem.

Jesus Lopez in one of the hatajos.  Photo courtesy Carlos A. Lopez and los Cimarrones.

The hatajos are groups of men and boys who dance wearing costumes resembling a priest's dress, carrying bells and sometimes incense burners.  For part of the celebration, they do fancy footwork, or zapateo, as part of the religious celebration.

This celebration dates back to the time of slavery when the Spanish masters used the footwork and dance to help convert their African slaves to Catholic Christianity. 

The footwork came from out of the Spanish tradition but also out of the African tradition, and presumably the importance to many Africans of footwork as a way of communicating with Mother Earth was part of the appeal the dances and the celebration held for them.

Son de los Diablos performance.  Photo courtesy Madeleine Campos and America Baila Dance Company.

The Dance of the Devils (Son de los Diablos) is something we only have time to mention briefly in our documentary.  It also uses the zapateo, is also done by groups of men accompanied by musicians, and is also done as part of a Catholic religious celebration-in this case, Corpus Cristi, which comes in the early spring.  And it also dates back to the time of slavery.

The dancers wear masks of devils.  The chief devil carries a large book in which are written the names of all the people he will carry down to hell in the coming year (or that he carried down the past year-I'm not sure of this).

Son de los Diablos.  Water color of the 19th century Peruvian artist, Pancho Fierra.

 Currently, the dance is mostly done as a performance presentation, although in 2004 it was performed on the streets of Lima, Peru, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the ending of slavery.  (Note that sources give two different years as the year that slavery ended:  1854 and 1856.  Again, I'm not too sure why,.)