Mañana es para siempre

While walking to a small neighborhood restaurant in El Paso, Texas, with my aunt and uncle many years ago, we came upon someone unloading "Casas Grandes" pottery in front of a funny little shop. The vendor went by the name of "Wild Bill." I thought it was some of the nicest pottery I had ever seen, but I had absolutely no background in pottery and now realize that this was just the ordinary pottery—the good stuff was still in a village in Mexico. I have not seen Wild Bill since, but I surely have seen a lot more "Mata Ortiz" pottery. After buying those few "ollas" I couldn't find Wild Bill again, but I was determined to find out where this great pottery came from.

At the time there wasn't that much information out there. A chance encounter with Robert Redford's Sundance catalog listing the name of the village, "Juan Mata Ortiz," and featuring some of the excellent Quezada family pottery, was all I needed to set me off on a road trip. I talked my cousin Jack Donald Jr., who had been living in Juárez for many years, into going down to help me find this little village, since it wasn't on any map. The drive from Juárez wasn't bad, and upon entering Casas Grandes we knew we were near because most people still referred to this pottery as "Casas Grandes" pottery. After my cousin asked around—he spoke Spanish and I didn't and some say still don't—we were off to "Old Casas Grandes," or Pueblo Viejo. From there we were directed to the Mormon town of Colonia Juárez. This is a hilly town with many well-kept western-style houses. The surrounding hills filled with fruit trees make it a very beautiful little town, especially in the spring. It is also the home of a very well-respected bilingual school, the Academia Juárez, run by Mormons. We asked several people, and much to my amazement no one had heard of the pottery. With perseverance we finally found—at the small shack of a gas stand right near the river crossing onto the road to Mata Ortiz—a very old toothless man who assured us that, yes indeed, he knew the way to Juan Mata Ortiz—right to the doorstep of Juan Quezada.

So off we went through the mesquite, over bone-jarring dips, and after two river crossings we found ourselves at the beautiful Hacienda San Diego. After admiring a place my hero Pancho Villa may have visited briefly, we pushed on to Mata Ortiz. My cousin and I were having serious doubts about our guide, since by now the dirt road literally was not much more than a wagon track. But we finally arrived after an hour and a half (the journey on the new road now takes ten to twenty minutes).

Through a series of coincidences in my life, I finally arrived with my cousin and guide to the place we had sought, which I have now called home for more than eighteen years. Although it was not my intention when we arrived to forsake the USA and move to Mexico, things happen. I now have a bit less money than when I started out. I do have a nice little home that I bought for $1,200, as well as a nice collection of broken pots, the by product of being a trader for so long. But I feel so lucky to have found this little village and am privileged to live in the epicenter of such a creative movement and see so much talent on a daily basis. Some of the talent here is unquestionably world-class. I have been a trader in pottery for a long time, but I'm still amazed at the artwork that people produce here. The pottery is a phenomenon that I will let others tell you about.

Pottery is just one aspect of Mata Ortiz, and not one that concerns everybody in the village. Mata Ortiz is an agricultural community that happens to have...