The highway that led us to Esmirna’s town was flanked by mountains and tall cacti. Most of the farms we saw were bare, with their soil resting between cycles of sowing and harvesting, a seasonal intermission. A plume of smoke rose at the entrance of town, where a group of men burned a heap of hay while drinking a milky beverage out of unlabeled plastic bottles. Esmirna, like most of the weavers of the community, learned her trade from her family. She uses natural dyes, high quality wool and pedal looms. Her husband taught me how to work the looms and Esmirna showed me the proper way of grinding cochineal and indigo with the metate. I had to hold my breath so the delicate dust of pigment wouldn’t scatter in the wind. Chunky drops of sweat, slowly rolling through my face, threatened to ruin hundreds of dollars of cochineal powder. Esmirna watched me graciously, entertained by the arbitrary and disjointed motions of my arms as I moved around her taking photographs. My enthusiasm was on par with the sporadic and mysterious sprinting of her dog. Esmirna’s creativity emanates from the well of her serene disposition. And the quality of her work mirrors the subtle elegance of Japanese Sumi-e paintings and the harmonious vitality of Bauhaus design. When I left town, a second heap of hay was burning, unattended by the group of men. Only a sleeping dog remained next to the fire.

Hi Esmirna. What is the name of the weaving technique you use?
Pedal loom.
Is it a technique that came from the blending of cultures or did it exist before the Spanish arrived?
I believe the Spanish brought the loom.
How did you learn the technique?
From my parents and grandparents, it’s been a long time. It’s said that here in Teotitlán del Valle, a priest who came from Spain brought the pedal loom. But first came the backstrap loom.
What does “backstrap loom” mean?
Yes, the loom is tied from a tree to your waist, you sit down and start weaving. Like the Triqui people in Oaxaca, I don’t know if you’ve seen them, sometimes they’re out on the streets weaving.
I see, so the original tradition was the backstrap loom and a Spanish priest brought the pedal loom. And is this tradition now passed down from woman to woman?
Yes, yes, it’s a custom here. Every day you get up and have to do the chores. But once the chores are done, then we start weaving on the looms.
What time do you wake up?
Around 6:00 in the morning.
Tell me what your day is like.
I wake up at 6, sometimes we go for a short run or a walk, then we come back and clean the kitchen, finish up, go to the market to shop, come back, eat breakfast, wash the dishes, and once we’re done, we go to the loom for a bit.
How many hours do you weave?
We start around eleven and finish around two to make lunch. That’s three hours. Then after lunch, around four or five, we start again until eight or nine at night, sometimes even until ten. So, about eight hours a day.

Are you good at running?
Just a little, sometimes we jog around 3 miles.
Do you get a day off?
Supposedly Sundays. But those are the days we have to clean, sweep, and wash dishes. We don’t weave that day, but we still have house chores.
How many pieces do you produce per week?
If it’s a rug, the design matters a lot. If it’s a complex design, we make very little progress, like 10 or 15 cm a day. And if it’s a rug that’s a meter and a half long by 80 cm wide, sometimes it takes us the whole week.
How much do you sell a rug of that size for?
It varies a lot, because there are natural dyes and artificial dyes.
Do you remember when you learned to weave?
Well, they didn’t want to teach me because my dad said it was men’s work. “Women were supposed to be at the metate making tortillas”. He also said: “School is not for you, because when you get married, you’ll have to make tortillas, food for your children. You won’t be writing numbers on the comal; you’ll be making tortillas. So you should learn to do housework.”
And how did you convince him to teach you?
I would watch how it was done and little by little I started asking my mom to teach me. I stopped going to school, and that forced them to teach me.
Who taught your mom?
My dad. She comes from a family of traditional cooks from the village. My grandmother was also a traditional cook—she made food for the mayordomías.
What is a mayordomía?
It’s when a church needs to dress a saint for its feast day and hold a celebration, inviting the church committee and close family. So my grandmother would cook a lot. She also cooked for weddings, quinceañeras, and other events.

What does it mean to be a traditional cook?
They make the foods that are used here in the community, the food that’s eaten in the village.
Do traditional cooks still use local ingredients?
Not all of them. There aren’t as many milpas as before.
What percentage of the ingredients used in traditional cooking are from the region?
About 80%, the rest comes from the city.
How long have you been working with looms?
Since I was eleven. I'm 45 now.
Have you taught anyone else?
Yes, my daughters and my son.
Do they seem interested in continuing?
Yes, they all work on the looms.
Do young people want to continue the loom tradition?
Here in the community, it’s still going. My son keeps weaving even though he studies on the weekends. He’s about to finish his degree. On his days off, he’s at the loom weaving.
Are all your looms the same?
They’re the same, what changes is the size. For example, with this one we weave rugs that are two meters wide by one meter long. The one my son is using is 1.3 meters wide by 2 meters long.

When someone is learning to weave, do they use a different loom or cheaper materials?
No, from the beginning the materials are the same. What changes is the quality of the rug. A beginner’s rug is not the same as one made by someone with ten or twenty years of experience.
How can you tell a weaver has experience?
Oh, in the edges! You can really see it in how tightly the thread is closed. Like in music—you can tell. Because I also have a daughter who’s a musician.
What instrument does she play?
She plays the French horn.
Tell me a little about the materials you use.
We use wool from Tlaxcala. We don’t spin it ourselves anymore. We buy it in bales because it’s very time-consuming. You have to wash the wool, comb it, spin it. Just imagine how long it would take to make a single rug if we also had to dye the colors, wash, untangle, and make skeins!
What are the pigments made from?
I work with natural dyes: cochineal, indigo, pericón, walnut shells, and pomegranate peels.
I know almost all of them, but what is pericón?
Pericón is a plant that grows in November. It grows in the mountains. Right now there isn’t any because it only grows after the rain. It’s not around all the time, just once a year.
Is pericón at risk of disappearing due to the water shortage in Oaxaca?
No. It grows on its own, but only in the mountains, in the highlands, very far away. People who live there bring it to us.
And why don’t you produce the cochineal dye yourself?
We buy it because it can’t be kept outdoors. The nopales I have over there are for cochineal, but they need to be in an enclosed space because they can get infested. When it rains, they get wet and the color runs. Then the little birds come and eat them. So there are people who only dedicate themselves to producing cochineal. Also, it takes six to seven months to harvest it. And there’s always the risk that it dries out.
I imagine there used to be families that produced the wool, the pigments, dyed them, and wove them.
Yes, yes, here in Teotitlán there are still some people who do all that, but it’s rare. Only about 5% of people still do everything.
I imagine it’s also an economic decision.
It’s not worth it to produce the wool, make the pigments, and also weave. Indigo and cochineal are super expensive, over 4,000 pesos per kilo.

Do you sell dyed thread?
We don’t sell thread. We like to dye it for our own rugs. Plus, the colors never come out the same because the process is natural. Cochineal reacts in different ways. Sometimes it comes out very red, sometimes it’s dull. Sometimes it looks brown.
What inspires you when designing?
Traditional designs, the grecas, diamonds. We use the images found in ruins, geometric figures. It also depends a lot on your mood. As you go, you see how you’ll combine the colors. Sometimes we don’t even realize it—it has a lot to do with how I’m feeling. If I’m angry, sad, or happy.
What’s your favorite story to weave?
For example, the story of the rains and the mountains. Since we’re in the valleys, rain is a blessing.
Do you ever run out of inspiration?
No. We always add a detail here, another one there, so it looks different.
What’s your style?
It always depends on the moment. Sometimes I add a little detail, some stripes, little braids. You get inspired while you’re working. I pull out the colors and see them, make my skeins, and start combining the colors.
Does the design change over the days?
No, no. From the beginning I decide on the color and design. It has to be finished how it started. Because changing threads when you make a mistake is difficult. If you don’t count correctly, you have to undo the work to find the error and start again. Sometimes you’re distracted doing something else, and if something gets messed up, you lose a day’s work.
When you weave with strong emotions, do your feelings show in your work?
If I’m angry, the result isn’t great. But sometimes, funny enough, I work just like I feel, and that rug ends up being the first one to sell. And when I’m very focused and dedicated, the rug sits there for a long time.

Do you know other parts of Mexico?
We’ve been to Tampico, Puebla, and Veracruz.
What did you learn on those trips?
Different color combinations and design styles. Different weaving techniques.
Have you had opportunities to collaborate with other artisans?
I think people are protective of their work. Here in Teotitlán, if you ask someone how they do something, they won’t tell you.
Can you imagine living somewhere else in Mexico?
No. In Oaxaca, we have everything. Once we went to Tampico, and there wasn’t even food. They cook you an egg and charge you 150 pesos. Here, you go to the market and there’s so much food, almost free. Here the food is fresh—you don’t eat food from yesterday or the day before. When we go to the city or to other states, it’s hard. In some places, people eat a lot of greasy food. We’ve visited places where it’s just a headache—everyone’s rushing around. We’re in paradise. If we want, we wake up whenever we want, go to the market, come back calmly. We don’t have so much pressure.
Using your imagination, if Mexico City were an animal, what would it be?
Oh, I don’t know. A roadrunner—it’s always running.
For you, what are the essential things a person needs to be happy?
To be at peace with yourself, to have health. Because if you’re not okay with yourself, then the people around you won’t be okay either—you’ll be angry, yelling all the time, fighting and arguing. So there’s no harmony, not inside you, not in your work, not around you.
Anything else?
Having materials to work with, having food.

How do you keep yourself at peace?
By trusting in God. Nowadays people stop at a red light and are already on their phone, like the phone is their whole life.
It’s like an energy drain.
Yes, because you get sucked into the phone and lose hours without getting anything out of it.
How do you think it is for people who emigrate to the United States, leaving behind their traditions and environment?
It’s very hard. I also tried to emigrate once, but when I got to the border and saw how things were, I turned back. You risk so much. You have to leave your family, your home. It’s a beginning where you don’t know which direction things will go.
Tell me more about that experience.
Yes, I went through a lot—many struggles. Sometimes there was nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat, no work. So when I have a craft in my hands and know I can do something with it, it’s not worth it to leave. We have a richness we don’t value.
Do you dream at night?
Sometimes, yes.
Do you remember your dreams?
Last time I dreamed that my husband, my kids, and I were walking. I don’t know where we were going, but everything was green. There were lots of trees and we sat down. We arrived somewhere to eat, and we brought food with us.
Was it a pleasant dream?
Yes.

Do you have nightmares?
I don’t remember very well… I felt like I left my body—I saw myself leaving it. My children and family were crying. I saw them there, crying, and I couldn’t get up. I literally felt myself leaving, and I went to a place where I saw a very white light. It was like I had reached the presence of a higher being. I saw white garments, a glowing light. I woke up feeling empty.
What did you do when you woke up completely?
I cried and cried.
Are your parents still alive?
No, my dad passed away about thirty years ago.
And your grandparents?
No, not anymore.
What do you remember from your childhood?
Going to school. My mom lives up on a little hill way over there. So we had to run down to school and then go back. If anything was missing, they’d send us running, and we had to cross a river. Now there are bridges, but back then, we had to cross over the little stones, and sometimes there was water. We fell many times. One time we fell, and the egg I had bought from the store broke. It was the most valuable thing I had.
How would you like to live the last years of your life?
I’d like to be at peace with myself and have my health. More than anything, to have my health, because when you’re sick—even if you have a lot of things—you can’t enjoy them.

Esmirna Lazo (english)

Eeyor

Esmirna Lazo (español)