Zapotec Weavers Come to Market
By Don Adams © Don Adams 2003

Often, as we walk the streets of our individual villages and towns or drive along the roads we see the many people of the area without actually taking note of who they really are. On the corner of Calle Revolución and the Carretera in Ajijic, where the weekly tianguis begins , nearly every day you'll find a young artisan offering some of the most intricately crafted and beautiful goods available anywhere in Mexico. And those who take the time will also uncover a fascinating bit of history; both of his country and his people, and of the craft he embraces as a way of life. This is a young man worthy of note.

I'm speaking of Francisco, the rug weaver. Many people stop each day to admire his work. The colors are alive and vibrant, the designs both traditional and modern. If you wish, and are patient enough (as I was) to wait a few weeks Francisco can even take your personal design or idea and reproduce it as a one-of-a-kind rug or wall hanging. But it's the newly discovered story behind what you see that many find most interesting. It's my privilege to help Francisco tell you of part of his life and of his heritage. This is his story, modified by my interpretation.

"I am Francisco Ruiz Ruiz of the village of Teotitlan del Valle in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. I am of the Zapotecs, an ancient people of Oaxaca. My wife Maria Luisa Ruiz Contreras and I have been bringing the weavings created by my family to the Ajijic area for over three years."

The Zapotecs of Mexico are an ancient tribe. Descended from earlier hunter-gatherers, they eventually developed pottery and farming techniques and began to settle in small communities in the Oaxaca valley. These began to grow and around 500 BC many of the settlements merged to form the mountaintop city of Monte Alban. By 450 AD the city had grown to a population of around 25,000 and was the center of a massive Zapotec empire which covered much of modern day Mexico. By 900 AD the Zapotecs had been defeated and subjugated by the Mixtecs, who were in turn defeated several hundred years later by the Aztecs.

Today the Zapotec number about 500,000, making them one of the country's largest indigenous groups. Like the more well known Huichol, they maintain their traditional culture, beliefs, and language, although there are many dialects, which often causes difficulty in communicating even with those of nearby villages. This problem is usually solved by the use of Spanish as a common language, both in social interactions and business transactions. Especially the business of weaving.

The verifiable history of weaving in Oaxaca reaches back at least as far as the Classic period, about A.D. 200 to 800 and has continued in an unbroken line up to the present day. This is the longest unbroken line of the practice of this craft that can be proven.

Archaeologists led by Dr. Gary Feinman of The Field Museum in Chicago are in the Oaxaca Valley at present to continue research begun years ago by other Field scientists to learn more about the ancient Zapotecs. Of their more recent discoveries, the most important may be the many uses to which the "old ones" put the plant maguey. You may know it as agave, or as the century plant. These discoveries, only now being fully examined and interpreted shed new light on the question of how the early Zapotecs survived in such an ecologically hostile part of Mexico.

Maguey was essential to the survival of the ancients, being used as food; to make the drinks aguamiel or honeywater, mescal, and pulque; to produce vinegar and a type of honey; as a privacy fence for homes; as a fence for fields and pastures; as fuel for the fires; as plates and platters; as a building material; even as shoes; and, most importantly to Francisco and his family, as thread to be woven into cloth or twisted and braided into rope and string which were used as trade goods to obtain things that could not be purchased or grown in the semi-arid landscape of the eastern Oaxaca Valley. Researchers have identified at least eight varieties of the maguey plant in the area, leading to speculation that each variety may have been used for specific purposes.

Prior to the arrival of the Europeans the weavers of the Oaxaca Valley used large stone scrapers called raspadors to extract the fibers of the maguey in order to manufacture thread for many purposes. One of the most important was to make textiles for trade or for their own use. Depending upon where they lived, either low in the valley where coarser cloth was produced, or high on the hillsides where finer, lighter cloth was produced, the ancients developed a good quality trade cloth for many uses, including paying tribute to the rulers of the area.

In addition to the maguey fibers, cotton from the trees in adjoining areas was also used by the old ones to weave an even finer cloth which was highly prized by the ruling class, and often restricted to their personal use. Today many of these trees still grow and produce small crops in parts of Oaxaca, Michoacan, Nayarit, Jalisco and Colima states, as well as many others. Some scientists have found evidence supporting the use of cotton cloth in Mexico dating back 7,000 years. Around 3,000 to 3,500 years seems to be the most widely accepted time frame, although authorities also claim that there is evidence that the Egyptians were using cotton as far back as 12,000 BC. Regardless of which date you choose, you can see that cotton has been a valuable and useful commodity in Mexico, as well as the rest of the world, for an extremely long time.

As for the quality of early native cottons you need only read the words of the Greek historian Herodotus who in 500 BC wrote of Indian cotton: "There are trees which grow wild there, the fruit of which is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep. The Indians make their clothing of this tree wool." And the same could have been written of Mexican cotton trees.

Many years after the first use of cotton in Mexico; after the last native rulers, the Aztecs, surrendered to the Spanish invader Hernan Cortes and his conquistadores and their Tlaxcala allies in 1521, new elements were integrated into the lives of the weavers of Teotitlan and other parts of the new empire. The Spanish priests introduced the fixed-frame pedal loom to replace the simpler backstrap loom, the telar de cintura which you see used by many of the Indian weavers down by the Traditional Posada in Ajijic, the malecon in Chapala, and many other places. The Spaniards also imported the churro sheep which produce the thick wool that is still used. The newest rulers then began exacting their tribute in the form of wool blankets and serapes. The use of native weavings as rugs did not become popular or widespread until nearly 400 years later.

"My family has been weaving for five generations and today three generations are still active in our home workshop in Teotitlan. My mother, Ofelia Ruiz de Ruiz and my father, Manuel Ruiz Martinez carry on the skills and techniques taught them by my grandmother Maria Ruiz Ruiz, and which they are passing on to my generation."

Francisco learned his trade through the lessons taught by his elders. This craft, as is the case with many others, is passed from generation to generation as an "on the job" training program. The children begin learning the lessons from an early age, helping with those chores which they can perform, and always watching and absorbing the information needed to become adept at the family business. This is an oral tradition with no books, trade schools, or outside instruction. Here are some of the skills taught and learned.

"Each year my family buys one ton of wool from local ranchers and we process it ourselves. We wash the wool, card it by hand, spin the wool into yarn, dye it with natural dyes, and weave the colorful rugs and other items you see on display. Many people wonder about how the colors are produced. We use many substances to make our dyes. Not all weavers in Teotitlan use the same materials to make their dyes. Each family has ways of making and mixing colors for their own use."

"Por ejemplo, some use alfalfa leaves for green, but some use copper. Rock moss or dried pomegranate skins make yellow; acacia pods and sea snails are used for black; bougainvillea blossoms, sea snails, and the dried and crushed larvae of the Nopal parasite, tiny Cochineal beetles are for pink, some shades of red, purple, and burgundy. Pecan shells make tan, indigo leaves are blue, and the bark of the oak tree or sometimes the skin of the pomegranate mixed with fresh pecan husks are used for brown. The pecan husks can also be used to make a light green dye. Certain types of moss are also used to create yellow and beige colors. We also use a tree bark to blend our grays, although much of the wool we purchase is naturally a very pleasing gray. Substances are carefully blended to increase the colors of our palettes. In addition, because of the natural differences in the coloring of the individual sheep we often use undyed wool of many shades and colors."

As Francisco says, many of the weavers of Teotitlan del Valle practice a craft that has been handed down from generation to generation. Artelar, the "art of the loom" has a long history in this area. Teotitlan oral tradition says that it was the first Zapotec pueblo in the valley, setting the early stages of development somewhere around the time of Jesus. These Indians are one of the few remaining cultures in the world to complete the total weaving process using ancient and traditional methods and techniques without the utilization of modern synthetics or machinery.

Unlike the short explanation offered by Francisco, the actual process, from start to finish is not only very labor intensive, but also requires a specific division of chores, a lot of time, and finely tuned teamwork.

The first step of course, is to procure the wool. Some, like the Ruiz family, purchase the raw product from area ranchers. Others raise their own sheep as part of an overall subsistence lifestyle. But from whatever source, the wool is the starting place from which beauty and utility emerge.

The next step is to make the wool usable. This is done by a process called "carding". Most of us are somewhat familiar with this process and a few others used by the weavers because of our school history lessons on Colonial-era life in the U.S. and Canada. Women usually perform this task in modern times, just as they did in the past. Two rectangular wooden paddles, slightly larger than ping-pong paddles, and covered on one side with short wire bristles, are used to pick up bits of wool to be drawn between the two sets of bristles. This separates and straightens the wool while dragging any debris such as weeds, sticks, mud, or seeds from the fibers.

Now the wool is ready to be spun into coarse yarn. This is done by using a hand-powered spinning wheel, with the spinner expertly feeding exactly the correct amount of cleaned material onto the large rotating wheel. This requires a deft touch and constant attention to the task to ensure a consistent thickness of the yarn. It is also a very time consuming process. The first rug I bought from Francisco measures a bit less than 3X5 feet and it took the family about a day and a half to spin out enough yarn to weave it. As the yarn is spun it is wrapped onto spindles as it leaves the wheel to keep it in a manageable storage form for later use. After a sufficient amount has been spun and spindled the spinning wheel is used to unwind the yarn from the spindles. At that time the resultant loose bundles are ready to be dyed.

The dyeing is usually done by the men, as it is heavy work. Large pots of dyes are heated and bundles of yarn are dropped in to absorb the dyes. A large paddle or strong staff is used to lift the heavy bundles from the vats and hang them out to dry in the sun. One of the more experienced women, or perhaps a master weaver often supervises the dyeing process to make certain that the colors are true and consistent. Repeated use of the pots of color causes subtle differences of tone in the original color, resulting in lighter tinted yarn. Adjustments to the formulae to maintain consistency can be made if needed.

Just as Francisco explained earlier, the dyes are made from a variety of natural substances. Each weaver uses dyes individual to his process, and most craftsmen jealously guard the secrets of their colors.

After the dyeing and drying the wool must be washed and rinsed in cold water. Due to the large amount of water required for this task the families often carry the bundles to the river; a long and time consuming job.

When the yarn is dry it can finally be presented to the weaver to use to create his art. The fixed-frame pedal loom, or horizontal loom, is the tool used to produce the beautifully designed pieces you see hanging on the fences, the temporary scaffolds, or from the huge tree by Salvador's. Many of the designs are inspired by the geometric carvings on pre-Columbian ruins in Oaxaca, most notably Mitla and Monte Alban. Most of the design motifs date back to the 10th century. Of course there is always room for the individual expression and vision of the individual artist too. In addition to the ancient designs many weavers have added less traditional motifs to their portfolios to satisfy modern tastes and to meet the demands of a growing number of interior designers who recognize the quality of their work and wish to integrate that spirit and style into contemporary design plans.

An interesting aside is that at one time the weavers of Teotitlan produced many of the pieces sold worldwide as "Navajo" rugs. Unable to obtain sufficient numbers of the Southwest weavings, some entrepreneurs brought their designs to Mexico to have the Zapotec craftsmen copy them.

Once a design and a size have been decided upon it's time for the weaver to set the yarn on his loom and begin the artistic aspect of the work. Looms are usually constructed by the individual to his own specifications to accommodate his personal needs and preferences. Although many women are expert weavers most of the weavers in Teotitlan are men because the work requires a great deal of strength. In addition to manipulating the lightweight shuttles on which the wool is wrapped to allow an artisan to weave an entire row of woof in one operation, he must also use the large foot pedals to operate the machine, and utilize a heavy wood beater to pack down and smooth out the rows as they appear.

Many of you know the words warp and woof, but a short explanation may be in order. The warp is the vertical weave of the work. This is the foundation of the work and is placed on the loom first. The finished size of the piece will determine the length and width of the rows of warp threads. The fringe you see on the ends of the rugs is actually the part of the warp that was not incorporated into the design of the piece. The woof, sometimes called the weft, is the part of the weaving process that allows the artist to create the design. A number of shuttles, each holding a different color of yarn, are laid out on the loom framework so they can be easily reached by the operator as he creates his art in the woof.

The final step is to display the finished artwork to the potential buyer. Usually each family sells directly to the customer. In the pueblo you'll see many craftsmen displaying their wares to catch the attention of the visitors to the area. Franciso and Maria Luisa repeat in Ajijic the same hospitable offer as their families back in Teotitlan.

"When you stop to visit with us you must feel free to touch and admire the beautiful work of our family. And I hope you will remember this bit of our history, and appreciate the skill and artistry of our work and the many hours of work involved in the creation of each piece. They are a part of our lives and of our joy and we are proud to share them with all the people of the world."