Tradition and the Transformation of Styles:

A Documentation and Analysis of the Horned Carnival Masks

Of the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico

--- An Artist’s Response

Mark Gordon

Summer 1987; revised January 2006

[--See linked maskmaking images from field research.]

Research Objectives

As a visual artist and graduate student at The Ohio State University, I was interested in traditional cultural manifestations of visual imagery, both for my own artistic development and to share images with my students.

The zoomorphic images embodied in Dominican horned masks have served as a source of inspiration in my artwork. When horns are encountered in archetypal visual contexts such as the Minoan cult shrines of Crete and at the Catal Huyuk altars in Anatolia, horns serve a semiotic function as symbols of power, wealth, sustenance, virility and agricultural growth. In contrast, horned masks can serve as threatening reminders of mortality: in the final account, these masks suggest animal skulls, especially bucrania.

There has been a shortage of articles published dealing specifically with the Dominican Republic’s maskmaking tradition, either in English or in Spanish. A short exhibition catalogue published in 1985 by Parsons School of Design, and a documentary, “Caretas de Carnaval,” by Jaime Piña—with narration by the formidable Fradique Lizardo—was sponsored by the Dominican telephone company CODETEL. This short video gives an overview of the country’s various regional styles of masks.

The Dominican traditions of carnaval and fiesta patronal, and therefore also of these celebration-related masks, were formed by the interaction of the cultural worlds of Sub-Saharan Africa, Catholic Spain and indigenous Taíno and Carib tribes of the island of Hispañola.

From 1980 to 1983 I lived in La Romana, a town on the southeastern coast of the Dominican Republic, where my task was designing and implementing a pottery training program for local youths. I am fluent in Spanish and can communicate effectively in the Caribbean dialects. An 18-month period in 1984-85, spent in travel and crafts documentation, helped hone my skill at interviewing and documenting traditional crafts. My 1987 travel in the Caribbean concentrated on the Dominican Republic, which boasts strong traditions of original folk-art in Carnival, Independence Day, and regional festival (fiesta patronal) masks.

Caribbean maskmakers are artist/craftsmen; my field study explored their backgrounds, training, attitudes toward work, and role in society. In anthropological terms, masking is characterized by a structured “corporate sequence” of patronage, inspiration, tradition, craftsmanship, and the embodiment of a new personality in a limited time-frame.

In the course of the investigation, various questions emerged. For example, in the Dominican Republic, both men and women make masks; why is there no strict sexual differentiation, with men as the sole maskmakers, as is the case in most of West Africa? The Akkan taboo on figurative image-making by women is to avoid conflation of the role of mask/image-maker with the role of child-bearer and “person-creator.”

Whence come the Caribbean maskmakers’ inspiration and motivation---is it a natural (or inevitable) development resulting from synchretized cultural traditions? Is some of the contemporary inspiration, as MacLuan might argue, a response to modern media influences? In the economic context, what are the roles of the marketplace in determining mask styles? What characterized Dominican maskmaking of 30 years ago, and what will become of the tradition 30 years hence? These problems lead into the intriguing realm of artistic transculturation. This documentation project had the goal of enhancing understanding of this rapidly transforming craft and aid in the documentary preservation of these valuable traditions.

The Dominican Republic’s maskmaking tradition centers in La Vega, Montecristi, Santo Domingo, and Santiago de los Caballeros (neighborhoods Los Pepinos and Las Joyas). To aid in contextualizing Dominican masks within the region, I added supplementary travel to maskmaking centers in Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Venezuela’s remaining indigenous tribes of the Orinoco River area, considered to be the same provenance as the now-extinct Taínos of Hispañola (Lovens, 1935, et. al.), parallel some practices of Dominican festival masking. Current centers of maskmaking are located in the Venezuelan villages of Ocumare de la Costa, San Francisco de Paula de Yare, and Ocumare de Tuy. Puerto Rico’s maskmaking centers of Hatillo and Loíza Aldea (a village of predominantly African descent, and home to the “Festival Africana’ in July) have strong semiotic connections to Afro-Cuban santeria, a phenomenon that is currently less observable in the Dominican contemporary traditions.

In analyzing contemporary Caribbean festival masking one must look to its origins. The observer is confronted with archetypal images of ritual piety used in the context of a festival. Caribbean santería, a syncretism bringing together archetypes of African deities [especially Obatala, Shango, Yemaya, Ochun] and Christian-saint imagery, includes invocations evidenced during Carnival through the use of particular color-schemes, iconic masks, and recitations of litany. A plethora of plausible theories account for festival masking in the Caribbean. In horned masks, there is an invocation of agricultural and human fertility. Perhaps this derives from collective subconscious: hunters’ archetypes containing shamanistic rituals were intended to address nature-gods, to placate, beseech, cajole, to exorcse, to frighten. This suggests one explanation of the origins of mask-use in Africa: to frighten children away from taboo objects or places, images were painted or carved, Perhaps also, African secret societies developed mask use as apotropaic devices--to protect totemic animal-spirits and, in turn, to seek power and protection for themselves.

The role of mask-created social persona in West Africa is often one in which the mask becomes prescriptive for a ritualized storytelling dance often involving patterned, orchestrated social interactions. Masking in the modern-day Caribbean serves instead to increase freedom of social interaction: as Turner points out, festival masking is the annual opportunity to acceptably ignore social conventions. Thus, openness could be permitted--often allowing for the temporary elimination of taboos against sexual promiscuity or violence. This process temporarily transforms and possibly revitalizes social interaction within a community. Both African and Caribbean manifestations provide for a tuning-in to society’s collective unconscious through celebratory ritual. However, the suspension of disbelief necessary for a “profound engagement of the self in the process” (Stewart, 1986) seems less intense in contemporary Dominican celebrations.

Traditional Caribbean carnaval can create a momentary destabilization of the existing cultural organization, rejuvenating the social calendar. During carnival the populace is given the opportunity to do what is normally condemned by society and the Church. Carnaval creates temporary anonymity, freedom and even danger in interpersonal relationship. Masking has the effect of creating a context in which political differences are safely aired through ritualized, regulated social conflict. The masked celebrations provide for the discontented poor a socially-acceptable context within which to voice political dissatisfaction through regulated enactments of put-on persona—in effect, acting as a safety valve for the status-quo. According to Paz, a generalized feeling of belonging can lead to increased awareness of national bonds: a number of Latin American national independence movements have begun with a grito (shout, calling-out) during festival celebrations.

Festival masking supports rites of initiation into an inner group within society.

Perhaps a synthesis appears between the Spanish cofradía, an informal brotherhood prevalent in 16^th century Seville, the city through which many of the early Spanish conquistadores and colonistas passed, and a later transformation into the Caribbean hijos de santos. According to F. Otiz, these latter groups were called ñañigo---organized societies affiliated with totemic animals---of the Yoruba of Nigeria, the Bantu of central Africa, the Fon of Benin, the Ewe of Togo, and the Mandingo of Senegal.

In considering craft process and materials, it is natural to conclude that the most direct early masks consisted simply of paint: a decorated face may be the most elemental of masks. Bone masks made from animal skulls were used by the stalker-cultures of prehistoric England. Another early form of mask is evidenced by death-masks from ancient Jericho: “restored” plastered ancestral skulls faithfully reconstructed with additions of clay and proto-plaster. The wide variety of materials used in maskmaking includes wood, clay, stone, leather (tanned hides as well as alligator and snakeskins), cloth, feathers, gourds, metals (copper, silver gold, window screen, tin cans--the Dominican hoja-lata or “tin-can-leaf”), aluminum foil, fabric, rope (raffia, jute, sisal), plaster, papier mache, cardboard, and tree bark. There is evidence for incorporation of such exotica as turquoise, jade, onyx, horn, amber, ribbons, bells, mirrors, hair, lacquer, shells, copper, silver, gold, and dried grasshoppers.

[A side note on the use of rhythmic drums:

Patterned sequences of sounds are canonized in the language of West African talking drums: in Ghana, even poetry can be expressed. These rhythms attain a level of complexity and standardization permitting transmittal of detailed long-distance messages. In Dominican festivals it seems that drums are used for simple musical accompaniment; this could be characterized by the term jitanjafora—“sound without meaning.” But perhaps there is more here than meets the eye---or ear…In Panama, juego de congos drumming tells the story of the cimarrones, escaped slaves protesting against the colonial system through sabotage, rebellion, even suicide.]

The result of the field study was to develop a video and slide presentation, a photographic exhibit, and a large field sample display. The 1987 documentary project was of an exploratory nature that, in terms of crafts ethnology, has the potential to contribute to scholarship in the field of the Caribbean masking and maskmaking traditions.

Mark Gordon

Associate Professor

Art Department

Barton College

Wilson, NC 27893

mgordon@barton.edu

.