Point South Mexico - Real Estate and Lifestyle Magazine

We stood alone on the cement terrace, watching the tourists, who tried but failed to dodge the sheets of rain, flee down the hill toward the bus. The color from Angelica's face drained along with any prospects of a sale, as dashed hopes joined the racing water that now carved deep ruts into the muddy roadway. The five other co-operativa vendors displaying and selling their families´ wooden carvings here looked on with vacant stares, wondering if the rain gods would be gentler to them when the next tourist bus comes through San Antonio Arrazola. I returned to the empty shop with Angelica Jimenez to purchase the crude, misshapen pink-dotted turkey which intrigued me. She tore a ragged piece of rough wrapping paper, and printed her and her husband, Fernando Espinal, names and address on it. Her first business card, I thought. I assembled the vendors for a picture, promising each that I would encourage my North American friends to visit Arrazola.

Carlos Terres, (Jose Carlos Hernandez Martin del Campo) was born and bred in Lagos de Moreno, an agricultural town, in the high mountains of eastern Jalisco, in 1950, during the governorship of Agustin Yanez, the year that the refurbishment of the downtown buildings of Guadalajara commenced. His father was Alfredo Hernandez Terres, an editor and journalist, and the founder of "La Provincia" newspaper. His mother was Maria Magdalena Martin del Campo, a self-taught painter and Carlos' first drawing teacher. His maternal grandmother was a painter of religious murals, in Mexico City.

The nimble fingers of Ernesto Vasquez G. worked with precision as he shuttled the woolen wrapped cock between the loomed threads. His wife, Hermanita, drew raw wool shreds between two coarse, short-wired boards, in a process called carding, removing natural impurities to prepare the wool for spinning. Their four year old daughter looked on, as her wide, black eyes absorbed the task that will pass to her hands in a few years. Like generations before her, the art of weaving rugs in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico involves every Zapotec family in the barrio and every family member, without exception, plays a role in the process.

A tousle-haired teenager with mischief in her sparkling eyes bragged to her schoolmates at the Art Academy of Mexico City, "My ambition is to have a child by Diego Rivera."

Diego Rivera paid little attention to this little nuisance until one day, when they both were in Mexico City; she cornered him on the staircase of the National Palace where he was commissioned to paint murals. She thrust a canvas, one of her first paintings, in front of him. He saw a spark of genius there, and encouraged her. A friendship between Frida Kahlo and Diego slowly developed.