Wenner Gren Foundation Fellowship | Fieldwork on the intersection of seers and humor in San Juan Cotzocon, Mixe, Oaxaca, Mexico. Artwork featured below.
Aurelia Reyes was unique: an unmarried seamstress who had a dedicated kitchen structure. She and the village healer/knowledge-keeper/curandera/shaman, Doña Guadalupe, would spend hours talking and laughing outside the kitchen, or inside if it was raining. Aurelia was the sister of Selso Reyes, the coffee bean buyer and roaster and the aunt of the twins, Minerva and Esauro who spent time with her and often slept at her place.
Aurelia Reyes’s sister was a weaver of the elegant, delicate huipiles worn by the women in Cotzocon. Like other weavers in Cotzocon she wove cotton yarn with a hand loom pictured here where she is weaving by the door to her home, a structure similar to Aurelia’s kitchen but with a porch so she could weave outside.
Cotzocon was a four days walk from the nearest road in 1974, so people had to carry or pack everything to or from any larger municipality. Now there is a road, electricity, and an all women’s band—among other contemporary features.