JOURNEY TO SANTA TERESA

Aruna Piroshki, March 1991

We sold 5 Trillis spinning wheels to the government of Nayarit in November of 1991, and used them to give demonstrations of spinning during the 'Feria de la Mexicanidad' in Tepic. But it was clear that the indigenous Huichol and Cora peoples who lived high in the surrounding mountains were the ones who would benefit most from these wheels.

The Nayarit government has a department whose job it is to promote the crafts, and Pepe Lima, the head of this department asked me to demonstrate the spinning wheels in the Sierra. He sent Doña Rafa, a stalwart member of the government craft workshop to accompany me. Doña Rafa regularly visits the mountain people and takes them craft work to do. Kaerolik, my 9 year old daughter, also came.

Tepic is the gateway to the Sierra, and our journey began at the local airport. All the local flights are scheduled for 6 a.m. We arrived in the dark at 5:15 to find a few Huichols and Coras sleeping outside the airport doors. Pepe drove up a little later with Doña Rafa, three spinning wheels, and a sack of wool.

Our flight was one of the last to leave; 2 small 6 seater planes were dispatched to Santa Teresa. The 3 spinning wheels, the wool, and our heavier bags cost 8 dollars, and each return ticket for adults cost 50 dollars, 30 for a child. It was a 35 minute flight. Leaving the cultivated land around Tepic we flew over more and more mountainous areas thinly covered with trees, arid and eroded with little sign of life, past the 'Micachos' , a mountain ridge of horn shaped peaks and over the river 'Paso de Bueyes' until we reached the highest area of the Sierra and slowly descended a little to a flat, cultivated area, and the little town of Santa Teresa.

After seemingly drifting slowly over the mountains, we were rushing to a halt beside the town. A group of men were perched on a fence, more brightly clad than the regular, each with a woven pouch over his shoulder and a big cream coloured hat. They answered our greeting. A couple of pickups drove up with return passengers for the plane. This little town has 3 regular flights a week; Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The alternative road journey is arduous; 7 hours to go from Santa Teresa to Jesus Maria in the Barranca, and then another 5 to Huejuquilla. There is also another route through Ruiz.

We were directed to the house of our contact, Don José Rodriguez, just 60 yards from the runway. We were delighted to meet a sprightly old man with a white moustache and his wife Boni, equally sprightly and with a mischievous face. Both of them wore wide smiles. Don Jose slowly read the letter of introduction from the government out loud, then warmed to the task of looking after us.

The town of Santa Teresa is composed of some 50 houses around a big open area in the middle of which is the new (and still unmanned) clinic with a radio telephone station. There is a well stocked shop to one side and a long street of adobe houses. The grander buildings are carefully built in local red stone like the huge church. Beside the church is a long white arched mission building and the ruins of another older church surrounded by peach orchards. Roves, sometimes of grass, often of Ricalit. Several houses are made of wooden boards, sometimes with a base of huge beams. There are often storehouses on stilts with bamboo walls and brush walled enclosures for the animals. Outside the town we noticed fences made with an unusual mortise and tenon construction that was also used in the roves of the houses.

We were shown to one of a pair of brick houses with large chimneys and water tanks on the roof. Inside it had a concrete floor instead of the usual compacted earth. The store room was designated to us to sleep in. The central room was large and airy and ideal for spinning demonstrations especially since we were in the middle of town and near to the shop with its daily traffic.

A group of 8 or 9 men gathered to watch as I assembled the wheels. One of them said he had a hundred sheep. They were interested and impressed. Among them were the judge, Juan, and the governor, Cirilo. Juan is tall quiet and serious. Cirilo small, bright and lively as a hummingbird! Not all of them spoke Spanish. A particularly active character, Don Toribio, took a strong role in explaining to the others and asking questions. When I'd set up one wheel I gave an immediate demonstration. T hey all marvelled. I showed a few photographs around and Doña Rafa and I explained our backgrounds and the history of the spinning wheel.

Don Toribio enjoyed the pictures of our boat especially. He's someone who has travelled and worked in different parts of Mexico, among them San Blas, and had seen boats coming and going there. He invited Doña Rafa and I to visit his tree nursery. He said it was about 1 1/2 kilometres from town.
After we'd demonstrated the wheels with wool and with 'estambre' (synthetic yarn that is much used for weaving pouches) to several groups of men, the women started to arrive in two's and three's. They were lively and not really very shy and they were keen to try the spinning wheels. We saw at once that they were very able. There are many treadle sewing machines in the town, so pedalling came very easily to them. Many of the women were able to spin pretty well immediately.

One woman with a Western style dress and a shawl stood out particularly. She spoke good Spanish and she explained that they needed to see if they could also spin wool to make blankets. She showed me the two types of yarn they use for this. The first is thick and even for the warp and they use a loosely spun, almost unspun, yarn for the weft. Soon we were spinning both types of yarn on Trillis.

There was much discussion about the price of the wheels; 450,000 pesos, or 9 woollen bags or 30 of acrylan. Some of the men said that the price was good, but the problem was that no one had either money or finished bags to exchange. No sooner did they finish a bag than they sold it.

All the rest of the morning women and girls were arriving to try the spinning wheels. Don Jose's wife Boni also came and Doña Rafa gave her a bag of estambre and cloth to make borders for skirts that they would finish at the workshop in Tepic. They obviously enjoyed the new materials. As the yarn needed to be plied I suggested that they do it later with the spinning wheels.

Don Toribio came to get us in the afternoon and we walked out of town, across the runway, to the Forestry land and the Nursery of project HUICOT. Don Toribio has been working on this for 12 years now, and the place is very impressive. From the town you can see a rich belt of trees and inside it is divided by avenues of tall larches double planted with some smaller trees. In one corner is a large area where pine cones for seed collection were spread out in front of a pair of adobe storehouses full of garden tools.

Across a stream of clear irrigation water is another area of red earth with neat rectangular furrows dug at even intervals and filled with seeding bags of pines, larches, eucalyptus, and fruit trees. There were Peach, Tejocotes, Apricots, Apples grafted on Sour Apple roots, Pears grafted on to Tejocote roots, Quince...... all at different stages of development. We crossed another neat avenue of larches carpeted with needles into an orchard of blossoming Pear trees, Peaches, and Tejocotes. "We just don't know what to do with all the fruit !" Don Toribio exclaims, "none of the women here know how to bottle, make jam or dry the fruit to conserve it. We eat a lot and the rest goes to waste. We need a teacher, the people here need 'capacitaciòn' ". We crossed another larch avenue into another orchard, "Perhaps you can tell me what I should spray these trees with to deal with the blight?", he asked me, pointing to 2 or 3 trees that have completely dried up. "Don't the Forestry engineers know that?" asked Doña Rafa. "Oh no!" is the reply. "They just shuffle pieces of paper, they don't actually know anything!" "There are seven of us working here and we'd like to be able to travel around, find other plants that would do well up here and learn more about nurseries, isn't there something you can do about it?"

We took another route back into town past fresh young Eucalyptus trees and well established Peach orchards. Although the land looks parched there are many fresh water streams. We reached our house and Kaerolik ran ahead, alarmed to see a little child's face peering out from our front door which we had left shut. We opened the door, and there at the spinning wheels, laughing at our surprise, and plying away at top speed were three women, Doña Boni and her two daughters, well into plying the yarn they'd been sent and going very fast!

Don Jose is a practised carpenter and his workshop was beside our house. He examined the spinning wheels carefully at the first opportunity even taking measurements, and we discussed the intricacies of the construction. He was very enthusiastic about making the post, legs and pedal from local hardwoods. These are the heavy parts to transport, and then bringing in the flier units and the wheels which are more difficult to make but small, light and easy to carry.

There are many women who depend on spinning and weaving to make their living. The men leave to work at harvesting or construction in the lowlands, and maybe never come back, while the women tend to stay, and many are single. Spinning a fine wool yarn is what these women have grown up with. I found that with the spinning wheels they preferred to spin slowly at first, and always produce a beautiful even yarn, it was a point of pride. The weaving of the Cora bags is renowned for its quality. Usually they weave double cloth, that is to say, simultaneously weaving two layers of cloth of contrasting colours which are skilfully interlaced to make different patterns. Sometimes this is even done with three layers! A good wool bag can be purchased for 50,000 pesos, (17 dollars). A bag woven with a particularly intricate pattern might sell for 80,000 pesos (27 dollars). They also make thick woollen blankets. Santa Teresa is one of the highest parts of the Sierra Madre Occidental, and it often snows in winter. These blankets are always made out of black or brown wool. They are thick, fluffy and wonderfully warm. They are also highly valued, selling from 200,000 to 450,000 pesos, depending on size (66 to 150 dollars).


Most sheep in the area are brown or black, with only a sprinkling of white ones. About three years ago, as we were told, a flock of 30 sheep and rams were brought into the area but soon most of them "died from the cold". We later found out that the Mexican government had bought these sheep from Australia, but it had been a bad deal. The sheep did not have fine wool, and they had come from a hot lowland climate so they soon sickened in the frosty mountains of Mexico.

We stayed a week in Santa Teresa and each day more people would come in to try the new machine. We kept demonstrating it and I showed my books on spinning and dyeing. One of the pictures showed a brown wool blanket with an indigo stripe which fascinated them. They said that in former times they made similar blankets. Our most popular exhibit was a pair of knitted woollen gloves in natural cream and brown wool. They came from the highlands of Guatemala. Everyone tried them on and enjoyed the warm resilient feel. Doña Rafa regretted that she had not brought her knitting needles with her. Many of the women wanted her to start a knitting workshop there.

Although several people were interested in buying a spinning wheel, only one came up with the money while we were there. Soledad Rodriguez Velasquez arrived late one evening and carried off the finest wheel we had, telling us to be sure not to tell anyone in town. She had bought it for her daughter, Teodora. The next day we went to show them how to take care of it. They lived about half an hour out of town, across a little stream. We passed 2 men making adobes. Further on we passed a strange old stone jutting out of a field; "Saint Santiago" we were told, we came to her 'rancho'. It was a small group of 4 houses with an orchard, a patch of tall cane for roofing and a cactus patch from which the people make salads of the new shoots. I explained how to take the spinning wheel apart, put it together again, oil it, and adjust it to vary the twist of her wool as she required. Then I made Teodora and her husband Manuel go through the same routine of dismantling and reassembly so they would remember.

Doña Rafa told me how much the history of the village had been affected by a series of 'programs de capacitación'. The first was a program to teach the villagers how to make adobe bricks about 50 years ago to reduce deforestation. The Coras originally built with wood. It was a mortise and tenon culture. Now most of the houses are solidly built of adobe, and adobe making has become a part of everyday life. In the centre of every house there is a raised adobe hearth which provides both for cooking and a preparation surface and often an oven. This is called a 'pretil' and it is a point of pride of every housewife to keep it neat and clean. I was amazed to find that this was a comparatively recent program to improve hygiene and reduce infant mortality. The forestry project is a part of the HUICOT government plan to assist the indigenous people. I found all this very encouraging because it means that the spinning wheel could also become absorbed into their culture and encourage the production of their blankets, pouches and who knows what else may start to flourish amongst these artistic and industrious people.

Wool is particularly easy to dye, much easier than cotton. Before I left, I collected a few samples of the different plants I thought might produce good colours. I found some lichens, a common meadow broom, some evergreen oak bark and eucalyptus bark. Later I made some dyeing explorations with these. They provided rich tans compared with the bright synthetic dyes, they could provide more mellow tones for quieter patterns. It proved the immediacy and simplicity of using plant dye stuffs and made a jumping off point for further explorations.

The Cora have a huge potential. They are a skilled and creative people who with more information and assistance could produce beautiful woollen articles both for their own use and to sell.

Assistance is needed to obtain some simple equipment for the preparation of wool. They need hand carders and combs, even eventually a small hand operated carding machine in the town, and spinning wheels which could be at least partly produced by the town carpenters. Even breeds of sheep with longer, finer wool

Also information and instructions is needed. Instructions on types of wool, care of sheep, preparing the fleece, knitting, plant dyes.... This could take the form of a 'programa de capacitación' in which particular items were made for a guaranteed market.