Villancicos in the cathedrals of New Spain: Nahuatl and African voices in the matins of a feast

Cathedral chapters in New Spain commissioned complete cycles of villancicos for the matins of a feast and printed them in the year they were sung. The printed cycles close with an ensaladilla, a deliberate miscellany of voices: a Black singer who says that although they call them horses they are people, a Latin- spouting student, and an Indian who answers in a tocotín — one of them printed entirely in Nahuatl in the cathedral of Mexico in 1687.