San Pancho Vida

To Weave a Story

Tucked in on a drab side street in Bucerias, just north of Puerto Vallarta, is a shop of colors. It has no obvious name, most of the time. The facade is draped with vibrant wool rugs and shawls on hangers. Inside is a big standing pedal loom where works the shop's owner, Javier Vicente, at his art and craft. I spent some time with Javier the other day and listened to his story.

Now in his thirties, Javier grew up in the town of Teotitlán in the state of Oaxaca, the son and grandson of a family of weavers. In the mid-nineties, when the economic problems and peso devaluation in Mexico caused very hard times all over the country, Javier left home alone and headed to the United States to earn money for his family. He knew no one there. He was fifteen years old.

After making his way to Orange County, California, he found a job washing dishes in a restaurant, living on the bare minimum so he could send money home to Oaxaca every week. He began studying and received his high school diploma. Over time, he learned to cook, and later became a waiter. He worked at that same restaurant for ten years. Ready for a change, he packed up and moved to Oregon, where he lived and worked seven years more.

Then he had an epiphany. He realized that he wanted to do what he'd been trained to do since age five, to go home to his family and become a weaver in the treasured Oaxacan tradition. 

Before long, Javier's original designs, worked in wool with all natural dyes, earned him the designation Master Weaver. Now, he spends six months a year working in Bucerias, and the other six at home in Teotitlán. His shop is called Arte Oaxaca and can be found two and a half blocks north of the main Bucerias Plaza, on Calle Mexico right beside the good Dr. Adrian Malja's dental office.

Do stop and visit Javier when you're in Bucerias. He's a lovely man and speaks perfect English.

To learn more about Teotitlán, natural dyes, and the Oaxacan weaving tradition, visit my post from March, 2010:

A Trip to Teotitlán 

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More Bugs (but this time not for lunch)

Teotitlán, a very old town and center of Zapotec weaving, sits at the foot of the southern Sierra in the state of Oaxaca. It's about a 45 minute bus ride from the city of Oaxaca. We know this because one sunny morning in early September we chose to lurch and rattle to Teotitlán by way of a local bus.

First, though, we had to convince Jaime. Actually, we sort of kidnapped him instead. Jaime is a well-traveled sort, but not so much a second-class bus rider. Even less, third-class. The night before, Travis and I had planned (don't tell Jaime) to lead the way, and so we did, tromping for blocks and blocks through Oaxaca, across a switchbacked pedestrian overpass arching above a rackety multi-laned street, and finally back down again to the unshaded bus stop. Where we waited. 

We weren't exactly sure which bus we should take. Lots of buses went by, all with guys leaning out of doors or windows yelling their destination for any passengers who could not read the signs. After much conversation and speculation, we got on one that said "Mitla" in the window, which is a town past Teotitlán.

Jaime decided to take a nap.

It's a good thing he did, too, because the bus was only the first strange conveyance of the day and he needed his strength. It emptied us out across the highway from the two and a half mile road into Teotitlán. As we stood there wondering what to do next, a nice looking and well-mannered young man offered us a free ride into town. Turns out it was free because he only took us part way, discharging us at his uncle's weaving workshop...

 ...which actually was just fine. The people there were friendly and happy to see us. A lovely young woman treated us to a class in weaving...or rather, a class in how they weave. 

First, she showed us how the wool is cleaned, carded, and spun. Then, in her charming English, she explained that they use all natural dyes to color their wool.

Beautiful, huh? Beside her right hand, you can see the natural wool in white, gray, and black. In the baskets around her knees are plants, tubers, moss and seeds from which the Zapotecs have concocted colors for...hmmm...about 2500 years. Back then, they used cotton and cactus fibers, and backstrap looms, which are small and portable.

Then, in the 1500's, along came the Spaniards who introduced the Zapotecs to wool and the standing pedal loom, which is what they use today. Our guide told us that they are beginning to experiment with silk now, too, as there is a village nearby that has begun to raise silkworms. 

Did you notice all those lovely reds in the photo above? Guess where the red dye comes from?

You're right! Squashed bugs!

The cochineal is a tiny scale insect that feeds on the flat pads of nopal cactus, one of which is leaning there on the right hand side of the photo. The Zapotecs have used them -- farmed them! -- for ever so long. They pick them off and squish 'em. That's what our amiga is doing above.

One of my favorite parts of this whole story is that the Zapotecs learned over the centuries how to create all these luscious colors out of a few dye-producing plants (and the cochineal--who's idea was that?). It's all chemistry--the adding of an acid or alkaline material to change the colors. Imagine the experimentation: add that leaf, that piece of lime, that mineral, that moss, to an existing dye bath--and you've made a new color. Dip that color into a different dye bath--and you have another new color. Use the gray wool or the black instead of the white and--you get the picture. 

The weaving families of Teotitlán guard their recipes and work to develop new ones, even now.

After our lesson, we took a tour of the shop which offers for sale the family's works: rugs, clothing, purses and a wide variety of other items made from their home-dyed wool. We each bought a little something, although this time none of us chose to take home a wool rug.

It was still hot when we said our farewells. We walked to the end of the driveway and eyed the road into town, thinking of food and drink. There was no traffic. We had just decided, grudgingly, to start walking when the oddest conveyance of the day appeared:

For ten pesos (less than a dollar), the young driver took us the rest of the way into town. We had to squeeze in, and the tiny bug taxi couldn't go very fast with such a heavy load, but we got there. Jaime gave the driver a 100% tip. 

For some reason, we all forgot to take any more photos in town, sorry. Except Travis, who took these:

He likes hand-painted signs.

Anyway, we had a nice lunch. The road into town and the quiet little town itself are lined with more weavers and shops, mostly modest, many that are family cooperatives, all intriguing. We might have stopped at a few more if it hadn't started to rain a bit during lunch. We were not dressed for rain.

We found a taxi driver parked a few blocks away who agreed to drive us all the way back to the city. During the drive, the skies cracked open and it began to pour. As we entered the center of town, still ten blocks or more from our hotel, our driver told us that he could go no further. Some kind of taxi rule? Maybe, we weren't sure. We wrapped ourselves in what few clothes we had with us and prepared to disembark and get really wet. The driver pulled over in a puddle. We paid and threw open the taxi doors.

And it stopped raining.

(Since I just love happy endings, I'm going to stop, too. We'll go to Monte Alban next week.)

➬Thanks again to Ashby and Pool for sharing photos!