Matachines

Matachines (Spanish singular matachín; sword dancers dressed in ritual attire called bouffon) are a carnivalesque dancers performing a dance that emerged in Spain in the early 17th century, inspired by similar European traditions such as the moresca. The term danza de matachines refers to their characteristic dance and music. The dance was documented in the 1642 treatise Discursos sobre el arte del dançado by Juan de Esquivel Navarro. The tradition was imported into Latin American countries such as Mexico and Peru and into the Southwestern United States.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Matachines”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Matachines is ritual dancers, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶