Sinaloa.- From a great gratitude, to a cry of petition, dance is an artistic tool that indigenous people use to express their feelings towards nature and their patron saint. Teacher José Luis Castro Juárez explained that the dances are an expression of their feelings as a community.
There are various types of dance in indigenous culture, among them are the deer dance, pascola dance, matachín dance and coyote dance.
“We dance to nature when we want it to rain and when there is a drought, but when there is a good harvest we thank it, when there are diseases we dance to scare away evil spirits,” he explained.
For the indigenous people, the word kullahane represents the hill, the mountain, the river, the trees, the animals, the water, among other things.
The dance cannot be complete without the typical costume of the indigenous culture, which is characterized by handmade accessories, such as the tenábaris, which are made from dry butterfly cocoons, which are regularly placed in the area of the ankles.
For its part, the clothing consists of pants and a blouse specifically made of a blanket, adorned at the hip with a leather belt called coyolis, on which different commercial bells are hung.
Nevertheless, the instrument they enjoy making the most are the masks, which have the distinctive long strands of synthetic hair that represent the beards of the old man in the Pascola dance. “The mask always indicates something scary,” he noted.
In addition to this, it is important to emphasize that the masks must always have a cross painted on them, which symbolizes the deep-rooted belief of the indigenous people in Catholicism.
“We are highly Catholic, whoever wants to join another religion is a torocoyori, which means treacherous, because he betrays his race,” he explained.
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When the deer dance is performed, the head of the animal is added, which is known as a mazocoba.
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