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Oaxaca occupies a
fundamental place in the universe of Mesoamerican
civilizations. It is the point of encounter between the
Nahuan towns of the central plateau, the Mayans of the
Yucatan Peninsula, and the ancient inhabitants off the
coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
For thousands of years
Oaxaca has been a fundamental part of the Anahuac
civilization’s cultural matrix in part thanks to the
imposing mountainous units that shelter it. It is in
the Central Valley’s system, surrounded by a sea of
protective mountains where the majority of indigenous
nations live in one state. In this magnificent ancient
state the most important cultural elements of the
ancient indigenous civilization have been preserved
along with a magical appropriation of diverse cultural
elements brought by the Europeans. This fusion has
produced the most formidable kaleidoscope of shapes,
colors, tastes, sounds, aromas and rhythms which make up
the popular cultures of Oaxaca, an essential part of the
Mexican cultural identity. In fact, the Olmec
civilization, known as the mother culture of
Mesoamerica, left testimonies of its presence in the
imposing archeological zone of Monte Alban situated in
the Valley of Oaxaca. In this region, the Olmec
influence can be appreciated in the famous stone
carvings known as "The Dancers," human figures in
strange tenuous positions which archeologists date to
five hundred years before the Christian Era.
Oaxaca’s vast artistic
heritage is reflected in masterpieces made of gold,
silver, copper, clay, stone, wood, bone, and fig tree
paper, which today are exhibited in many museums of the
world and archeological zones like Monte
Alban, Mitla, Yagul,
or Daninzu, and it is also present in the
overflowing sensibility and creativity that is alive and
vibrant in the sons of the sons of these early Oaxacans.
In fact, the creativity and sensibility of the
indigenous and peasant towns of contemporary Oaxaca, are
an expression, a continuity of thousands of years of
human development which has lived in this region of the
Mexican territory. What makes up the roots and the
essence of artistic creation today, is the same for
Oaxacan artists such as Rufino Tamayo,
Francisco Toledo and Rodolfo
Morales or Teodora Blanco,
Doña Rosa and Manuel Jiménez,
who represent a continuation and a popular expression of
this ancient language, expressed with clay, wood, or
cotton.
Oaxacan art flows
directly from the spirit of its creators, form the world
known artists to the simple indigenous and peasant
artist families. Popular art is a way of seeing and
feeling the world and life. It is an ancestral way of
expressing the most profound emotions that exalt human
consciousness.
Oaxacans live and feel
art as an essential part of their daily life. For them
it is similar to making a garment of clothing, and to
carving a piece of wood, or preparing one of Oaxaca’s
seven chile sauces. The popular artist leaves a piece
of himself in each work, but the difference is that he
leaves it with humility and simplicity, without
existential pretensions or external recognition.
The sculptor, the
carver, or the weaver work day to day with patience and
harmony. Their "doing" is intimately mixed with their
"being." An equilibrium exists then with the same
devotion that they [use to] tend to their small animals;
they work their land and carry out their daily chores in
front of the potter‘s wheel, the blades, or the loom.
This form of living art in an ancestral way has
characterized Oaxacan towns. Their attachment to
traditions, holidays, uses, and customs is already
legendary within the national context. The genesis of
this plurality of artistic and cultural expressions that
coexists in Oaxaca is not only due to the millenary
foundations of its indigenous cultures, but also to
these values and principles which remain in use in all
the communities of the Oaxacan geography.
The sensibility and
creativity of the Oaxacans has made them "masters" in
the field of popular art, in music, in culinary arts,
and fine arts. Oaxaca is the land of artists where "God
never dies," because each day it is revitalized in the
wonderful works of art that its artists create, as in a
embroidered napkin, a wood carving, or in a woven
tapestry.
To attend a “tianguis”,
market, or a festival in Oaxaca is to find the harmonic
union between the spirit and the mundane, between
creativity and sensibility, between the divine and the
sacred. The popular artist is the most genuine
representative of an ancestral aspiration which lives in
communities. Popular art in Oaxaca is communal and
representative of a ancestral form of perceiving and
understanding life, death, beauty, nature, shapes,
light, and color.
Oaxacan art is the
reason and the essence of life, the most transparent
expression of "being Oaxacan," which brings Oaxaca to
being the artistic heart of a profound Mexico.
Guillermo Marín
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