(Southwest United States, Late Eighteenth Century/1840-50)
Translated by Gilberto Espinosa Los Comanches is a conquest
drama that reenacts the Spanish army’s historic defeat of a
famous Comanche chieftain in what is now New Mexico. In this
secular reinvention of the moros y cristianos tradition—mock
battles between Moors and Christians that the conquerors brought
to the ‘New World’—the victors are portrayed as being motivated
by greed and lust rather than religious zeal. The play was
staged in small towns throughout northern New Mexico during the
nineteenth century, and a version of it is still performed
outdoors and on horseback every year in the community of
Alcalde.