MEXICO .- The summer of last year was very hard for the carpenters of Huamantla, Tlaxcala . With the same surprise that the world had welcomed them in recent years, they had to close the epicenter of their ephemeral art activities due to the pandemic and there was no devotion to Our Lady of Charity. Nor his famous carpets made of sawdust, corn and flowers.
It was during the day 14 during the famous “Night that Nobody Sleeps” and although they could not impact the world with another of their colorful creations in which the entire community of the central region of Mexico participates every year, the civil organization Alfombristas Mexicanos made a work virtually for the world and awaiting the reopening
Anticovid vaccination advances in Mexico with around 75 million Mexicans , a quarter of the population, and activities begin to normalize after the restrictions of the pandemic and these artisans say they are ready to return to the ring.
“The truth is that we have not stopped with the project,” says Miguel Angel Alfaro, executive director of Alfombristas Mexicanos.
larity of Mexican carpets made with perishable materials from the places where they are designed (seeds , flowers, leaves, wood, earth) was just emerging in Mexico and in the world beyond Huamantla when the pandemic began.
Still, in some areas , the Mexican Alfombristas collective managed to make an itinerant design “The eagle and the serpent: We are no longer the same” , a carpet of 16 Metters of diameter based on cobs, grains and corn leaves that was inaugurated at the Ensenada State Center for the Arts, Baja California, in November.
From there it jumped to Tecate and, later , from 8 to 18 December, at the Museum of Popular Art in Mexico City on January 6, 2021 and until March, where he could admire himself keeping a healthy distance.
The concept of the eagle and the serpent, as explained by the group, was “a gesture of encouragement and certainty” in difficult moments that we live as humanity. “We are no longer the same,” they said on one side and the other to where the design and its materials were transported in large trucks for those who wanted to appreciate the beauty of this creation.
() Mexican carpeting dates back to at least 180 years in the town of Huamantla as a religious syncretism because takes up pre-Hispanic antecedents of the cult of the Mexican goddess Xochiquetzalli (of beauty, flowers and love) that connected with the gods through paths of petals and flowers.
Over time it became a tradition to be admired every year in the summer of Huamantla, but little by little, Huamantlenses have wanted to export it to other states of the country and to other countries where, prior to the attacks of the coronavirus, it was gaining strength.
The new horizons
From That push came up with the idea of adding Mexico to n international project to register ephemeral art rugs as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity before UNESCO.
Occurred in 2018, during the VII International Congress of Ephemeral Art held in Spain, Mexican Alfombristas made a carpet with seeds natural for the most important event in the world held every two years from 2006 and brings together associations from Europe, America and Asia.
The purpose is to promote relationships between carpenters so that maintain the values that characterize the group: generosity, volunteering, respect, friendship and creativity and guarantee its continuity with international support. They are still there.
Miguel Ángel Miranda says that they are in the process of documenting the impact on the community, a requirement requested by UNESCO. “It is a long process, but we are moving forward.”
Mexican designs have been very successful in the world since they began to be exported at the event in Spain, where they took the carpet that they titled “First Dream , the Mexican baroque is freedom”, a complicated concept designed by Alejandro Lira, author of all the concepts of Mexican Alfombristas.
They used corn of different varieties, sizes and colors , beans, beans, details in chinamite (dried corn cane) and corn leaves with which they formed the heart, the axolotl, the moon, the rattlesnake, the turkey, the Mexican wolf, the monarch butterfly, the opossum and the goddess Tonantzin as a sample of pre-Hispanic Mexico and syncretism.
That same year they jumped to Belgium to upholster the Central Square of this city with a monumental carpet during the Flower Carpet, an event that takes place every two to us. A monumental carpet made mainly of begonias, one of the most important flowers in this European country, is installed on the Grande-Place (World Heritage Site by UNESCO).
Mexico surprised, then, with a rug Inspired by three cultures: the Otomí, the Purépecha and the Chupícuaro that showed an Otomí bird, surrounded by talavera with two Purépecha warriors dotted with ceramics, suns that remembered the origin of the creators who presented it: Guanajuato.
The carpet measured 75 meters long by 24 Wide. At the time, the artist Ana Rosa Aguilar told the press that, although the work was only going to last five days, the planning took almost a year to design the mat that she ended up using 600, 000 Begonias and Dahlias. “This is the art of the ephemeral.”
For Mexican Alfombristas, other invitations came later to Italy, Belgium, Germany, Malta, Korea, China, India, Tibet … and, to the pair were surprised to their own country.
Prophets in their land
The 28 April 2017, the inhabitants of Mexico City woke up with beauty at their feet. The esplanade of the Monument to the Revolution was covered with colors with the mega carpet of more than 4, 500 flowers made with leaves of corn in which more than 200 participated and 30 carpets from Huamantla.
It was known that Huamantlenses had mounted floral carpets for the visits of Popes John Paul II and Francisco, but it was the first time that t They used the capital of the country and the success was resounding as part of the first festival of “Flowers and gardens” in the city as a commitment to nature.
One of the main objectives of carpets is transform a public space into a collective work of art. For this reason, and through a performance, the community is summoned to participate in the assembly with materials from nature that are accompanied by lighting, sound, video and scenography.
Seven months later, during the premiere of the film Coco (by director Lee Unrick) at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexican Alfombristas made two works of ephemeral art. “Heart” and “Guitar” with colored sand, flowers and candles as a sample of the symbolic elements of the film.
The symbols are a essential element of carpeting. In Guanajuato —another of the regions where it has developed— presented a work in honor of the use of pre-Hispanic murals discovered in Cacaxtla.
They titled it South and North in which it was reflects the confrontation of two groups, one dressed as birds and the other of jaguars that represent the earth and the sky, the body and the spirit, the south and the north that meet and confront.
on a time when Mesoamerican culture was connected.
But beyond the content, the process of elaboration is part of the symbolism for collective work. Carpeting is collective; result of the sum of wills and hands that work to create; allows to organize, live in harmony; temporarily transform a space and use responsibly the materials that offers nature.
“It is to preserve a tradition and communicate a message of our identity ”, summarizes Miguel Angel Miranda.
Alfombrista School
The pandemic was a pretext. Or an opportunity. The fact is that Mexican Alfombristas launched a carpet-making school in seven primary schools in Naucalpan, in the State of Mexico and they worked with 1, 500 students and their families and 100 teachers who were instructed to train them in carpeting.
“We want to transmit values such as solidarity, teamwork, respect, inclusion in community work in this project ”, said Claudia Rico, operational director. “The children did not work alone but with their families and with the materials they have on hand.”
The work dynamics were not compulsory but that the little ones did it voluntarily after all their normal classes and that is why it was a surprise that the children got involved with lentils, rice, beans, seeds, leaves, flowers, tree twigs, painted salt, painted sand other recycled, plasticine, paper, squares, balls, confetti.
The point was make catharsis or, at least, show their concerns about events such as that they will not return to many classmates who were in sixth grade.
“We were surprised that even the children who worked alone met the challenge,” said Rico.
The methodology was simple. In sessions of The playful activities made them aware to express their feelings in drawings that were transformed into rugs that will soon be a collage for virtual exhibitions of Mexican homes for the world.
Follow Reading: Increase in HIV among Mexicans and other Hispanics