Crafting Tradition: The Making and Marketing of Oaxacan Wood Carvings

PREFACE

xi c r a f t i n g t r a d i t i o n PREFACE The first time I saw a wood carving from the Mexican state of Oaxaca was in September 1987 in the living room of a friend’s house in Iowa City. This large, roughly formed sculpture of an unfamiliar animal was dully painted in a sickly green shade. Despite (or perhaps because of) its simplicity and weirdness, the carving had a certain charm, and I was intrigued when my friend told me that such pieces were increasingly sold in markets and shops in Oaxaca. She then showed me some bettermade , colorful carvings of dogs, snakes, and lizards that had been purchased on a recent Mexican trip. Although I enjoyed looking at the whimsical pieces, I had no idea that the trade in Oaxacan wood carvings would be the main focus of my research in the next decade. In the late 1980s and early 1990s I took several short vacations in Oaxaca immediately after my teaching obligations for fall semester at the University of Iowa were over. Oaxaca is sunny and mild in December, and I enjoyed the good weather, pleasant cafes, comfortable hotels , and inexpensive, delicious food. The main reasons I kept returning, however, were the state’s archaeological c r a f t i n g t r a d i t i o n xii sites, museums, markets, fiestas, and crafts. I was particularly struck by the wood carvings, which seemed omnipresent in hotels, restaurants, markets , and shops. The pieces were more elaborately painted and carved each year as artisans competed for customers. I wondered who the makers were, how they organized their work, and what their incomes were from carving. I was also curious about why the carvings appealed to so many middle- and upper-class tourists from Mexico, the United States, and Europe. During one of my vacations in Oaxaca, I took a bus tour that included a thirty-minute stopover in Arrazola, an important wood-carving center. I found out on this trip that I had been making several incorrect assumptions about the wood-carving trade. I had thought that carving was a minor source of income for rural residents; Arrazola’s large houses and many cars suggested that some people were prospering from craft production. I had been under the impression that the carvers were speakers of an indigenous language; the ones I met were monolingual in Spanish. I had assumed that most carvings were sold to tourists, but houses in Arrazola were filled with pieces that had been ordered by wholesalers and store owners from the United States. First Oaxacan wood carving seen by author. Don Roberts, collection of Holly Carver. Early Oaxacan wood carvings (circa 1985). Don Roberts, collection of Holly Carver. xiii c r a f t i n g t r a d i t i o n In the early 1990s I began to think seriously about conducting fieldwork on the wood-carving trade. The anthropological literature was full of accounts of misguided development projects, and I had studied several such fiascoes in previous research in Peru and Belize. Many wood-carving families, without being part of a planned development project, were quickly improving their standard of living. Perhaps their experiences would provide some clues about what conditions lead to successful small-scale development. Furthermore , I was reading more and more about how globalization was undermining the economic base of rural communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The carvers’ success obviously depended on their participation in an international folk art market. Could globalization sometimes help the rural poor? Or would the wood-carving boom inevitably lead to uneven development , with only a few merchants and carvers prospering? Were the carvers being enticed into relying on a source of income that would disappear when tastes for crafts changed among their middle- and upper-class buyers? Because many anthropologists work in Oaxaca, I wondered if someone else had conducted research on the wood-carving trade. After talking with colleagues from both Mexico and the United States, I learned that the only significant research on the wood-carvers had been carried out by a journalist named Shepard Barbash, who had written an article for Smithsonian magazine (Barbash 1991) and a short popular art book (Barbash 1993). Both the article and book included many striking color photographs by Vicki Ragan. Although...