Yaqui Deer Dance- San Carlos, Sonora Mexico

This Yaqui Deer Dancer came into the restaurant in San Carlos, and with his permission, I shot this dance. The rattles on his legs symbolize the insect world.
"It is hard to go far in the borderlands country of Arizona and Sonora without encountering images of the Yaqui deer dancer. Fixed in bronze and larger than life, he stands as a public monument in Ciudad Obregon. Travel posters, hotel directories, salsa bottles, even the official seal of the state of Sonora feature his image. Yet even when he cavorts wildly in the interpretive motions of one folk dance troupe or another, he is mute. What speaks are the political and economic motives that cluster around him. He is the aboriginal connection of the politicians, the romantic lure of the ad man, the borderlands equivalent, in many ways, to the warbonneted Plains Indian horseman of the wild west.
To all Yaqui Indian people, the deer dancer is "little brother," and when he dances for them he has a voice. The voice speaks to all who attend a deer dance through the songs to which the dancer moves. The songs of the deer singer are the voice of the deer. In them, as one deer singer puts it, "he does not talk, but he talks in an enchanted way."