Ritual Festivities and Sounds in Nuevo Santander: Political Strategy of Assimilation and Belonging to the Hispanic Monarchy, 1747-1760

Abstract

In colonial times, artistic representations and their sounds helped to create and strengthen the New Spanish identity of the inhabitants of the viceroyalty and keep alive the communion with the King. To address these issues in the Colonia de Nuevo Santander, the analysis of documents of the time is used, which provide important information on the way in which its inhabitants executed such festivities. The interpretation and meaning of these cultural practices is supported by a specialized historiography, whose contributions guide the ideas and arguments that support this study. It is postulated that, despite its late foundation, in the mid-eighteenth century, in the Colony stagings and cultural events were mounted, which commemorated certain events that fostered the bonds of brotherhood with the mother country, which, together with their sounds, functioned as axes of the articulation of the identity mentioned in Nuevo Santander. At the same time, they fed the thinking of the inhabitants that nourished their cultural horizon, where such acts meant a bridge that, despite the distance that separated them from the Crown, united them with their Hispanic origins.