Home page//Crafts-for-sale introduction
Altagracia Gomez Mendoza
traditional Zapotec weaver
from Santo Tomas Jalietza, Oaxaca, Mexico
Altagracia using her traditional telar de cintura, or belt loom
Altagracia Gomez Mendoza was born in the traditional weaving village of Santo Tomas Jalietza, about 15 miles south of Oaxaca. She was eight years old when her mother began teaching her how to weave, and ten when she began selling woven goods in Oaxaca's zocalo. She has been weaving, and traveling to Oaxaca to sell her wares, for more than four decades. In addition to helping to support her family by weaving, Altagracia has raised eleven children (for the past ten years as a widow) and also cares for her aged mother.
Following a tradition that goes back many generations, Altagracia has taught all of her daughters to weave as well. She remembers when the women in Santo Tomas Jalietza only wove the intricately patterned belts that set them off from the women of other pueblos. However, her mother and other weavers of that generation adapted to the growth of tourism by working their traditional motifs into the table runners, placemats and purses of various sizes and designs that Altagracia continues to make, and modify, today.
Altagracia is known to generations of visitors to Oaxaca. She can be found almost any day of the week walking around the zocalo or nearby streets laden with examples of her weaving. Altagracia is a tiny but dignified woman, whose lined face crinkles into a beautiful laugh when something strikes her as funny.
As you would expect from someone who has been weaving for most of her life, Altagracia's hands move so quickly and deftly that it's just about impossible to follow what she's doing, much less capture it in a photograph. For her, like her mother and her daughters, weaving is not just a craft, nor simply their way of making a living; it's a central part of their lives, weaving them into an unbroken tradition that dates back to long before Europeans came to the New World.
Altagracia's hands fly over her loom
With the current problems cutting tourism to Oaxaca to less than one-tenth of normal, Altagracia and other craftspeople are finding it extremely hard to make ends meet. That's why we're introducing you to Altagracia and inviting you to seek her out--she's at the zocalo almost every day--and purchase and enjoy her some of her weavings.
samples of Altagracia's weavings
Home page//Crafts-for-sale introduction