History,'Los Pastores', and the Shifting Poetics of Dislocation

Abstract The history of 'Los Pastores' in Texas, a nativity play from medieval Spain used by the early missionaries to teach Christian doctrine, is embedded in the larger social arena of political change and social subordination of mexicanos in this region. Any effort to understand the historical practice and contemporary meaning of Los Pastores cannot be separated from the way both performers and event have been narratively inscribed through various selective discourses, or cultural poetics, that form one aspect of the social marginalization of the mexicano population in Texas.
In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.—Walter Benjamin, Illuminations .