Oaxaca Cultural Navigator

I’m in love with the book, Taller Flora by Carla Fernandez. In it she describes the various ways of putting webs (geometric shapes of cloth–squares, rectangles, triangles) together to create dresses, pants, skirts, blouses, shirts, sashes and jackets. Fernandez describes indigenous pre-Hispanic techniques for constructing garments, and compares this with western techniques. Westerners cut cloth to fit the body. Indigenous weavers feature the textile and, make few, if any, cuts into the cloth. Their clothing is loose fitting, comfortable, and easily adaptable to another future use. The weaving takes center stage.

Last summer, I eyed a piece of hand woven cloth tucked away on the bottom shelf case of the B&B where we were staying. It’s gloriously rich color spoke to me, and I bought it. It’s been stashed away and yesterday I decided to take it in hand and create a huipil. Imagine three long, rectangular pieces hand woven on a back-strap loom, each panel (web) 14-1/2” wide x 80” long and hand-stitched together, featuring intricate patterns of stars, birds, fish, crabs, lobster, bugs, deer, and rabbits. It is a brocaded piece from the coastal Mixtec village of Huazotitlan, Oaxaca. I don’t know for certain, but am assuming, that it is dyed with cochineal (red), indigo (blue) and caracol (purple) based on the price I paid for the cloth ($180 USD) — and that was not yet made up into anything!

Above: Example of weaving on a backstrap loom.

Lovingly, I opened the seams and took apart the hand stitching, thinking about the women who created this fabric. How many women’s hands were there? Were they mother and daughter? Dear friends or sisters?

The 4-ply cotton seam threads went on for a while, were knotted off, the trailing thread tucked neatly into the next set of stitches that continued but were different. I could tell they were made by another pair of hands by the way they entered the cloth. This was every bit as sturdy as any machine-made seam. I was deconstructing the panels because two panels would be sufficient to cover my body. I was able to create a huipil without making a single cut in the cloth. Here’s how I did it:

First using small basting stitches, I sewed two panels together at the center seam, being sure to match the direction of the pattern in the weave. I ended the seam at the opening of the neck hole, measuring how big I wanted this to be so the garment would go over my head. I made the total size of the opening 16″, and marked the cloth equally front to back with a straight pin (and tailor’s chalk) so I would know where to stop sewing. I continued to baste from the hem toward the neck on the other side closing the seam the same amount of inches front to back. Then, I held the side seams together to see how much of an armhole I wanted. I decided on a 12” opening for the armhole. So I measured 12” from the shoulder fold down the side-seam, marked it with a straight pin, and began to baste from the hem going up toward the straight pin.

Not being an accomplished Mixtec seamstress, I took the fabric to the sewing machine and used a basting stitch (#4 stitch length on my machine) to sew all the seams together. I decided not to make the machine stitches smaller (#3) because I didn’t want to pull the the brocade fabric together too tightly and I wanted the flexibility to take the garment apart later in case I wanted to do something else with the material. Then, I steamed out all the seams with my iron (gently) so they laid flat. I finished the huipil by folding the bottom over into a ½” hem and sewing the hem by hand using blind stitches. The entire project took me about 3 hours. I didn’t need to finish off the neckline or armholes because the selvages are perfectly beautiful.

I’m really pleased with how this turned out. A huipil of this quality would cost $500+ in any shop in the Santo Domingo – Alcala de Macedeonia neighborhood!

Norma Hawthorne is a North Carolina fiber and jewelry artist, and university administrator, who writes about Oaxaca and living in Teotitlan del Valle on her website www.oaxacaculture.com She is currently organizing weaving and natural dyeing workshops with Federico Chavez Sosa and Eric Chavez Santiago in Teotitlan del Valle.

ADDENDUM: June 5, 2008. I’ve had lots of requests since writing this post for where to purchase the Taller Flora by Carla Fernandez book.  I cannot find a U.S. source and intend to try to track down this down on my upcoming trip to Oaxaca.  Meanwhile, if you go to the website:  www.flora2.com/ you can download the book from a PDF file.

Wars have been waged, tributes paid, and civilizations overturned because of cochineal. Cochineal is one of the most valuable commodities on earth. Some say, it is more costly per ounce than gold. For the uninitiated, cochineal is used to dye fiber RED (and purple, pink, orange, and all shades in-between). Remember the Red Coats of the British Army — their coats were dyed with cochineal. Yes, cochineal is a “parasite,” I reply in response to a question recently asked. Aztecs had exacted fealty payments in cochineal from Zapotec and Mixtec subjects long before Cortes conquered southern Mexico. However, not soon after, the Spanish created a controlled world monopoly on the commerce of cochineal. The holds of galleons were filled with tons of dried powder to export to Europe, as a royal and middle class sought to bedeck themselves in red — symbol of power and prestige.

Where does cochineal come from?

A beetle grows and develops on the fleshy leaf of the prickly pear cactus. It becomes imbedded, morphs from male to female, lays its eggs, multiplies, and after about three months of development is ready to be harvested. In Teotitlan people call this beetle a bug. The bug is picked off by hand, dried, and then crushed. It is about the size of an ant. If you pick a live bug off the cactus, put it in the palm of your hand and crush it, it oozes a deep, rich red, like the color of blood. Add lime juice or ash and watch a color transformation. It takes a g-zillion little dried bugs to make an ounce of powder. In the Chavez home, they crush the bugs by hand with a mortar and pestle.

Oaxacan rugs and textiles dyed with cochineal are much more expensive because of the cost of the dye. One can pay up to 50 percent more for a piece that is all naturally dyed with cochineal. Because of the costs, cultivation and preparation time, most weavers in response to market demands for cheaper goods, have put aside the traditional methods of dyeing with cochineal and are using aniline (commercial synthetic) dyes instead.

Oaxaca, once the center for cochineal cultivation, has been surplanted by Peru which produces the largest quantity of cochineal in the world. With renewed interest in cochineal by weavers, the cochineal farm just outside of Oaxaca city is cultivating and selling the little bugs. You can even find souvenir packets of them in gift shops on Alcala Macedonia.