Colour and tradition: A lockdown trip to Mexico

We have all, of necessity, been preoccupied with too many gloomy topics in the last several weeks. I thought this might be a good time for something colourful and cheery. A visit to Mexico is always a feast for the senses, so I thought an online exhibition of some of the visual pleasures of Mexico would provide some needed joy.

A phrase that has stuck firmly in my mind while reading for my Mexico project is a comment that ancient Mexicans were “people of the book”. They kept records of all manner of things, using a pictographic writing system on paper made from fig bark. Stone tools for pounding bark into paper are frequently found in archaeological sites. Nowadays, paintings on fig bark are a popular form of tourist art in Taxco, a colonial silver mining town about 180km from Mexico City. Over the years I bought a few paintings that appealed to me. The first two were made in Maxela, a village about 100km south of Taxco, which specializes in bark painting.

Paintings on amate (fig) bark from Maxela, Guerrero

Like most tourist art, these views are idealized, but they succeed in portraying various aspects of village life. The architecture of the houses and church are reasonably accurate. The leisure activities are typical of rural Mexico: the charreada (a variety of rodeo), the cock fight, the musical band. The fauna and flora are also representative, with the exception of the coconut palms, imaginatively transplanted a long way from the coast to the mountain village.

These two were bought in the 1980s. I am not sure whether ploughs drawn by animals are still much used, but they were a common sight in the 1970s when I travelled around rural Guerrero. Hunting is definitely an important rural activity.

Paintings on fig bark purchased in Taxco, 1980s

When the Spaniards conquered Mexico in the 16^th century they were few in number and relied on indigenous labour for pretty much everything, including painting and architecture/construction. While we were in Mexico in 2018 we visited two magnificent churches in small towns in Michoacán. The 17^th-century church in Nurio has a magnificent painted ceiling over the entrance.

 

Painted entrance ceiling of the church of St James the Apostle, Nurio, Michoacán

St James the Apostle façade

St James the Apostle altar and retablo (reredos)

To one side of the church is an elegant chapel (known as a huatapera in Michoacán).

The interior of the 16^th-century church of Saint Bartholomew in Cocucho is much more restrained in its decoration, but the splendid paintings over the entrance more than compensate. Angels serenade on contemporary musical instruments while St. James the Moor Slayer goes about his business of dismembering infidel Moors. Unfortunately, 16^th-century Tarascan craftsmen had never seen a Moor, so they assumed they looked much like a Spaniard.

 

Church of St Bartholomew, Cocucho, Michoacán, façade

This space, with its cross, would have been used in the 16th century to preach to Indians too numerous to fit in the church

Paintings on the ceiling over the entrance, church of St Bartholomew, Cocucho, Michoacán

Interior, St Bartholomew, Cocucho

Our Ocumicho diablito

A visit to Ocumicho, a short drive from Zamora, where we stayed in 2018, took us to another huatapera. It lacked the paintings of Nurio and Cocucho, but we were visiting in May, the month of the Virgin, so the church was a riot of flowers, topped up every day by young girls. Ocumicho is a centre for crafts, particularly ceramics. The local potters specialize in making diablitos (little devils), and a side-line in erotic sculpture which earns the severe disapproval of the village priest. We opted instead for a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which would surely have pleased the priest. Our diablito and the Virgin are the work of Octavio Esteban Reyes.

The huatapera of Ocumicho, Michoacán, altar and flowers in May 2018

The huatapera of Ocumicho, façade

 

Octavio Esteban Reyes, Virgin of Guadalupe

 

Octavio Esteban Reyes, Ocumicho, Michoacán, May 2018