I had returned to Oaxaca, because I was intrigued that one of Oaxaca’s famous artists, Francisco Toledo, had converted a former hydroelectric power plant into a workshop to produce high quality paper from native plants. When I learned that the Taller or workshop provided jobs for the community, there was no hesitation in planning a visit. I was eager to see how the strands of Toledo’s project had been knitted together into a cohesive whole: the building, the native plants, the workers and the end product of fine quality paper.
We drove north from the City on a cloudless, hot, sunny day with no hint of rain. Our first stop was the market at Etla. Only one parking spot remained. Octavio spotted it and squeezed into the tight place. We remarked on our good fortune.
Stone steps led up to the market. Not content to be crammed into one building, stalls with white awnings flowed down the stone steps to form a pool of vendors at the bottom. Sounds, smells and colors swirled and eddied. It was like entering the Mexican version of Harrods’ Food Halls in London.
There were herbs, potions, amulets, embroidery, farm implements, seeds, beans, bunches of small slender ocote (resinous pine used for igniting wood fires or lighting gas stoves), green pottery from Atzompa, local red pottery and tall, deep cylindrical baskets woven from carrizo (a native reed). Red tomatoes sprawled next to green chilies; mounds of ripe pineapples shouldered them. Branches of nopal cactus (prickly pear) and its fruit (tuna) rested side by side. Nopal branches are cooked in a variety of dishes and are good for controlling diabetes; the edible fruit makes an especially refreshing sorbet or nieva.
During our stroll through the market, I learned about the seven regions of Oaxaca, the seven moles of Oaxaca and the six colors of bougainvillea. I needed a break. My head was whirling from the sun, the sights and so many facts. “Please, no more talking until I rest.”
We stopped at a stall where a woman was selling atole, a pre-Hispanic drink reminiscent of gruel. The recipe calls for boiling roasted corn in water. Then grinding, straining and thickening the mixture. The result is a comforting and filling drink especially for breakfast.
The atole was rapidly boiling in a metal tub on long legs, and the pottery serving bowls were sparkling clean, both signs of safety in choosing a vendor from whom to buy atole in the markets. I ordered a bowl, knowing it was just what I needed to clear my head.
I settled myself on a plank bench next to a portly man dressed in a dazzling white suit and white sombrero. He held a bowl of champurrado (atole mixed with chocolate). “Buenos dias,” he said. “I am single.”
I asked him what he had purchased in the market. He unwrapped his parcel to show me leafy greens, bread and a bunch of small white onions. He gently handled each item as if it were priceless porcelain.
Without warning he turned to me. “Slow down,” he admonished. “There’s plenty of time.” He had observed the speed with which I was drinking my atole. I was unaware that I was rushing to empty the bowl as if there were somewhere more interesting to be or something more important to do than to be in the present moment.
Etla is famous for white cheese made from cows’ milk. At the cheese stalls one of the women vendors explained the different consistencies of the cheese and let me sample the contrasting textures. There was a soft cheese, which looked and tasted like ricotta, a medium firm cheese and a third type, wrapped in a green leaf and packed in a circular wooden mold. The vendor selected one of the latter, unmolded it on a plate and handed it to me. It was too rich to eat all at once; I stored half for a snack.
We entered the adjacent church. Construction was finished in 1636. Baby Jesus was on the left wall. He was dressed in infant’s clothes and wore a white knitted baby’s cap. Another Nino Santo, this one in regal robes and crown, looked out from a case on the right wall. Scattered on the case’s floor were toy cars and trucks and dolls left by the distraught parents and relatives of sick or dying children.
The deserted cloister was tranquil and silent, its arches outlined in brick red. The exterior walls were ringed by trees, their branches weighted down with ripe fruit. Octavio went from tree to tree naming them for me: nisperos (zapote or sapodilla), guayabas (guaya), toronjas (grapefruit), and papayas.
Time seemed to stand still. Not remembering precisely how we got there, we found ourselves back in the atrium in front of the church. It was Octavio who discovered the bamboo towers. They were placed on their side atop a stone platform connected to the church. Spent fireworks were tied in the corners of the carefully crafted staging, remnants of a recent celebration. Fireworks are an integral feature of any fiesta, and we marveled that more spectators were not injured by them.
We crossed the atrium. The iron gate to the street was ajar. Slipping through, we closed it behind us. On the gate was a sign; the atrium should not be used for romance.
We drove through cultivated, fertile land to the chapel of las Penitas. Restored in 1983, the chapel sat on a hill amidst a haunting landscape. The pocked surface of the rock with its smoothly worn, water-filled depressions appeared like a lunar surface, weird and wonderful to the eye. Small stones or penitas peppered the ground in front of the chapel. They were difficult to walk on. Octavio believed they symbolized the stones that paved the route that Jesus took on his way to His Crucifixion.
Miniature grills dotted the foreground. Flat rocks had been topped with bricks arranged so as to leave a small square aperture in the center of each grill. Ashes remained at the bottom of the grills, indicating that they had been used recently. Because it was the wet season, the rains would have washed out or diluted the ash.“What do you suppose goes on here?” we asked. “What could one possibly roast on such small grills?” Our questions were lost in the air for no one was present, not even a caretaker for the chapel. If it were a place to picnic or to celebrate special occasions involving food, very little could be cooked at one time, a decided drawback when one considers the size of Mexican families. “Perhaps,” we mused, “these little stoves are for offerings.”
The chapel was next. Inside we met Our Lady of Guadalupe. She stood in the left transept benevolently gazing down upon a model of a green two-story house, which a hopeful petitioner had placed on a table. In the right transept beneath another Virgin, a table displayed a model of a pharmacy. Beside it was a white one-story house with a basket of fake flowers on its flat roof. “The donors must be a newly married couple.” Octavio speculated.
Milagro means miracle. It also denotes a votive offering, a tangible representation of a prayer or plea for a miracle, which a petitioner makes to a saint or a member of the Holy Family. At las Penitas, milagros were fastened to the robes of the two Virgins, wrapping them in prayers and petitions. In other churches, milagros are pinned to the interior walls of saints’ niches or secured on lengths of ribbon or elegant fabric hanging beside a statue.
Milagros commonly are made of tin and have a narrow, colored ribbon attached at the top. There is a milagro for almost every aspect of daily life. Spiritual or emotional problems? Choose a miniature person who is standing or kneeling in prayer. Parts of one’s anatomy that may be affected? Buy an eye, a hand, a leg, a heart, breasts or ears. Troubles concerning the crops or the home? Select a tiny dog, cat, mule or donkey, perhaps an ear of corn, a house or a car.
Driving away from the chapel, Octavio braked beside a stand of trees. “Higerillas. They have seeds that give oil for shampoo. Don’t use the oil for cooking, though,” he warned. Traveling with Octavio was an adventure in discovering herbs, trees, fruits and flowers. He had a vast storehouse of knowledge about the customs and the natural history of the State. He always was pointing out something new or giving me a novel interpretation of something that I might have taken for granted.
We were ready for Toledo’s workshop; however, Octavio had neglected to bring directions. No one he asked knew its exact location, not even the police stationed at barracks beside the main road. “Mexicans frequently give bad directions,” Octavio counseled, “so I choose the route the democratic way. I ask many people and choose the direction given by the majority.” The consensus of opinion was to make a right turn off the main road.
The dirt road passed through an area noted for plentiful springs, which fed the many balnearios (pools of thermal waters) that lined both sides of the road. The balneario named “Acapulco” appealed to us. We joked that we could boast to our friends in the City that we had been to Acapulco and back in a day. Later, we would learn that these abundant springs provided a reliable source of water to the Taller, even during the dry season when water was at a premium.
We knew we were lost when we arrived at a dead end. The only person in sight was a man in work clothes. He was leaving a driveway to our right and walking towards the door of an adjacent building. Octavio acted quickly. He clenched his right fist and held fist and forearm horizontally in front of him. In response, the man pointed his left index finger at his chest, raised his eyebrows and froze. When Octavio told him that we were looking for the Taller, he sprang to life. Using no words, only elaborate and animated hand signals, he directed us to turn sharp right, drive down a steep gradient of enormous paving stones and turn sharp left. At the end of the road was the former hydroelectric power station, now the Taller de Arte Papel Oaxaca.
We faced a plot of emerald green grass with a fountain in its center. Behind it was the Taller, white-washed and decorated with red brick columns. Red brick lintels ornamented the tops of the doors and the open, iron-barred windows. Narrow channels of rushing water bordered the lawn. The sound of coursing water mingling with the sound of water splashing from the fountain was soothing and refreshing.As we approached the Taller’s entrance, a man appeared in the open doorway. He cordially invited us in and appointed himself our guide. The one-room interior was spacious. Sunlight, streaming through the windows, highlighted the workers, who quietly went about their business paying no attention to our sudden and unexpected arrival. Only our low voices, the creak of machinery and the muffled footsteps of the men broke the silence.
We asked many questions, and our guide patiently answered them. He enumerated the native plants from which the paper is made; Maguey, brown cotton, carrizo and banana were the only names we recognized. He explained that chichicastle, an important ingredient in the paper, was a fiber used for weaving in pre-Hispanic times.
Plants arrived at the workshop from communities throughout the State. Each community was responsible for the cultivation, harvesting and conservation of the plants shipped to the Taller. There should be no threat of over-harvesting or of dwindling resources.
Our guide, worker 1, led us to the machinery that stood on a low stage. Baskets filled with leaves and other plant parts rested at the edge of the platform. The baskets’ contents were waiting to be crushed by being circulated in a trough of boiling water for one and one-half hours. They would replace the batch of mashed fibers that had completed its allotted time in the boiling water and was ready to be removed to an adjacent vat. Our guide suggested that I reach in and sample the wet pulp. I grabbed a handful of the mushy contents and squeezed it between my fingers.
After worker 2 transferred the pulp to a vat, he added glue extracted from the prickly pear and stirred it into the pulp. He showed us a rectangular wood frame, which encased two screens nested inside each other. He plunged the frame into the bath and withdrew it in order to demonstrate how a thick layer of the mixture rested on top of the screens. Holding the frame over the bath, he waited until the liquid drained through the screens and left a rectangular residue of pulp on the top screen.
He carried the frame to a thin, flexible metal sheet, which rested on a larger gray felt-like mat. Working slowly and methodically, he pressed the frame from one side of the metal sheet to the other. What remained on the sheet was a rectangle of pressed pulp. He repeated screening and pressing the pulp until there were enough layers of mat-metal-pulp for worker 2 to carry to the pressing machine.
Worker 3 placed the layers between two massive plates on the pressing machine. He cranked the handle of a wheel on one side of the press. As the upper plate slowly descended, it compressed the layers and extracted the residual liquid, which splattered on the floor. Several more twists of the handle satisfied him that the press had removed all of the liquid and had flattened the paper.
Worker 4 took the stack from the press and placed it on a flat surface. A thin sheet of paper now adhered to each metal sheet. Layer by layer he discarded the mat and inserted a hook at one end of the metal sheet, leaving the paper attached. He suspended each metal sheet on a crosspiece, which hung between two horizontal bars of an empty rack.
When the rack was full, he rolled it out the back door to join other racks of paper drying in the sun. He estimated that it took eight hours for the paper to dry during the rainy season, less time during the dry season.Racks of dried paper worked on in black or in color by the creative hand of Toledo lined one wall inside the workshop. We asked permission to examine them. “Toledo was here yesterday,” our guide said pointing to his studio in a corner. We had missed him by a day, but we could sense his lingering presence amidst the paints and brushes scattering his work space. None of the men knew when he would return; none of them knew where he lived. His unannounced schedule protected his privacy.
Our guide accompanied us outside and pointed us down a path. At the end was an open-sided structure. Its roof provided shade for artisans working at sturdy tables and benches.
A woman was assembling a book from sheets of paper, and three women were making paper jewelry. One was cutting triangles of different sizes from the paper. Another slowly dipped an edge of a triangle in a shallow pan filled with natural dye of a neutral color. She rotated the triangle so that each edge absorbed a narrow band of dye before she set the triangle aside to dry. A third rolled triangles into beads. She tightly wound each triangle around a cylindrical rod, glued its apex to the roll and put the bead in a box. We watched her struggle with a bead; the roll was too loose. She unrolled it and began again, the tips of her fingers acting like delicate sensors throughout the process. She acknowledged our exclamations of approval with a smile and a slight nod. After all, that was her job.
We admired the handiwork of the women who were stringing necklaces of beads or of rounds of white fish bone and small paper circles. My favorite necklace was constructed of small pieces of accordion-pleated paper. I fastened it around my neck, and the folds fanned out like an elegant ruffle. That was the one I wanted. But the jewelry was not for sale. A chorus of voices informed us that the articles were sold only in the City at the shop at Santo Domingo Church.
We returned to the main building in order to thank the workmen for their warm hospitality. I thought about Toledo, his vision and how he had translated it into a project that benefited an ever-widening spiral of people. The spiral began at the Taller with jobs for the unemployed. It widened to encompass the plant harvesters, the apprentices working in the Taller, the researchers who investigated new sources of plant fibers and new paper-making techniques, the artists who created the finished products and the patrons who purchased the works of art. I was deeply touched by this first-hand experience of how one man’s dream had become a triumph with far-reaching influence.
We exited the Taller to find an evergreen bush with elongated leaves and delicate white flowers, their centers washed with pale yellow. It looked like a giant rhododendron with apple blossoms. “What is this?” we inquired. One of the men replied, “Beautiful, no? We use the pretty flowers to make crosses for the churches.”“What a fitting tree to be growing outside the workshop!” I exclaimed. “Inside plants are being turned into paper while outside these flowers will be made into decorations.”
On the way back to the main road we stopped at a church. Shrines lined both walls of the nave. Each shrine was a small stage. The actor was the saint who posed in the shrine before a backdrop of painted trompe l’oeil drapes. Stacked in a corner beside one of the shrines were intricately woven palm fans with woven palm grips. Beside them, woven palm circles, overlaid with palm crosses, sprouted from the ends of long handles. “For the processions,” Octavio explained.
A beguiling Virgin in a gown of airy white fabric stood at the front of the chancel smiling at someone’s labor of love. That someone had strewn a thick bed of recently plucked flower petals of the most subtle colors on the floor of the transept. The fragile petals had been lovingly arranged in the shape of an oval rug, a perfect spot upon which to kneel in prayer. The scent from the petals perfumed the air. No wonder Our Lady looked so happy.
Two steps led up from the petals to where the Virgin rested. A three-legged copal burner containing the remains of an offering of copal incense stood on the first step. The smell of the incense blended with the fragrance of the petals. On the second step, the flickering flame of a candle created an air of mystery and intimacy. A tiny broom, waiting to sweep up the petals after they lost their freshness, leaned against the altar rail. No doubt about it, a special holiness enveloped the space. An invisible barrier sealed it off from the rest of the church. It remains an unforgettable picture, indelibly etched in my mind’s eye by the twin senses of sight and smell.
We headed back to the City. Arriving at the gate of my bed and breakfast, Octavio shook my hand and summed up the day. “Thank you,” he said. “When I learned I was going to a paper factory I couldn’t believe it. I wondered what kind of a day it would be. Now I know. It was a day to remember.
2 comments:
this is a good blog.
Nice post. Binding and interesting. Loved the pic of the makeshift grill.
Post a Comment