Oaxaca Mexico 1970-1979

OAXACA ! MEXICO ! 1970-1979 Photographs & Text by Clare Brett Smith

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: ISBN_978-1-4507-3327-490000_PC.eps Copyright © 2010 by Clare Brett Smith All rights reserved

Many of these photographs have previously been shown in exhibitions at the National Arts Club, New York City; the Silo Gallery, New Milford, Connecticut; The World Craft Council Conference in Kyoto, Japan and at the Pablo Picasso municipal library in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, México

Clare Brett Smith 80 Mountain Spring Road, Farmington, Connecticut, 06032 United States of America

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Ir y Vuelta ! Round Trips I’ve been in Mexico often, though never long enough to feel completely at home there. My first visit was in 1943, as a fifteen-year old student in Morelia on The Experiment in International Living. Many years later, beginning in the 1970s, my husband and I traveled throughout Mexico looking for authentic and utilitarian crafts for our folk art import business. Oaxaca was a rich and fascinating source. Each small town in the wide fertile valleys of Oaxaca had its own market day and Mexico, unlike most other Latin American countries, had preserved, and still used, an incredibly wide range of traditional crafts. Oaxaca is also a beautiful place, often described as a land of eternal springtime, and you sense a freshness in the air when you get off the plane.

Traditional baskets, pottery, serapes and rugs were still prevalent then in the markets of Oaxaca along with less commercial but amazing objects, like huge wooden ox yokes and handmade saddles. Shipping to the U.S. was usually practical and affordable - but not always. Mexican railways run on a different gauge, and the smaller Mexican freight cars cannot be uncoupled at the border and hitched directly to U.S. engines. Instead, our three hundred pottery ollas, each in its own basket, had to be transferred by hand, one at a time, into U.S. freight cars in Laredo. We bought directly from artisans but they, often Zapotec-speaking, not Spanish-speaking, were not capable of export and we relied on professional exporters for packing and documentation.

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As "middlemen" ourselves, we realized their importance (as our customers did not) and buying in the villages was our direct link with the artisans, their families, their lives and their land. It was certainly not an efficient way to buy, but it was pleasant, friendly and respectful. I doubt we would have been as welcome had we been simply curious tourists poking around, and I’m certain I could not have taken photographs so freely without this connection. Most of the photographs in this portfolio were taken over a ten-year period in and around Oaxaca, in the pottery villages of Atzompa and San Bartolo Coyotepec and in the rug-weaving community of Teotitlån del Valle.

On later trips, through the 80s and 90s, I began to take along an extra Nikon loaded with kodachrome film. It seemed crazy not to record Mexico's brilliant and inventive color combinations, but I noticed that color masked the strong shapes and curves that I liked so much, the hills, the kilns, the pots and the women wrapped in their rebozos. Color emphasized itself and it seemed to flatten out the forms. Color shrank the strikingly wide range between the black velvet shadows and the blazingly white ground beneath my feet. The special rigor of black and white film was a kind of discipline that deepened my understanding and sharpened and delighted, my eye.

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San Antonino del Obispo, 1979

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Oaxaca Cathedral, 1979

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Ruins of a 16th century Dominican monastery, near Oaxaca, 1979

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Atzompa, 1978

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San Bartolo Coyotepec, 1977

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Details, Teodora Blanco's flower pots, 1978

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Atzompa, 1978

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Galvรกn sisters, San Bartolo Coyotepec, 1977

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Market, Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1978

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Church Domes, San Antonino del Obispo, 1979

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Churchyard, San Antonino, 1979

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Maguey Cactus, 1979

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Near Mitla, 1978

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Santa Ana del Valle, 1979

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Santa MarĂ­a Coyotepec, 1977

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Rolling out tortillas, 1979

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Isaac Vasquez, Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1978

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Teototlรกn del Valle, 1977

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Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1977

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Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1978

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Santa Ana del Valle, 1978

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Santa Ana del Valle, 1978

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Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1978

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Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1978

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Z贸calo, Oaxaca, 1979

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Oaxaca, 1979

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Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1978

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Oaxaca, 1978

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Oaxaca, 1978

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Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1978

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Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1978

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Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1978

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Teotitlรกn del Valle, 1978

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Oaxaca Central Market, 1973

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Oaxaca, 1979

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Atzompa, 1979

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Notes about the Photographs

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Page 17, Teodora Blanco, 1978 A celebrated folk artist out in the world, at home in Atzompa she was considered a master too, but also mischievous, almost a witch. As we watched, she delighted in adding an iguana’s head to her muñeca, her classic doll-like flower pot. Animal and bird spirits inhabit all her figures. Teodora Blanco died in 1980, but her daughters and her son, Luis, carry on her style of pottery. It is nearly impossible to equal her quirky transformations.

Cover & Page 21, Galván Sisters, 1977 I haven't found any mention of the sisters in current accounts of the black pottery of San Bartolo, but in the 70s they were quite productive, I used their picture (the one with the turkey) as publicity in our import business and it was also in a series of postcards published in Mexico city by Turok. We took a batch of the postcards back to San Bartolo and gave them to the sisters. They were pleased and surprised at multiple copies. I'm conferring with them in the photo at right.

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Page 25, Domes, 1979 From the bell tower in SanAntinino del Obispo you could climb out onto the church roof and up the steps between the vaulted domes.

It's not exactly handicap accessible, but it made a fine lookout over the town. The photographs on pages 7 and 27 were taken from there.

Page 29, Maguey Cactus, 1976 An iconic image of Mexico, a giant maguey's heart is a source of pulque, mescal and tequila. Of the genus Agave and sometimes called Century Plant, its leaves yield a strong fiber used in hammocks, bath scrubbers, doormats, rope, feed bags. The Maguey is sterile and must to be fertilized by hand.

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Page 35, Santa María Coyotepec, 1977 This image has a contradictory message: the goats represent an environmental hazard as they’ll eat anything and everything that grows, but the conservation message painted on the wall reminds us that we, all of us, depend on the earth for sustenance.

Pages 39 through 45, Teotitlán, 1978 The weavers of Teotilán del Valle specialize in tapetes, small rugs woven in family workshops from local wool, natural dyes and ancient designs, some of them remembered and some from museum collections. Isaac Vasquez (page 39) is probably the most famous weaver, and his wife (page 41) manages the dyes. Soledad Vasquez and her family's work are on pages 43 & 45.

Right,Enrique Ruiz from another family.

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Pages 47 & 49, Saint's Day, 1977 Every year the currently wealthiest man in Santa Ana del Valle is elected mayor and he is expected to pay for the drinks, the music and the festival, a very effective system of wealth distribution.

Pages 69 & 71, Teotitlรกn, 1978 There is not much work available in small rural Mexican villages and many young people, often family men unemployed and desperate for work, leave for the cities or make the dangerous journey across Mexico to the border, and north into the United States.

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