Artisans gathered in Los Pinos resist the invasion of plastic with talent.

▲ In the first image, Ocotlán Zempoalteca, a Tlaxcalan clay master; then, aspects of the artisans' gathering at the former presidential residence.

Angel Vargas

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, June 15, 2025, p. 3

The hands of an Ocotlán Zempoalteca woman mold the wet clay as if it were tortilla dough. It's an act of alchemy that, thanks to her skill and the magic of fire, will give life to a burnished clay jug. At 74 years old, this Tlaxcalan master knows that every piece that leaves her family workshop in San Sebastián Atlahapa fights an unequal battle against plastic: one of its worst enemies.

We used to sell 10- and even 20-liter jars at the Basilica of Ocotlán, my town. Now we only make three-liter jugs. They started adding a lot of plastic products, and our work becomes expensive. But making them isn't the same as buying and reselling them , he says, while showing off some miniatures that take the same amount of time he used to spend on larger pieces.

I've been doing this for over 60 years, since I was a child. I learned it from my mother, just as she did from hers. Nowadays, I only make small decorative figures because clay is too heavy for large pieces. Everything changes.

Their story is repeated among several of the booths at Original: Decorative and Utilitarian Art Gathering, which concludes this Sunday after three days of activities at the Los Pinos Cultural Complex, where several of the 250 master artisans from 28 states warn about how synthetic materials can erase ancient knowledge and traditions.

A few aisles further on, Berta Zárate Blanco, from Santa María Atzompa, displays a collection of lamps with lace-like openwork. They are the hallmark of the 10 Zárate Blanco siblings, the only family to master the technique of lace-worked white clay in this Oaxacan town.

“We used to make drawn red clay, which served as a container for fresh drinking water. Later, we switched to openwork, but now in white clay. It's an ornamental work, because utilitarian pieces—jars, pitchers, and plates—don't leave as much impact anymore,” he notes.

There's a lot of competition for plastic items, because before, at parties, they used to use pots or jugs with handles, but now they use plastic buckets. It's something that's affecting us. It puts our items at risk, because sometimes they don't sell as much as they used to; sales have actually dropped.

Proud to be part of the third generation of a family of artisans, Doña Berta talks about the unevenness of making a living from crafts: "Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's difficult; there aren't always good sales. But, honestly, we keep doing this because we love it, and it helps us survive ."

On the second of its three days of activities, this Decorative and Utilitarian Art Gathering—held as part of Original 2025—attracted thousands of people from very early on Saturday. The cloudy day and intermittent rain did little to deter the crowd. The aisles and stalls of the exhibition are almost at capacity, and the hustle and bustle is relentless.

Everywhere you look, everything amazes, surprises, and/or moves. Whether it's a wood carving, a palm basket, an alebrije, the colorful textiles and clothing of various indigenous peoples, or the always spectacular Huichol designs. Such is the influence of the creativity of Mexican artisans that they have managed to attract visitors not only from Mexico but also from other countries, such as Korea, Spain, Italy, the United States, and Switzerland.

Of his 30 years, Alfonso Martínez has dedicated 15 to artisanal work in burnished black clay. In his space, alongside hearts and candlesticks sgraffitoed or carved with the skill of a surgeon, he has an impressive surrealist sculpture: a bust from which demons, angels, and fantastic creatures hang, surrounded by disconcerting sculptural images, including that of a wake.

This is not craftsmanship, in the right eyes it is art, and what I do is a kind of exorcism of my nightmares , says the Oaxacan from San Bartolomé Coyotepec, who is the son of a backstrap loom weaver and has renewed the technique of burnished black clay by mixing filigree openwork with his personal iconography.

Despite his talent and mastery, and the fact that his work has even been sold in other countries, dedicating himself to crafts has not been an easy experience for him: "What I sell sometimes only covers the rent. This is my first time participating in Original, and it's been wonderful because I've sold a month's worth of work in just the last few days ."

Evening falls, and people are still enraptured by the prodigy of shapes, colors, and inventiveness that overflows from the former presidential residence of Los Pinos. For many of the artisans, this is the first time they've participated in this event organized by the federal Ministry of Culture, and they say they are fortunate and satisfied with this experience, during which they have received workshops, including how to register their trademark, promote their works in digital media, and price their products.

I feel very happy to be here, but even more so to be able to do what I do. Because it's a way of preserving knowledge, and above all, a history , emphasizes Doña Ocotlán Zempoalteca as she continues to shape the wet clay in her hands.

▲ The presentation was directed by musicologist and researcher Manfredo Kraemer, who chose songs inspired by the Virgins of Guadalupe in Mexico and Bolivia. Photo: Armando G. Tejeda

Armando G. Tejeda

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, June 15, 2025, p. 4

Madrid. Some of the most beautiful pieces of the so-called Baroque style of colonial America were performed in the Prado Museum auditorium in a concert that was part of the parallel activities for the exhibition "So Far, So Close," inspired by the figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a pretext for recovering the artistic value of viceregal art.

The concert was performed by one of Europe's most prestigious Baroque music ensembles, The Rare Fruits Council, directed by musicologist and researcher Manfredo Kraemer, who chose pieces inspired by the Virgins of Guadalupe of Mexico and Bolivia, with works by composers such as Antonio de Salazar (1650-1715), Manuel de Sumaya (1690-1755) and Ignacio Jerusalem (1707-1769).

The person responsible for the historical research for the selection of the pieces was the musicologist and composer Bernado Illari, specialist in Latin American music and professor at the University of North Texas, who explained that it is a research made concert, a work of great rigor of sources, practices and contexts used as a basis to imagine the best possible music .

He explained that the story is simple but fascinating. On one side of the world, the Virgin of Guadalupe of Mexico, who appeared to an indigenous man in 1531 and became the emblem of the soul of a continent. On the other, a Guadalupe painted by the friar Diego de Ocaña, sent to Bolivia to collect alms, ultimately generating a local fervor that today fills streets and cathedrals with dance processions and popular songs. The devotion was twofold, but the emotion was shared. And music, that common language that explains everything without saying almost anything, was essential. In Mexico and Chuquisaca (present-day Sucre), the great Marian celebrations were woven with a repertoire that combined liturgical solemnity with the vitality of the baroque Christmas carol. A festive and theatrical language .

The concert was a previously unpublished and carefully documented selection of pieces composed in the 17th and 18th centuries around the two Guadalupes. On the one hand, the Chuquisaca tradition, led by the peninsular master Juan de Araujo and his Creole successors Roque Jacinto de Chavarría, Blas Tardío de Guzmán, and Manuel Mesa, who developed a local style of great expressive richness. On the other, the Mexican repertoire with works by Antonio de Salazar, Manuel de Sumaya, and Ignacio Jerusalem, whose compositions echo European Baroque, but with their own accent. In both cases, music served to explain the sacred through the everyday: arias that caress, motets that move, and carols that bring a smile. Through these, an attempt was made to explain how love for Guadalupe was also a way of making music, of creating identity, and of singing the world with its own accent.

The Rare Fruits Council, one of the most highly regarded ensembles on the European Baroque scene, is made up of musicians who regularly collaborate with groups such as Musica Antiqua Köln, Les Arts Florissants, Concerto Köln, and Jordi Savall. The group combines historical rigor with a scenic expressiveness that transcends the academic. Its members' shared interest in exploring the triosonata, the quintessential Baroque chamber music genre, led to the formation of the group. Their notable recordings include Harmonia Artificioso-Ariosa (1996) by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, which won the Diapason d'Or and the Grand Prix de la Académie du Disque and was unanimously acclaimed by international critics as the benchmark recording of this work, and Rariora & Marginalia (2003), a selection of rarely seen musical works by Georg Muffat, Philipp Friedrich Böddecker and Antonio Bertali, among others. The group's name, an allusion to the florid naturalistic titles of countless Baroque-period musical releases, is also a declaration of an aesthetic purpose: as in a riddle, to discover the familiar hidden beneath an exotic costume, or as in art, to renew wonder and illuminate a familiar object from an unusual perspective , as they explain. The performers are Elionor Martínez, soprano; Judit Subirana, soprano; Daniel Folqué, alto; Víctor Cruz, tenor; Manfredo Kraemer and Guadalupe del Moral, violins; Balázs Máté, cello; Sara Águeda, harp, and Alfonso Sebastián, harpsichord.

▲ Haydeé Boetto, Ana Lara and Consuelo Carredano in the Manuel M. Ponce Hall of the Palace of Fine Arts, during the presentation of the new era of Mexican Music Editions, founded by Rodolfo Halffter and other composers in 1947. Photo by María Luisa Severiano

Angel Vargas

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, June 15, 2025, p. 4

"It was completely abandoned ," says composer Ana Lara regarding Ediciones Mexicanas de Música (EMM), one of the most significant cultural projects to emerge during the last century in the sound field of our country.

Now, the publishing house founded in 1947 by fellow Spanish composer Rodolfo Halffter (1900-1987) with the aim of promoting the publication of Mexican music scores, is beginning a new era after remaining adrift for a long time.

The initiative is the work of composers Federico Ibarra, Luis Jaime Cortez, and Ana Lara herself, members of its editorial board. For the past two years, they have been working to revive this cultural enterprise with the mission of contributing to the recovery and dissemination of the national repertoire.

After the death of Mario Lavista (1943-2021) and Víctor Rasgado (1959-2023), former members of the board, in addition to maestro Ibarra, we decided to make the effort to rescue the publishing house , Ana Lara explains to La Jornada.

"It's been an immense task because everything had to be put in order: the administrative and legal aspects... It's been very difficult, but at the same time a pleasure, because we see so much potential in this project. It's enough to know that its collection, consisting of more than 400 scores from 1947 to the present, contains the history of Mexican music."

The relaunch of EMM seeks to preserve its collection, republish it, and make it accessible, according to the creator. Now begins a new era of repositioning; we want to give it a new profile through the use of digital technologies to showcase a catalog that remains largely unexplored .

He explains that, initially, they will revive emblematic works whose scores are out of print, such as Huapango by José Pablo Moncayo; Sones de mariachi by Blas Galindo; the quartets of Silvestre Revueltas; and several pieces by Federico Ibarra, among others.

Catalog of more than 400 works

It's a catalog with just over 400 works, including classics, but also authors who are completely unknown even to us. So together we'll discover several treasures.

Another focus, he adds, is publishing new scores by contemporary composers. There are plans for some by Hebert Vázquez, Jorge Torres Sáenz, and Georgina Derbez. There is also work on unpublished Mexican music from other eras; this is the case, for example, with the quartets of Julián Carrillo. There is interest in doing the same with historical archives, such as that of the Colegio de las Vizcaínas, which, incidentally, currently houses the publishing house's collection.

EMM materials are now available to the public thanks to the alliance with Sonus Litterarum, a multifaceted Internet project dedicated to music, through a virtual store ( https://sonuslitterarum.mx/ ).