Where big fashion houses see dollar signs, indigenous artisans plumb priceless connections to nature and heritage
By hola | Published | No Comments
Interview with indigenous artisan Araceli Calixto
While growing up in the Mexican municipality Tenango de Doria, Araceli Calixto learned from her grandmother how to embroider the designs of her Otomi people, making wall hangings, napkins, tablecloths, and blouses.
“For us,” Calixto says, “all of this is important because it’s a way of connecting with each other. … It’s a way of life.”
The intricate designs have been passed down to Calixto through generations of Otomi women. They’re famous throughout Mexico and even the international fashion houses Louis Vuitton and Carolina Herrera have sold products that appropriate Tenango’s traditional designs.
Here in Washington, D.C., Calixto led a sold-out embroidery workshop in August 2021 at the Mexican Cultural Institute (MCI). The Institute is now planning to bring Calixto back for a workshop in March as part of new plans for a creative lab that will feature events and classes for Greater Washington residents.
After the success of Calixto’s workshop, Enrique Quiroz, MCI’s director of artistic affairs, says he’d like to establish a creative lab aimed at attracting local artists in the D.C. community that would promote multiple artistic disciplines.
“We noticed that we were just targeting the academic and diplomatic communities, but we were not reaching out to the actual community,” says Quiroz, who with the support of the Institute’s director, Ix-Nic Iruegas, is gearing up to launch the new creative workshops, as well as new Spanish and English classes. The Institute plans to charge a small fee to participants taking advantage of these new offerings with the proceeds going to the artists and instructors and to cover related costs, Quiroz says.
“We’re going to be programming the culture and traditions of Mexico, as well as art and talks and basically, reaching out more to the community,” Quiroz says, of the institute’s longstanding tradition of promoting Mexican culture Including music, performances, lectures and book presentations. The creative lab will be based in the former consulate building adjacent to the institute’s elegant mansion on the 16th Street NW, previously the old Mexican Embassy headquarters.
Dolia Estévez, a Mexican journalist who has worked as a correspondent and foreign affairs analyst in Washington for decades, was one of the attendees at last year’s sold-out workshop led by Calixto and her husband Onesimo. Besides being a lot of fun, Estévez sees the workshop as an example of soft power diplomacy, “a way of communicating that a country is much more than just politics,” she says.
“It’s an excellent way to connect with people through art craft and other types of arts,” says Estévez. “It shows that some of the most prominent art crafting in the world comes from Mexico.” She says it was the first time in her recollection that the institute had offered such a hands-on way of appreciating a Mexican handicraft and she continues to use the embroidery techniques she learned at last summer’s workshop.
Tenango designs are never the same. Each piece is unique and one of a kind. But to Calixto, it’s not just a way to express herself. It’s a bridge to her people, her culture and the natural things around her.
“Depending on how you feel, you sit down, and you start to sew without thinking of the time. You don’t look at the hour, you just sit down and you just sew and sew. And then, time flies. And when you look back, it’s done, and you’ve created an animal or a flower. You’ve done it, and you see how you felt,” says Calixto. It takes her about a week to create a large dinner napkin-sized design.
While her mother was at work, Calixto’s grandmother taught her the community’s embroidery traditions including how to sit when embroidering, the shades of color and how to identify which color combinations to use. Eventually, Calixto says she learned how to express how she felt through her art and even how emotions affected the colors she uses.
Calixto’s Otomi people live in the central plateau region of Mexico, in what’s now Hidalgo, Queretaro and Veracruz but can be found all over the country. Spanish isn’t the only language spoken. The ethnographic atlas, “Los Pueblos Indígenas del Hidalgo,” reports that the region’s inhabitants speak Calixto’s Sierra Otomi, as well as Nahuatl and Tepehua — three of the 143 native languages in Mexico.
According to the Mexican Cultural Institute, the region saw a cultural revitalization during the 1960’s after droughts disrupted the local agricultural economy and many families — primarily the women — began relearning the Otomi design and applying it to embroideries, bags, clothing and art. Since then, the craft has become a source of cultural and economic nourishment for the area. Each family has a unique style that’s different from the other.
Today, Tenango designs aren’t just made by women as it was traditionally. Men now partake in the craft and use it to show what they carry inside, according to Calixto. The tradition itself continues to evolve. To Calixto, she’s not just teaching others the traditions of her people, she’s teaching others how to creatively express how they feel.
In Tenango de Doria, many use art to financially lift themselves via online shops, and families teach their children so they may continue the tradition. However, fashion designers have also discovered the craftsmanship of the Otomi and other Mexican indigenous artisans, leading to controversy over stolen indigenous designs.
In 2019, Mexico’s Secretary of Culture, Alejandra Frausto, sent a letter to Louis Vuitton, publicly accusing them of stealing a Tenango design and using it as their own. The design in question graces a chair that was part of the Dolls by Raw Edges collection that year and retails for nearly $20,000 apiece.
Not too soon after, the French designer took down the listing, and the item’s online presence disappeared from the Vuitton website. In June 2019, Secretary Frausto sent another letter to the fashion brand Carolina Herrera for its Resort 2020 collection that Frausto says contains dresses embroidered in stolen designs.
“[They] are stealing their culture,” says Quiroz on the matter of Tenango design theft. “They’re stealing their ideas. There were embroideries that the Tenango people actually did for themselves around the ’60s. They started selling it to help their economics. So, definitely, it’s immoral and economic theft that they are doing,” says Quiroz, who likens it to stealing the rights to a song. “The most hurtful one is the moral one because you’re not giving credit, whatsoever.”
Carolina Herrera defended the use of the Tenango design in the 2020 collection, saying the designer “wanted to show deep respect” for “Mexican craftsmanship.” But Quiroz says a better way for the fashion mogul to show respect would have been to work with the indigenous communities and share some of the profits with them for their designs.
Mexican lawmakers have enacted a new federal law aimed at protecting the cultural patrimony of its indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities. An initiative to help artisans copyright their work is also under way, according to a 2019 piece by The New York Times, though obstacles remain.
Estévez, who calls Mexico’s indigenous crafting traditions one of the country’s treasures, says the Mexican government should do more to protect the artisans. “It’s a very highly qualified art, very unique, and should be protected by the government and institutions that deal with culture in Mexico,” says Estévez.
But to the Otomi, the designs are more than just a means of making a living. Calixto’s husband Onesimo says the Otomi people see it as their cultural connection to nature. “We understand what is the meaning,” says Onesimo Calixto. “Why the colors, why the different shapes or animals or plants or everything because everything is connected, and everything has a meaning. And we know that, that this is why. When we talk about this it’s important. It’s important for us as it’s not just about money.”
Have you run into any stolen indigenous fashion designs or cultural appropriation when you are shopping? If you’ve spotted stolen designs at stores in the Washington area, elsewhere around the country, or online, please email us a photo along with the date and store where you found it to holacultura@gmail.com.
To learn more about their handicrafts, contact the Calixtos at bcocorona@gmail.com. To learn more about the upcoming workshops at the Mexican Cultural Institute, visit the MCI website.
—Interviewed by Clara Melo de Paula, Andrew Vetsch and Melissa Perez-Carrillo
—Written by Adjanni Ramos
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