Alebrijes en Arrazola

WHERE I ATE: in the plaza by the dead puppies (sad)
COOLEST PERSON I MET TODAY: Mario Castellanos, alebrijes artist
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Continuing our artesanías theme for week three, we ventured to Arrazola today, another small town outside of Oaxaca. This town was interesting, because like several other Mexican towns, it was originally a large hacienda covering immense amounts of land until the Revolution of 1910 and later federal legislation busted up the haciendas and gave the land back to the people.

We went to Arrazola because they’re known for their alebrijes, which are wild, colorful creatures carved out of copal wood. It’s one of Mexico’s youngest artesanías, having been developed in the last hundred years. Story goes that the first alebrijes were fever-induced figments of Pedro Linares, who, in his illness, saw crowds of wild creatures shouting nonsensical things, and the only word that he could remember was alebrije.

We met with a collective called Eco-Alebrijes. Their mission is two-fold: 1) to create jobs in Arrazola to prevent people from having to immigrate north to find work, and 2) to work in sustainable ways since past practices have deforested several areas around Arrazola.

San Marcos Tlapazola

WHERE I ATE TODAY: on the bus (but I did have an excellent bean sandwich thanks to Brady)
KEYCHAIN THAT BROKE MY HEART: said “Te esperaré” (“I will wait for you”) Made in a town where most young men have migrated north.
OAXAC-AHA! So one curious thing about this part of Mexico is that many places got partially renamed when the Spanish took over. So you’ll notice that a lot of towns have a saint’s name stuck in front of their original name. (San Marcos Tlapazola, for example.)
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In week three, we are studying the various artesanías of Oaxaca, and today we went to San Marcos Tlapazola, a small town outside of Oaxaca that has a long history of working with clay. We were invited to visit Marta Antonio Martinez at her home where she showed us the entire process of making a comal (a large, flat earthenware dish used for cooking). She told us how she and her family goes to the nearby hills to get clay (one particular hill for red clay, another for black, and another for yellow). They carry it back in car or on burro, and sculpt it into dishes still used on a daily basis.

One of the things I find so fascinating about listening to these different artisans talk is that many of them– whether they are weavers from Teotitlan or potters from San Marcos Tlapazola– create a product that is entirely native to their area. From start to finish, all the materials you need you get from your community or nearby communities, and you make a product that used and sold in your community. Coming from a place like New York City where it seems that everything is out-sourced and imported, there’s something really beautiful about an object that has only traveled a kilometer or two to get to where it is today.

In the video below, Marta explains part of the process. Watch for various chicken cameos.

My new tattoo

Hah, made you look. I haven’t gotten this image of corn tattoed on my body… yet. But who knows? We’ve got two more weeks in Oaxaca, and the more I learn about corn, the more I see why it’s important to shed light on what’s going on with corn in Mexico today. Corn, part of the trinity of Mexican food staples– along with beans and squash– is quickly becoming too expensive to produce in Mexico. They’re importing corn from the U.S. (and beans from China). Many people are growing concerned that this represents an alienation of which Mexicans themselves may not even be aware.

Marietta Bernstorff from MAMAZ (Mujeres Artistas y el Maíz) has developed a critical group of artists who focused on employing the image and concept of corn in producing art as a means of bringing the community’s attention to what’s going on. MAMAZ started with a show here in Oaxaca with 28 artists, and was so well received that they have since taken their show to Mexico City, inviting other artists to join. I encourage you to check out the link above to see some of the impressive work these artists are doing.

Textiles in Teotitlan

WHERE I ATE TODAY: Petrona’s house
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Today we took a trip to Teotitlan, just a few minutes outside of Oaxaca. We had the pleasure of having Lynn Stephen from the University of Oregon to introduce us to indigenous Oaxacan weaving. She spent a few years living in this small rural community, during which she learned Zapotec, an indigenous language in this part of Mexico. She’s kept in touch with people in the community of Teotitlan since the 80s, so she led us to two different weavers.

The first visit was to a women’s weaving collective called Mujeres que Tejen (Women that Weave) led by a woman named Josefina. It was the first of its kind in Teotitlan. The formation of this collective spurred the development of eighteen other collectives and led to women getting a much more public voice in civic affairs.

After visiting Josefina’s collective, we trekked through a milpa, the Zapotec word for cornfield, and went to visit her former host family, headed up by the matriarch Petrona. Here we had lunch prepared for us by Petrona and four other women from the town, and Petrona’s son, Paco, also led us through a natural-dyes demo. It was one of the most informative and interesting excursions yet. Below are a few snapshots of the day. (All the really good photos I stole from a friend. Gracias, Brady!)

Josefina, the head of the first women’s collective in Teotitlan

A lady at the women’s collective showing how pigments are ground

Me watching a woman weave at the women’s collective

Blue corn jello with red bug icing

Milpa (cornfield) in Teotitlan. They plant corn, squash, and beans on top of each other.

Paco, who taught us about natural dyes

Paco and Lynn discussing natural dyes

Turkeys, one of two natively domesticated animals in Mexico

Petrona and the other ladies who helped prepare our lunch

Petrona and me

Sign at Petrona and Paco’s house

Naturally dyed skeins of wool yarn

Obligatory Photo with Street Art

My Oaxacan Fixer-Upper

I don’t ask for much, just the top floor… look at all those windows.

Doña Macabra

WHERE I ATE: Café Bar del Jardín
FIRST-TIME PURCHASE: azucena flowers from the main square
REASON I CRIED (TWICE) TODAY: sweet old men
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Taking a break from my project for NEH, I went to go check out a Doña Macabra, a crazy Mexican horror flick from the 70s, about an old, Addamsesque spinster who lives in a giant mansion with just her maid and a bronze bust of her deceased husband. There have long been dark rumors about Doña Macabra around town, but little did the town know her brother was constructing his life’s opus underneath her house. His grand design was to build an underground wax museum, and in order to get his statues more realistic, he picked up unclaimed corpses from the morgue (hence the random bodies that occasionally needing disposal… the source of all the rumors). It was a wild movie, but so enjoyably campy.

Below is a pic of the movie house that was showing it: el Pochote.

Ocotlan & San Miguel Tilcajete

WHERE I ATE: in some three-table restaurant at the top of the stairs
NEW SPANISH WORD: baches (potholes)
THING I LEARNED HOW TO DO: make chiles rellenos
OAXACAN CUSTOM I COULD REALLY GET USED TO: the little gifts you get when you buy stuff (see below!)
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Have you ever wished to find a one-stop-shop for any of the following items?

• kitchenware
• fresh produce
• incense for your next religious ceremony
• stupid whistles
• live turkeys
• pots made of gourds?

If so, then you need to go to Ocotlan. Friday being their big market day, we took a day-trip there to check it out, and it was one of the best Mexican markets I’ve been to. It’s a good balance of indoor/outdoor/low-hanging tarp-covered space, and you won’t get bored.

After the market, we stopped in a gorgeous church. It’s a 16th-century church that has been fully restored and is in beautiful condition. To the left and the right of the main altar, they had two chapels: on the right, they had an unusual image of Mary with a knife in her chest at the foot of crucifix, and as if that weren’t enough, there were also angels holding up giant light bulbs  on either side of the Christ.

After the church, we went artesanías shopping. The best part was at each workshop that we went to, we were able to speak directly with the artists who had worked on the pieces we were looking at. I was so impressed with their willingness to share their time and talent with us; with the exception of the untouchable Josefina Aguilar, all the artists we spoke with patiently answered all of our questions and explained to us what sets their artesanías apart from other artists in town.

At one shop, after I had purchased an alebrije from this guy named Francisco, he offered both Jake and I shot of mezcal natural as a little bonus. Apparently, it’s common to throw in little gifts like that when you’re making a purchase, but usually it’s more of the same: for example, if you buy a print from an artist, they might also give a postcard-sized print for free. This is the first time I’ve ever gotten free mezcal natural for buying something. And let me tell you, I don’t know what makes it natural, but it BURNS. I think we were drinking the Oaxacan equivalent of moonshine. (Come to think of it, the bottle didn’t have a label on it…)

Luis el amatero

WHERE I ATE: back to Las Quince Letras
BEST BAR IN OAXACA: el Central
DRINK REQUEST MOST LIKELY TO CONFUSE A OAXAQUEÑO BARTENDER: mezcal with apple juice
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Today our professor Stephanie asked an amatero come and talk to us. Amaderos are artists who make the brightly-colored paintings you see below on amatlpaper (made from ficus bark). Luis, the amatero, was eighteen years old, and helped to both paint and sell his family’s work on the streets of Oaxaca. What interested me the most was when he talked about the economy of art, about what sells and what doesn’t: he’d much prefer to paint landscapes, but those almost never sell, he says. Instead, his family makes pueblo scenes like the one you see above.

But Luis wasn’t the only artist in the room! Our own Pearl Lau and Yasmin Acosta-Myers created their own amatl paintings the day before. Below is Pearl’s painting which uses Mayan-inspired glyphs to tell the story of two teachers (ahem, Brady and Jake) who were late to class one day and missed the bus headed out of town.

Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa

WHERE I ATE TODAY: Las Quince Letras and La Farola
BEST NEOLOGOSIM: oafunka (pronounced wah-funk-ah): when your clothes develop this particular odor, you know it’s time to do laundry (gracias, Emily)
OAXAC-AHA! Don’t walk around this town unless you wanna run into 20 people you know.
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Today we had the opportunity to go to the Burgoa Library at Santo Domingo here in Oaxaca. We got to speak first-hand with a guy who works on restoring original books and codices. Communities can send their codices (often histories of towns and families hand-painted on ficus-bark paper) to the Burgoa to be restored. But one of the most fascinating things was how hard this library has to work to build the trust of the communities around them. In the past, other groups (like INAH, the federal organization in charge of archaeology) have taken codices from communities and locked them in a vault in a basement in Mexico City, never to be seen again. But the Burgoa is trying to regain trust, so they restore the codices and return them to their original town complete with a climatized display case. And the towns don’t have to pay a thing; it’s all subsidized. The only payment the people at the Burgoa ask is for a photo of the codex once it’s on display in the community.