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.
Such is the plight of the alebrije wood carvers from the villages in the Oaxaca Central Valley, 20 kilometers outside of Oaxaca City, Mexico. The area's many craft artisans continue to suffer the devastating effects of reduced tourism, slashed by traveler concerns and advisories resulting from political unrest there since May, 2006.
Alebrijes , translated fantastic, confused images, describes these hand-carved, vibrant colored, animal or people figures, whittled with local Sierra Madre Mountain copal wood and from the imagination and superstition of subsistence farmers turned folk artists.
Mexican indigenous groups carved timber for centuries, but the practice increased with Catholicism's demand for wooden religious icons and church altars. The art of carving masks for church observances, pagan festivals and Day of the Dead celebrations, which gained notoriety in the 1930´s, rekindled this skill. The birth of the alebrije , as the craft world knows it today, occurred in 1957 by Manuel Jimenez. He worked on a huge sugar plantation, in operation for a century, which encompassed the entire land mass of current San Antonio Arrazola. To escape boredom, he whittled toys for workers children and discovered that copal wood lended itself magically for carving. An American, Arthur Tran, fascinated by Señor Jimenez's work, took examples back to the US. The international market for this folk art exploded. By 1980, entire families in Arrazola and near-by San Martin Telcajete turned to carving alebrijes, whose sales surpassed income from subsistence farming. With the devaluation of the Mexican peso in the 80's, North American folk art enthusiasts amassed huge collections at incredible bargains. I, too, joined the "wood carving rush," making a trip to Oaxaca to select my own pieces of wooden wizardry. I returned with iridescent gargoyles, wildly contorted dragons with detachable wings, tails and ears and various insects with removable appendages.
In July, 2007, I returned to Oaxaca to attend the annual folkloric extravaganza, the Guelaguetza . Pockets of political unrest and protests, spurred by the festival, flared up around the city, crushing the craft artists' prayers for resurgence of tourists. Eager to add to my alebrije collection and undeterred by the media reports, I revisited the wood carving villages after fifteen years. Over this time span, carvers refined the process and improved mastery of the art form. Early on both male and female copal trees abounded in the high sierra surrounding the villages. The females, of course, devoid of knots, a smell of citrus and supple pulp proved the ideal wood for carving. Fathers and sons whittle the pieces from emotional imagery, children and grandparents sand the figures and mothers and daughters finish the product with layers of pulsating, colored, acrylic painted dots and lines. The powder-post beetle lurks as the gravest challenge to any wood carver. Eggs remain dormant in the wood, for years, but once hatched, can turn a magnificent piece into sawdust in days. According to sources, Nelson Rockefeller's entire collection of Manuel Jimenez alebrijes disappeared into a pile of dust. Now, carvers soak every piece in gasoline for 12-24 hours, after sanding to kill the voracious insects. Freezing the wood is the only guaranteed way, however, to rid the buggers completely, but few Mexican kitchens contain this appliance. To prevent pricey carvings from blowing away in the wind, give every alebrije purchase the required two day cold shoulder treatment in your freezer.
The artists´ economic situation suffered an additional blow with the total depletion of copal trees from Arrazola hillsides. Angelica reported that they must buy wood from vendors higher in the Sierras. Across the dirt road from the co-op, a more established business, Eco Alebrijes/Familia Aragon Santiago , holds promise for the future of all artists here. Fidencio Aragon and wife, Mary Sol Santiago have organized the townspeople to reforest the land with copal seedlings to restore the ecological balance and to reduce the dependence on outside wood sources. They show a vision needed for this art form to survive.
Moving up the carving chain, we later visited Florencio Fuentes Melchor and Paula Sanchez Gomez of Taller de Artesanias in San Martin Telcajete. Florencio presented a professionally printed business card, with email and website, indicating his grasp of the need for present day technology to grow his business. "The artisans of Oaxaca depend entirely on tourism," he commented, "and we have scared off the tourists with our political problems. Oaxaca has everything to offer the tourist-archaeological sites, museums, diverse arts and great food- everything except tranquility." He believes with governmental efforts to support the artists, Oaxaca will rebound with improved security and visitors will return to the beautiful Oaxaca valley.
I marveled at the differences in level of artistry, imagination and craftsmanship of the three alebrije s I added to my collection on this trip. I left Oaxaca with more than tangible pieces of wood. I left with an appreciation of the problems these artists face every day and the hope that tranquility will return to the area so this magical folk art continues to thrive.
