¹ Festivals such as feasts of community patron saints, also were an integral part of village or rural life. However, the essays here define the elaborate, costly, and extraordinarily sumptuous rituals only possible in colonial cities and larger towns.

² This transition is seen most clearly with the evangelization program of the sixteenth century. See Ricard, Robert, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966)Google Scholar and Phelan, John Leddy, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World: A Study of the Writings of Gerónimo de Mendieta, 1525–1604 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).Google Scholar For studies demonstrating the complexity of evangelization and Native acculturation, see Lockhart, James, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar and Burkhart, Louise M., The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989).Google Scholar

³ This is not to say that indigenous and African peoples did not appropriate these forms, fuse them with their own traditional rituals or view the significance of a procession or an entry in ways different from the Spaniard.

⁴ For the concept of festivals as creators of collective memory, see Connerton, Paul, How Societies Remember (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ For the sequence of public ceremonies for the Mexica, see de Sahagún, Bernardino, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press and School of American Research, 1950–82),Google Scholar book 2; and, for African peoples, see Parrinder, Edward Geoffrey, Religion in Africa (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969).Google Scholar

⁶ For this festival philosophy, see Maravall, José Antonio, The Culture of the Baroque (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).Google Scholar

⁷ Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Harper Collins, 1973),Google Scholar chapter 1.

⁸ Turner, Victor, Drama, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), pp. 231–71.Google Scholar

⁹ Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process: Structure and Antistructure (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969),Google Scholar chapter 3, and Leach, Edmund, Culture and Communication (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1977)Google Scholar and The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).

¹¹ Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1959).Google Scholar

¹² Strong, Roy, Art and Power. Renaissance Festivals 1450–1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984);Google Scholar Bryant, Lawrence M., The King and the City in the Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony: Politics, Ritual and Art in the Renaissance (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1986);Google Scholar Flynn, Maureen, “Mimesis of the Last Judgement: The Spanish Auto de Fe,” Sixteenth Century Journal 23:2 (1991): 281–97;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Christian, William, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar and Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

¹³ These authors discussed or described spectacle as part of larger works, see Leonard, Irving A., Baroque Times in Old Mexico (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959),Google Scholar especially chapters 8 and 9; Stampa, Manuel Carrera, Los gremios mexicanos. La organización gremial en Nueva España 1521–1861 (México: EDIAPSA, 1954);Google Scholar Cuevas, Mariano, Historia de la iglesia en México (México: Patria, 1946–47);Google Scholar Rueda, Julio Jiménez, “El certámen de los plateros en 1618 y las coplas satíricas que de él se derivaron,” Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación XVI:3 (1945): 434–84;Google Scholar de Campos, Armando de María, “Las comedias en el Corpus mexicano colonial,” Humanismo 2: 11–12 (May-June 1953): 111–14;Google Scholar Marroquí, José María, La ciudad de México (México: Tip. y Lit. La Europea de J. Aguilar y Cía, 1900–1903);Google Scholar de la Maza, Francisco, La mitología clásica en el arte colonial de México (México: UNAM, 1968);Google Scholar Robert Ricard, see citation in note 2; de Terreros, Manuel Romero, Ex-Antiques. Bocetos de la vida social en la Nueva España (Guadalajara: Imp. Fortino Jiménez, 1919);Google Scholar and, Garcidueñas, José Rojas, “Fiestas en México en 1578,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 9 (1942): 33–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Eric Van Young refers to this melding of disciplines as the “convergence of history and ethnography.” See his “Conclusion: The State as Vampire-Hegemonic Projects, Public Ritual, and Popular Culture in Mexico, 1600–1990,” in Rituals of Rule, p. 344. This interdisciplinary approach reflects what Clifford Geertz called “blurred genres.” See his Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York, 1983).

¹⁵ This is not intended as an exhaustive list. The following are presented merely as a sample or point of departure for the interested scholar. See Viqueira Albán, Juan Pedro, Relajados o reprimidos? Diversiones públicas y vida social en la ciudad de México durante el Siglo de las Luces (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987),Google Scholar espeically chapters 1 and 3; Correa, Antonio Bonet, “La fiesta barroca como práctica del poder,” in El arte efímero en el mundo hispánico (México: UNAM, 1983);Google Scholar Fernández, María, “The Representation of National Identity in Mexican Architecture: Two Case Studies, 1680, 1889,” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1993);Google Scholar the essays of Clara García, Deans-Smith, Susan, Ayala, Sergio Rivera, and Martin, Cheryl English are located in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico, eds. Beezley, William E., Martin, Cheryl English, and French, William E. (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1994);Google Scholar Van Young, Eric, “The Cuautla Lazarus: Double Subjectives in Reading Texts on Popular Collective Action,” Colonial Latin American Review 2 (1993): 3–26;Google Scholar for de Teresa, Guillermo Tovar, see, among many essays, “Arquitectura y efímera y fiestas reales: La jura de Carlos IV en la ciudad de México 1789,” Artes de México 1 (tercera edición, 1993) pp. 34–47;Google Scholar for essays discussing the emblems utilized in many State-sponsored festivals and their significance, including one by Buxó, José Pascual, see Juegos de ingenio y agudeza: La pintura emblemática de la Nueva España (México: El Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994);Google Scholar and, also see my works, “Giants and Gypsies: Corpus Christi in Colonial Mexico City,” in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance, cited above, pp. 1–26 and “Saints, Sovereignty, and Spectacle in Colonial Mexico,” (Ph.D. diss. Tulane University, 1993).