PETER ROBERTS


specific dance, supported his point with an example: "Asimismo, el fandango
poseia otra acepci6n. Se le tomaba por sin6nimo de baile entire blancos. Ya
casi a principios del XVIII acusaron al cura de La Aguada de ir un dia -a un
fandango" (2001: 215). The example (and there are others) that L6pez Cantos
gives supports the meaning of fandango and provides some support for Labat'
s claim that the calenda was in some way connected to the Catholic Church
in the Spanish colonies. The link between the fandango and the calenda will
be made clear a little later.
 Apparent support for the claim that the calenda was well known in Spanish
America came almost fifty years later from another French priest. In 1769
Antoine Pernety said the following: "There is however a very lively and
lascivious dance which is danced sometimes in Montevideo; it is called
calenda, and the Negroes as well as the Mulattoes, whose temperament is
hot, love it to death" (Quoted in Ledru 1810 2:75).
 Pernety differed from Labat to the extent that he associated the liveliness
and lasciviousness of the calenda with the hot temperament of the Negroes
and Mulattos. As to the dance itself, Pernety repeated most of the details
given by Labat as the source of the dance (the Spanish love for the dance
and its frequency among them, the indecency of the dance, children who
can hardly stand dancing it; the singing that accompanied the dance, all the
movements of the dance, and the story of the nuns dancing it on Christmas
night). It should be noted also that Pernety' s words were cited by Ledru in
1810 (2:75-6). Pernety's text matches Labat's very closely, except for the fact
that Pernety claims to be talking about Montevideo, Argentina. It also makes
a few additions to the dance and does not specify the instruments that were
used. The closeness of the two texts casts some doubt on the authenticity of
what Pernety is claiming for Montevideo. Furthermore, unlike Labat, Pernety
was just a temporary visitor to the place he was writing about. Yet, in spite
of the wholesale borrowing, Pernety's location of the calenda in Montevideo
might not have been total fiction.
 Another French writer, Pierre Ledru, also identified the calenda in a part
of Spanish America, in this case Puerto Rico. Ledru was on a trip collecting
information and visited several places, including Puerto Rico in 1797. In
describing the celebration of the birth of a first born near Loiza Aldea, Ledru
said the following:

 The mixture of Whites, Mulattos and free Blacks formed quite a pleasant
 group: the men in pants and Indian jackets, the women in white dresses
 with long gold necklaces. They wore on their heads a painted kerchief on
 top of which was a braided round hat and they executed in turn Negro and
 Creole dances* to the sounds of the guitar and the drum popularly called
 bamboula. (1810 2: 75)
 [*The chicca and the calenda, voluptuous dances, a little lascivious.]