Leonardo Saucedo ‘El Chiri,’ eighty years of dancing
Leonardo Saucedo better known as «El Chiri,» is a dancer by inheritance. From the age of seven his grandfather assigned him to the Lord of Huaje in Jocotepec to whom he offers his dances during the festivities. Photo: María Reynozo.
By: María del Refugio Reynozo Medina
Since he was a child, Leonardo Saucedo learned dance from his father Leobardo Saucedo Valentín, a dancer who performed the representation of the conquest in the town of Nextipac, municipality of Jocotepec.
Leonardo watched the rehearsals with rapt attention. He clearly remembers the characters; La Malinche, Hernán Cortés and Cuauhtémoc.
“-Get up, great monarch, Hernán Cortés is coming….” La Marina began in one of its dialogues in the colloquium that recreated the episode of The Conquest. It lasted more than three hours and up to 60 actors participated among dancers and musicians with guitar, stringed instruments, and drums.
At the age of seven Leonardo suffered a very strange illness. Small wounds appeared on a large part of his body that oozed. His grandfather entrusted him to the Lord of the Huaje, the Christ carved on a huge gourd tree found in the vicinity of San Pedro Tesistan and located in the chapel formerly known as the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception in the municipal capital of Jocotepec.
She promised him that if he healed him, she would give him her little grandson so that he could praise him through dance. So, they undertook the pilgrimage from Nextipac to the temple of the Lord of the gourd tree, walking, praying, dancing and the seven-year-old boy carrying despite his illness, a heavy wooden drum.
Don Leonardo «El Chiri» is now 86 years old, he remembers that moment and tears come to his eyes.
“I was even hot when I arrived,» he says.
After fifteen days, the boy was completely healed.
His father used to take to the Lord of gourd tree for the festivities of «the dawn» (rockets, cinnamon, bread and ringing of bells).
In addition to his love for dancing, he remembers that he used to help his father in the fields every day. During harvesting the fruits or burying the seeds in the middle of the furrows he would go over the dialogues. Though the official rehearsals were in the afternoon when the days in the fields were over.
As a dancer «El Chiri» went to Zacoalco de Torres, San Luis Soyatlán, Tizapán el Alto, Santa Rosa, Atequiza and Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos.
Now he says he is sad to see himself getting old, however, as long as he exists he will also live his fervor for the crucifix made from the gourd tree. Every time he goes to Jocotepec, the first thing he does is to visit the image and take a candle to it. Every year he is also present at the feast. “Although I may be crawling, I have to go.”
«El Chiri» they call him in town because one day in a soccer game, ten minutes from the end, he scored an Olympic goal that led his team to victory. “It was a fluke,» he was told.
«El Chiri» learned very well his side as an actor not only as a dancer. He recreated characters with different voices. ‘The Indians did some voices, he says, and the conquistadors did others.”
One day when they were walking up the hill on their way to Cajititlán for a presentation, the woman who was going to play La Malinche fell into a stream. By the time they reached their destination she no longer had a voice. «El Chiri» had no problem representing the female voice and completing the picture. He had a very good memory, although «we had no school,» he says.
In those days they had for school a leafy mango tree, a piece of smoked board and his teacher.
However, he came to learn not only his own dialogues but those of everyone else.
Now his memories are vague, and among them he’s lost some incomplete stanzas of what was the splendor of the colloquies of La Conquista.
“Silence and little morulla, if you want to see this dance.
Listen to me, so many women, which one is the most murmuring,
is she braided or is she hairy.
Adorned with little rags shut those little lips.
Don’t disturb Juan Guarín epa maistro of the violin
Touch me the dwarfs to dance them here …”
Translated by Sydney Metrick
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