Mexican artisan reveals the skill of his life

IHUATZIO, MEXICO - Pale green reeds dove beneath rays of yellow fiber as Santiago Marcelino Morales wove them into a basket. The courses of chuspata (a type of reed), harvested from nearby Lake Patzcuaro, zigzagged in eager arpeggios toward the top of the container. Suddenly, the rhythm changed as Santiago sliced a reed with his thumb and index finger, then entwined stalks around tense strips of aged vegetation to embrace them in a chain pattern. Arriving at the top, Santiago brought the rambunctious composition to a close, looping the reeds over themselves in still another design called "pico terminado."

"I have 43 designs," said the 66-year-old artisan and member of the Purepecha tribe, his tank top revealing the vigorous physique of a much younger man. His wife left the laundry for a moment to dampen a bundle of chuspata so the reeds could later be transformed into three-dimensional sheets of music. On another day, the roles could easily be reversed.

"Here in this family," Santiago declared a few days earlier, "we don't go by, ‘You are a man and you are the woman, do this, do that.' " His son, Jose Angel Marcelino Gabriel, also makes rebozos (shawls) , as does his wife.

"If there are a lot of dishes and my wife is busy doing something else, I can do the dishes no matter what," said Santiago. "If it's doing more clothes to be washed and my wife is busy doing something, I can wash clothes and dishes if she's busy."

The family had busily engaged itself for the past few weeks to complete a new workshop on the property. White timbers stood on small blocks of wood over the soggy ground and rose toward a bare wooden ceiling. A mound of rocky soil crawled from a newly constructed cavernous septic tank of powerful stone.

Rough logs leaned against a wall of stone and brick. A small store at the front of the home sold cooking oil, magazines, fresh eggs and tomatoes, bags of salt, cold Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Corona and Modelo.

Santiago's family and the rest of the town had been preparing for the Festival of San Francisco. Pounding hammers and the metallic rattle of workers assembling a carnival outside his door barreled into his living area.

His wife, Florencia Gabriele Rivera, rushed off to mass in a bright red dress. Their 10-year-old grandson, Jose Fernando Marcelino Medina - who'd already learned how to make tortilla baskets - dashed outside to see the activity.

"Every child will start out with a little basket for tortillas," Santiago said. "I started out making little baskets for tortillas. I can't remember the date exactly, probably 7 years old when I started making baskets."

Santiago, dressed in purple jeans and cracked loafers, explained how he had constructed a woven rectangular box around a wire frame.

"This is like a filing cabinet," he said. "It has the drawers here. The first thing we do is make the wire frame."

His spirited eyes, set between a thick frock of hair and tight cheekbones, spoke volumes about his zest for life and his life's work.

"I want you to know that I am an artisan," Santiago said. "I teach everything to do with natural fiber, like chuspata, carrizo, and bamboo. I have gone out to give classes so people will get the tradition. I am not the stingy type. I want people to learn what I can teach them, so the tradition will not be lost on the younger generation and it will continue."

Santiago, whom his wife affectionately refers to as "Santi," enjoys working with all sorts of fiber.

"I am into everything," he said, retrieving a bundle of dried stalks with wilted florets dyed yellow and hot purple. "If I see any dried leaves, I go paint them for the floreros (flower pots). Some people think that's trash."

Santiago also learned to weave huinumo (the Purepecha word for pine needles) about seven years ago after he saw some Chinese products in a magazine.

"It was an ashtray," he said. "I saw it and I thought, ‘I could also make that.' I didn't have to get any lessons. I saw the possibilities of working with zacate (grass). I couldn't work it very well. The huinumo was perfect to do it. That was the best material to work."

He had no qualms about copying Chinese products.

"The Chinese also copy some of the Michoacan things, like the guitars," he said. "They are already making the guitars. Personally, I have been very affected by the Chinese market. Once they copy the pieces they are priced so much lower. There's no way to compete with them."

He gestured to a woven clothes hamper with a hinged lid.

"I am selling this one for $45," he said. "Someone can copy it and sell it cheap."

"I think it's not good work at all," chimed in Jose Guadalupe Martinez, 42, referring to the Chinese products. He had just brought in some tightly-

wound huinumo pitchers the color of roasted pecans.

"This is it," said Jose, holding up an 80-peso pitcher.

Why does he prefer huinumo instead of chuspata?

"It pays better," Jose said. "It's harder to work. Huinumo is not as easy to get as chuspata. The straight pine is not nearby. I have to go to Santa Clara del Cobre or Cuanajo to get this."

Santiago cut in: "That's why it's highly recommended that people work with what's easy to get. On the coast, the bamboo is easy to get, so the people work with that."

The technique of weaving plant fiber has descended to Santiago from many past generations. However, Santiago's work has changed from that of his forebears.

"I do very different things from my grandfather, because you have to make different things because the market demands it," Santiago said. "My grandfather, there was no wire in the things. Just hats and baskets without the wire. Now you can make chairs and tables."

A woven item from Santiago's shop begins with a canoe trip on Lake Patzcuaro where he and other artisans cut chuspata. He and other members of a 25-member artisan group, called Huricha (Purepecha for "the ones that create"), take turns using three canoes (they are trying to acquire two or three more canoes).

Most of the cutting occurs during the dry months between February and May. These trips to the lake for chuspata appear to be joyous occasions judging from the numerous pictures taken of yellow wooden boats filled with laughter as someone pushes them with a long pole through the slow black water. They drift past green lilies into tall wicked-looking reeds jutting through the water and cutting the air high over their heads before the occupants slice them down to size, bundle them together, and drop them into the boat.

"We have to go very early in the morning and stay out all day to get as much chuspata as possible," Santiago said.

Each artisan keeps the chuspata he or she gathers; Santiago's family stores its chuspata in a warehouse.

"It takes 30 days to dry," he said. "We have to lay it out during the day and bring it in at night because the humidity will make it damp. That's why the pieces are so expensive. They are considered high priced. People don't know all the work we do."

Santiago's two sons and two daughters all learned to weave chuspata. Some have continued with the craft and others have taken up other professions. Santiago's son, Jose Angel Marcelino Gabriel, who was studying to be a priest before he got married, now lives in Ihuatzio with his wife and their two children where they weave chuspata. Daughter Cecilia Marcelina Gabriel is a doctor and lives in Morelia. Daughter Edith Marcelino Gabriel completed her studies as a lawyer but now lives with her husband and two children in Janitzio. Juan Antonio lives in Ihuatzio where he makes chuspata and key chains. He and his wife also make rebozos.

Juan Antonio sat at a table one evening to make wooden key chains, carving names with a coping saw and gluing them to a base. His wife, Blanca, pulled out rebozos the color of rum and canary yellow and snow white, plus one with bands of aqua blue, burnt orange, white and cherry red. The pieces, a composition of tight bands alive with designs separated by loose threads, had been woven on an upright loom the family periodically rents.

"I have to rent the telar (loom)," Santiago said. "There's a lot of people here in Ihuatzio that work telar."

The family uses the telar for three days straight and makes as many as possible. Then the artisans will create a piece of deshilado by weaving the threads together in a netlike pattern. Selecting a piece doused in hot pink, Blanca twisted a needle dexterously through bundles of hot pink fiber connecting bands of fabric.

"In her house, she learned from her family," Santiago said. "When she arrived here she learned from me and my wife."

Juan already knew how to make rebozos. "He learned from me. I taught my son, and his son will learn from him."

Although Juan enjoys making rebozos, key chains, and items in chuspata, he prefers the latter two trades.

"It's easier than rebozos," Juan said. "Rebozos are more difficult to do. It takes a month and a half to get the wood dried, and the chuspata takes more time because I have to go cut it and get it dry in the sun. In the case of the rebozo, it takes a good time just to do a little piece of it."

The children are never far from their roots. His daughter, the doctor, was asked to give a class on weaving chuspata.

"She said, ‘Dad, how am I going to teach chuspata? I am a doctor,' " recalled Santiago. "She said, ‘I am ashamed.' I said, ‘It's an honor to be Purepecha. When I talk to the governor, I talk in Purepecha and then translate into Spanish. It's nothing to be ashamed of.' "

Santiago is proud that his grandchildren are learning to weave chuspata; he doesn't want them to leave the tradition. However, he had mixed feelings about them weaving after they get home from school. He himself never attended primary school; the economics of his own childhood compelled him to work chuspata instead of studying. Many local families are in the same predicament.

"They don't abuse the kids, but they have the need for the income," he said. "They don't let them do their homework because they have to make the work. They need to sell to make money. It's not my case, but I am better off economically."

Santiago didn't let his trying childhood prevent him from excelling in life.

"My father didn't have any money to give me the studies," he said. "We hardly had tortillas to eat. I can do any math operations you want. I can read Spanish and I can translate immediately to Purepecha. I read fluently in Purepecha. Sometimes when I worry about money I go to a field and read the Bible where it has the Purepecha and it says the same thing in English. People ask me what studies I made. I don't have any studies. They say, ‘Where did you learn so many things?' I answer ‘the need taught me.' "

He pulled out a couple of awards he'd received from El Centro Cultural Antiguo Colegio Jesuita de Patzcuaro, one for huinumo and the other for making flowers from corn husks.

"I have 32 crafts," he said proudly. "This kind of recognition supports me. With this kind of recognition people know me. I have already 75 awards. I have 20 first place awards. I don't care for the second or third places. I just want the first place. I always want to do the best."

Santiago's 43 designs include the torcido (twisted) style with which he made a flowerpot by twisting four slender reeds together (or three thick ones) in each joint.

"I am always trying to get new designs," he said. "Normally when people go to a little town to look for a certain type of chuspata, they come to me. I know where to send them. It depends on what they are looking for. I know whom to suggest. The person who makes hats, he makes three sizes, but he only makes hats. The maceta, the type of work you see there, that type of frutera, is called petate. The hat trim is called cadena. The clothes hamper is called petate. I specialize in petate. I also work carrizo, huinumo, and bamboo."

Now Santiago picked up another reed and laid it across the course of a basket, raising one reed to lay it under, then over, another one, tightening them down. His hands raced through the chuspata; the fibers leaped, swerved, raced around each other, chattering away in rapid staccato as they became entwined in one another's destinies. They mimicked Santiago's family members who embraced each other, releasing themselves from the barren wasteland of isolation, each fiber acquiring the tasks as they presented themselves.