Dyeing...and weaving...Life

 

 

 

 

Array of yarns the Juan Gonzalez family has dyed using a variety of natural substances-- mostly plant-based but also insects (cochineal). The colors are astounding in their beauty all on their own, even without the knowledge that they are entirely natural, and that many are things grown, harvested, or found locally.

My (Daniela) mother's visit seemed like an excellent time to visit an artisan workshop and an archeological site. She had decided she wanted to visit the site of Mitla/Lyobaa-- it is smaller and more manageable than Monte Alban. As it works out, on the way to Mitla/Lyobaa is any number of pueblos which each have their own tradition of artisan/art work....how to choose one?!

It turns out that my mother had been reading recently about wool rugs made by Zapotec artisans...and of course, they are from Oaxaca! In fact, in one specific community: Teotitlan del Valle. In this pueblo, there are approximately 7000 people, 6000 of whom are weavers. Most of these are arranged in family-based cooperatives. Weaving has been happening here since long before the Spanish came, back then it was with fibers that were locally available (e.g., from pochote tree and agave fibers and cotton) and using backstrap looms. The Zapotec people of Teotitlan paid homage to the Azteca Empire with woven goods. With the Spanish came borrego (sheep), spinning wheels, and treadle looms. And from there, we arrive to the present day where the Zapotec cultural and historical designs and historically used dyes (e.g., cochineal, zapote fruits & leaves, cempasuchil flowers) mix with the European tools as well as dyes that originated elsewhere and are now grown/cultivated in Mexico (e.g., tumeric). What an amazing story of antiquity, tradition, transformation, rebirth, history, culture...

 The workshop we visited-- of Don Juan/The Magic of the Zapotec Hand-- is a family who has been weaving for five generations and they only use natural dyes. They did an amazing job of teaching us about the whole process-- from the wool, through cleaning, combing, spinning, dyeing, designing, and finally weaving the rugs. It was a phenomenal experience and a great pleasure and privilege to witness this.

Thalia tries her hand at combing the wool

All the wool is spun by hand, with their spinning wheel. The abuelita of the familia is the acknowledge master at spinning. I think it takes that long to get good at it (it was fairly impossible for me to get any more than a few millimeters of yarn when I tried to spin it)

Many of the dye ingredients need to be ground- which is - claro!- done by hand, using a stone metate. Here, cochineal after drying, etc) are ground to produce this amazing deep red.

The deep red/purple of the cochineal is then altered using various acids or bases (lime juice or cal, for example) to create even more colors-- oranges, pinkish reds, lilac, lavender... it's awesome. They recreate this process on your hand- it is super fun! This is Thalia's palm.

Don Juan (the patriarch of the familia) is weaving in this foto. A rug with geometric patterns (all of which have meanings), using wool dyed with indigo, to various colors.

 Through the presentation and learning about the symbology of the designs and seeing the family members interact, I learned quite a bit about the culture of the Zapotec of Teotitlan: that they value their lengua materna (they *always* spoke to each other in Zapotec, always, even while speaking to us in English and Spanish), they value family, and extended family, at that. Clouds are ever-present and ever-important (they are Ben 'Zaa - the Cloud People- after all), as are water, the mountains, and maize. The spirit and the body are intertwined during life, but the soul flies free after death, as the butterfly flies, with great happiness. Life can be understood by close observation of the natural world.

All the designs have traditional Zapotec meanings, they told us about many but I could only remember so many of them!!! Here are turtles, which are long life and patience!

From bottom to top: clouds, water, mountain, and maize (the short horizontal lines in the mountains are the maize)

The Zapotec Jaguar: Power.

This rug has several symblos: the caracola (snail) which indicates the cycle of life - they are always in pairs. The one on the left is the cycle of the body's life and the one on the right is the cycle of the spirit's life. And they are connected. Then there are the stars or energies around the caracolas and the spirit in the middle of the star energy.

Zapotec stars with a butterfly (happiness and the soul) in the middle

 It was a rainy day and the warmth of the cafe they served us, of the colors from the natural dyes they showed us, and of the family themselves, kept our minds, bodies, and spirits warm and nurtured. Our very great and heartfelt thanks, Xtiuzu'u, to this familia for sharing themselves with us and the world.

Here we are with some of the rugs we bought and some of the weavers (Juan Carlos and Alejandro are holding rugs they designed and wove)

Talavera tiles

Ever since I lived & worked in Portugal for two unforgettable summers, I've been an ardent fan of the tiled façades of buildings. I never thought I would see azulejos as wonderful as those of Lisboa or Porto. But Puebla's historic centro has many buildings covered in the region's Talavera tiles. The approach and designs are slightly different but no less effective and affecting. I loved all of them! The other members of the family pretty much just rolled their eyes because I just had to stop and take fotos right in the middle of the sidewalk. Here's a bunch of those fotos- without further ado!

 

Going back in time...and then further back...PUEBLA

We went to Puebla (formally knowns as Heroica Puebla de Zaragoza but also known as Puebla de los Ángeles) for a long weekend. Thalia gets a three day weekend at the end of most months (thank you, private school?) so we decided we need to take advantage and go somewhere we'd never been. Puebla is a much talked about city in Mexico (and had actually been on our list of cities to check out to live in but didn't make the short list for entirely arbitrary reasons) and is a relatively short 5 hour bus ride away. So off we went to make the most of a short stay in quite an amazing city.

Everyone in the family agreed that the two absolute favorite things we did were visit the Biblioteca Palafoxiana (read more in English here) and the tunnels at the piramide in Cholula, read about the pyramid here (Cholula is actually a different town & dates from c. 500BCE but whatevs and further actually there are *two* Cholulas! right next to each other San Andres Cholula and San Pedro Cholula! because history).

First, fotos from the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, perhaps the oldest public library in the Americas. Whether or not it qualifies for that oldest title, it is a stunner. A single, long room with soaring white ceiling and wood carved three stories of bookcases and talavera tile floors, it pretty much takes your breath away with both the light and weight of history. Founded in 1646 when the Bishop Palafox y Mendoza donated his books with the understanding that the books be in a specifically public library, the actual structure was not completed until over a century later in 1773.

From Palafox's words regarding books and a library, rendered in, what else? this IS Puebla, afterall!, azulejos (tiles).

I can't really stress enough how light-filled the library is. In fact, this made it simulatenously easier to photograph (no need for a tripod which I don't have with me and isn't allowed anyway) and difficult (too much light is its own challenge! Shadows! Glare! Flare!) The light comes both from breaks in the bookcases along one wall as well as windows high above the three levels of bookcases.

 

As implied, the other long wall of the library is a more or less unbroken wall of books and bookshelves-- gorgeous!!!

 

Not to be left behind, the floor is a beautiful - if hard! good thing you sit to read books! - combination of red clay tiles and talavera tiles, most often in blue and white but every once in awhile a tile with more colors shows up,

 

Mostly I'm including the below foto because it reminds me of Fatima and I miss her! The tables in the middle of the library have on them various period pieces, like globes and other whatnot thingys. Technical term.

 

A couple of fotos of perhaps my most favorite part of the library- the corners and edges where the wooden bookcases and railings and banisters curve around. Be still mi corazon!

In the 2nd foto you can also see the stairs to the third level of books. It was unclear to us how you go from first level to the second as there were no visible stairs- we speculated that there may be stairs behind a couple of closed doors.

Did you know there is a pyramid in Cholula?! And that moreover it is considered to be the *largest* pyramid in the world?! Click here to see a cool graphic on the relative sizes of the Great Pyramid of Cholula (Gran Píramide de Cholula) and other pyramids and pyramid-like buildings. We certainly did not know (okay, honestly all we knew about Cholula is that there is a hot sauce that we really like- it's Daniela's favorite of the commercially available hot sauces). Not that many people know about this pyramid because it is covered- basically you can see very little of the actual pyramid itself so it isn't obviously a pyramid. In fact, when the Spaniards came and conquered, they thought it was just a hill and they stuck a church on top and built part of the camino real through one side of it. Ahhhh, colonization...  There is quite a lot that is not known about the pirámide, known as Tlachihualtepetl in Nahuatl-- exactly when it was built as a temple, for example, or why it was covered over (intentional? neglect as traditions changed?) but by tradition is thought to have been dedicated to Quetzalcoatl. In the 1930s archeologists started to excavate and over time they built 8km of tunnels through the tunnels. Despite work in the 1930s and 1950s, this is a relatively unstudied archeological site.

We knew there were tunnels and that you can go in them, but we had no idea what it was going to be like. It was amazing! And a little terrifying! My fotos aren't great- you can see better ones and read about the tunnels more at this article.

Here's Thalia heading in, at this point we had no idea what this was gonna be like or how long it was gonna be. Otherwise, one of us would never have done it! Thalia was utterly entranced though which helped and I had to force myself not to think about how much pyramid and earth and church was above and all around us and let wonder take over.

Tunnels like this went on and on and on! There are many side-branches that are closed off as well.

 

Sometimes there are side-branches that you can briefly climb and sometimes you can see parts of the actual pirámide building materials and structure.

 An example of a side branch tunnel that goes up and up and up. There were also side branch tunnels that went down and down and down but I didn't manage to get a good foto of them partly because it's a little frightening to look that far *down*

Overall, this was quite an experience! I've been down into various tombs but never inside a pyramid; I'm not sure that one can even do this anywhere else these days? 

It's not all that easy to take a foto of what the pirámide looks like from the outside, but here are a couple of attempts---

Here you can see the top parts of the pirámide, with the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios on top (she has the the saint's day that just! happen!s to be the same day as the festival of Chiconauhquiauhit, the goddess sacred to the pirámide when the Spanish conquered the area, today the church is a site of Catholic pilgrimage but the pirámide is now also the site of a Quetzalcoatl-based ritual & celebration, held on the spring equinox,

A foto of me and Thalia, pausing on our way up to the top of the pirámide, wearing our coordinating Nahua-artisan-woven huipil quexquemetl from Hueyapan in the Sierra Norte of Puebla,

Thalia posing with the view from an overlook on the top of the pirámide, gives you a sense of how high one is, and how far one can see,

Q and A with Thalía

Hi everybody! Today will be a Q and A! (question and answer)

Thank you so much for reading all my posts and for commenting and leaving questions! My mom says that without a doubt I am getting more comments than she does!

Ok so the first question is from my Omi aka Abuelita. And she asked 3 questions; the first one is
Do I go to bed earlier since I get up so early?
Yes I do go to bed a little bit earlier but it is not like a major difference.
Question number 2 is
Do we have to  write in cursive? 
No we don't. We can pretty much write in whatever style we want, and I don't think many of my classmates write in cursive.
Question number 3 is
Do we have recess?
Yes we do but for example at my old school you all had to go outside to recess at the same time, because if people were left who knows what kind of trouble they would get into. But here we don't have a lunchroom. We all go outside to the courtyard and eat with your group of friends and then you go play.
The next question is from Catalina, my mexican folk dance teacher's daughter. She asked
If I have english class?
Yes, we do have English class in my school, where if you think back ALL the way back to preschool, do you remember learning how to pronounce words and past tense and stuff like that? That's what we  are learning right now. Hey, if this is what we're learning in fourth grade, what are the kids in first grade learning in English class?
Ok. The next question is from an unknown person that I would like to know who that persona is. But they ask
What I bring for lunch to school? 
I am a pretty picky eater, so it doesn't differ very much. But you can buy fresh popcorn or a candy bar from the schools café, which I might try to do that someday.

Thank you soooooooo much to everyone that commented and even to those that just read. Today was pretty short so tell me whether you like short or long blog posts.

glossary:
abuela; grandmother
persona; person

Life and Death in Zaachila, Zapotec capital

The town of Zaachila is renowned as the last capital of the ancient Zapotec people, after they left Monte Alban (in Zapotec: Dani Beedxe or Dani Baán) and the Mixtecos took it over. Zaachila is the namesake of Zaachila Yoo, a Zapotec ruler in the late 14th century. It is also the birthplace and hometown of Donaji, known as the "last Zapotec princess" and who is the subject of a star-crossed lovers legend between the Zapotec & the Mixtec peoples. Zaachila, as the capital of the Zapotec people, was also the home of Cosijoeza, Coquitao ("King" in Zapotec) and his son Cosijopii of the Zaachila empire. Cosijoeza fought the Mexica (aka Azteca) when they came to conquer and through an alliance with the Mixtec king Dzahuindand succeeded in expelling the Mexica, at least for a time, until a treaty was proposed by the Mexica and accepted. Both Cosijoeza and Cosijopii were alive when the Spaniards arrived in the valles centrales of what would someday be Oaxaca.

Today, Zaachila is still a cultural capital, if not an imperial one (although it does have two municipal governments, neither recognizes the validity of the other one)- with a wealth of dance, music, gastronomy with traditions that go back generation upon generation and Zaachila Zapotec is still spoken. Market day- Thursday- is one of these traditions and the reason we went to visit. This market is composed of the open air stalls known as tianguis. Not quite as large as Tlacolula but still plenty large!!! We tried a prehispanic maize-based food that we'd never even heard of -- called "nicuatole"

Eric with a hunk of nicualote at the Zaachila mercado

Nicuatole is a sweet gelatina made with maize (corn), sugar, and canela (cinnamon). There were two colors available-- the vendor shared a little piece of the "blanco" with us so we could taste it. Then we bought an "amarillo" one-- it comes in a plastic bowl that she upends, cuts into pieces, and puts into a plastic bag for us. I'm not sure that the red topping has any real flavor. Turns out that the "amarillo" has a very distinct smokey flavor, like the nieve leche quemada! Who knew? We just thought it was made with yellow maize as opposed to white!

Some views of the mercado/tianguis of Zaachila:

I'm always so obsessed with the way that the tarps that almost every vendor hangs over their stall is anchored...everyone has got their own color rope and they intertwine like the strands of a spiderweb. There are so many over-lapping tarps that it is like you are under a roof while strolling along the mercado. A couple of vendors were still putting up their tarps in this foto

lots of moles for sale as well

 We then walked over to the Zona Arqueologica which is in the middle of town, behind the small church (sacred ground, anyone? yes) on a hill called "el cerrito." It's a small site, with several un-excavated mounds but there are two tombs one can visit (two other tombs have apparentily also been excavated but are not open to the public, nor can you tell where they are, even). These are Zapotec tombs but also show some influence of Mixtec customs. The artefacts found in the tombs have been removed to Mexico City (speaking of cultural imperialism...) but the tombs themselves are cool to visit. Tomba #1 has some beautiful carvings/paintings on the wall of the tomb. The tomb belonged to Lord 9 Flowers, but 5 Flowers is also depicted as well as Coqui Bezelao, the Zapotec god of death.

Tomb #2 - here you can see the archeologist-reconstructed relief work (that's the bit with little rocks in the mortar) above the lintel leading into the tomb

And then there is some relief work that is original- really cool!

Eric down in the entrance to Tomb #1, that of Lord 9 Flowers. Here you can see that the lintel still retains the red used to paint it as does the background of the bas-relief above it- Very cool!

Two owls - creatures of night/death are on the interior of the tomb

This figure-- at the back of the tomb seems to be flying through the space, has a turtle shell on his back as well as representation of talking

the head of the god- notice still has traces of paint. Gorgeous! Just beautiful!!

The head and hand (which is holding copal incense) of Lord Nine Flowers. He was hard to get a foto of, given that he's at the back of a side wall. But I loved his face- so dignified and serious

A mound of earth over unexcavated tombs on site.

View of the church from the top of the mound in previous pic

view of the excavated tombs from the mound

From the entrance to the archeological site, Zaachila

After the archeological site, we headed back into present day via the church:

 

A reminder that Nov 1, 2 (Dia de Muertos) is coming...

And on that theme... We walked along the street that goes between the church and the panteon (cemetery) so naturally all the houses & businesses on this street have amazing muertos murals and street art! Here's a few, see fb album for more! 

quite a lot of demo/contstruction going on inside this wall

despite the fact that the mural is in decay (jaja), I loved the esqueleto opening the "shutters" of the "window"

skulls...or electrical meters?! SO.FREAKIN.AWESOME

this mural of muertitos baking pizzas in a wood fire oven blends into the cochera of a Neapolitan pizza place, see next foto.

Because life and death are inextricable in Mexico (well, they are everywhere, it's just that Mexican culture is very upfront about that!)