Tag Archives: masks

The Oaxaca Mask Project: Sew and Give to Keep Oaxaca Safe

Dear Friends: If you sew masks in the USA, I am expanding The Mask Project to ask you to mail me masks as a donation to keep Oaxaca safe. Our intention is to give out a FREE mask to all who will wear one in the city and surrounding villages — market and street vendors, customers, NGOs to distribute to their constituency. This will require a lot of masks!

How? You mail masks to me in Huntington Beach, California. I will collect the masks, put hang-tags on them explaining use, and send them via DHL to Oaxaca for distribution. When you SEND ME AN EMAIL, I will send you the mailing address. Thank you.

Send me an email to participate.

We are building a distribution network now — people on the ground who will go out and encourage mask-wearing. The government has mandated that everyone wear masks. Their use is not widespread. Perhaps this is because masks are hard to find. Perhaps, it is an unfamiliar practice. Perhaps it is because some people may not believe the gravity of the virus. We are in novel times.

Our job is to educate and disseminate. Our job is to help Oaxaca and her people. We can do this from afar, too.

Send me an email to participate.

I accept gifts of masks of any quantity, starting at ONE. The more the better!

Don’t make masks? Make a gift.

If you don’t sew, send a gift of money to support the effort to buy and ship masks. Send to: paypal.me/oaxacaculture We are buying masks made in Mexico — in Oaxaca and Patzcuaro, too — to fill the need. This necessitates money. Please give what you can. You can also send direct via PayPal to my account there — use Send to Family and Friends: oaxacaculture@me.com

Mask made by Rocio Bastida Cruz, San Felipe del Agua, Oaxaca

What the hang tags will say:

Protégete de la infeccion viral COVID19. Cada vez que salgas de tu casa usa un cubre bocas. ¡Si te cuidas tu, nos cuidas a nosotros!

Protect yourself from coronavirus. Each time you leave your house use a face mask. It protects you and all of us!

Thanks, Janet Chavez Santiago, for the translation.

Rocio in her workshop

We are using hang tags as an educational tool because many people do not believe there is a virus. It is something they can’t see. Many are uneducated. Many are poor and need to continue working to feed their families. Most have no savings to carry them through. Our help has no judgment.

Send me an email to participate.

Whatever you can do to help will be greatly appreciated.

Rocio’s Story

Rocio Bastida Cruz is a professional seamstress. She worked in a clothing store in Colonia Reforma and recently lost her job. Dave Crosley encouraged her to start making masks. She uses high quality cotton, double faced and elastic ear bands. She explains that to make the cubre bocas, she cuts two 17x20cm pieces of fabric. Everything is double stitched and ironed. She can make 450-500 mouth covers per week. My goal is to employ her and distribute this quantity or more per week, and perhaps she can hire on others to help her. This also expands employment opportunities for those who have lost their jobs.

Thank you for helping!

Dave Crosley is helping Rocio develop her mask-making business

In Oaxaca, Masks Now Mandatory and Need for Food

Yesterday, Oaxaca government announced that the use of face covers is mandatory throughout the city, that all public squares, where the greatest number of infections occur, will be sanitized, and that police will enforce social distancing to prevent concentrations of crowds. They continue to encourage isolation.

This is good news for Oaxaca.

Staying safe in Huntington Beach, California

More face masks are needed. I just ordered 100 masks to be made and mailed to Oaxaca. I am organizing a distribution task to give the masks away starting in the public markets and with street vendors and customers. We have created hang tags for each mask that will explain in Spanish why it is vital to use the mask to prevent the spread of infection and save lives. My goal is to enlist helpers to distribute the masks in Oaxaca and the villages. We will need hundreds of mask and funds to pay local people to hand them out.

Please help me support this effort and make a gift to my PayPal account, designating that it is for the Mask Fund: paypal.me/oaxacaculture or open PayPal, use Send Money to Friends and Family, for oaxacaculture.me

Delivering food for CEI distribution

Food Needed for Children and Families

Kay Michaels, owner of Oaxaca Eats Food Tours, tells me this:

Centro Esperanza Infantil / Oaxaca Street Children (CEI) is one of the non-profits that Oaxaca Eats Food Tours supports through a percentage of ticket sales. Dean [Michaels] and I have also donated directly to Oax Street Children They currently support 558 students from kindergarten to college.

Last week, Erich Hansen (you met him at the chef’s party with Kalisa) and I spent about 2,000 pesos at Sam’s Club to buy rice, beans, and oil. We delivered it to Martha Canseco Bennetts – CEI Board Chair and owner of Becari Language School. She delivered it to CEI.

Families also need cash donations in order to afford transportation into Oaxaca. Some of the supported students live 2-4 hours away. Getting in to Oaxaca for donations is quite a journey.

Packing up Huacal food baskets

Resources for Giving and A Cry for Help in Oaxaca

  • SiKanda.org Solidaridad Internacional Kanda (SiKanda) AC is a Oaxaca non-governmental, and non-profit organization. It was founded ten years ago with the mission of facilitating and leading participatory processes of harmonious and sustainable development to improve the quality of life of people in Oaxaca, Mexico. They are raising money to feed vulnerable families during the COVID-19 crisis. Donate via PayPal from their home page.
  • PuenteMexico.org works with 30 communities in the Oaxaca Central Valleys and Mixteca to grow and distribute healthy food, develop sustainable agriculture programs, and provide public health education. They support over 16,000 people. You can donate here.
  • Huacal is a food basket delivery service created by Sirilo and Oaxacking that sources food from Abastos Market, packs it into weekly portions, and distributes it now to those in need. It costs 350 pesos to feed a family of 4 each week. You can donate here.
Receiving a food donation at CEI

Masks for Oaxaca Hospitals and Clinics

Donate Here.

Tlayudona is organizing an effort to create high-quality reusable masks to donate to local hospitals and clinics in Oaxaca. We are looking to create a sustainable effort that will supply local medical personnel with much-needed masks.  At the same time, this project will provide living wages for several of Tlayudona´s hosts who no longer have work because of the pandemic. We ask that you donate what you can to support this effort.

Tamale Day, Candlemas and Masks in Patzcuaro, Michoacan

February 2, or Candlemas, is celebrated throughout the Catholic world as the end of the Christmas season. It marks the 40 days after the birth of Jesus, when Mary goes to the Temple in Jerusalem to purify herself.

In Hebrew tradition, this is the mikveh ritual bath. In Catholicism, it has become embedded in the cyclical annual calendar that marks the story of the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Who could resist this one? Reminds me of papier-mache masks in Venice, Italy

In the mask-making village of Tocuaro, just outside Patzcuaro along the lake, master wood-carvers make masks depicting the devil. The masks become part of an elaborate costume for Candlemas re-enactment in the church courtyard on February 2, starting at 5 p.m.

Elaborate, wood carved mask with embellishment

The re-enactment is like a play that depicts the forces of good and evil. The hero Michael Arcangel fights and slays Lucifer, represented by three devils, forever banishing them from earth to the underworld. The masks and costumes are elaborate and scary, especially for children.

Getting his mask fitted

During the conquest, throughout Mexico, priests from the Dominican, Franciscan and Augustinian orders, integrated Catholic rites with indigenous practices. This is called syncretism.

Mask-maker Maestro Felipe Horta, Tucuaro
This guy is scary — elaborate costume with horned mask

Candlemas marks the end of winter and the beginning of the planting season when days begin to lengthen and the earth warms for plowing. In ancient times, this was signaled by the alignment of the stars of Orion.

A whirling Lucifer with eagle wings spread
Lucifer and the shepherds

With the conquest, the agricultural cycle aligns with the Christian calendar and the beginning of Lent. Spiritual forces of light prevail and overcome darkness, allowing the “light of Jesus” to enter the world.

At the 40-day mark, Mary brings baby Jesus to the Temple for the priestly blessing, bringing candles for the altar. Hence the name Candlemas. The term Pastorela refers to procession of shepherds who accompany her. This officially marks the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of the next cycle, the Easter season.

We learn all this through our Patzcuaro guide Jaime Hernandez Balderas as our Michoacan Folk Art Study Tour participants enjoyed an afternoon with famed mask-maker Felipe Horta and his family before going to the Pastorela at the church.

Why is February 2 called Tamale Day in Mexico?

In Europe, bread is the offering. In Mexico, it is corn. Let’s go back to Christmas and January 6, Three Kings Day or Epiphany. Every family celebrates by eating a piece of Rosca de Reyes. Hidden inside is a baked-in plastic figure of baby Jesus. Whomever gets the little doll is blessed with providing tamales for the entire family on Candlemas. Sometimes, this requires feeding several hundred people. So, now, we can find eight or ten figures baked inside the large round loaf to spread the expense.

Rosca de Reyes, Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca
Elaborate eagle and serpent cape worn by a Lucifer

Mascaras Mexicanas: Mexican Masks — Dances, Dieties, Identity

A new temporary special exhibition at the Palacio Nacional (National Palace) on the Zocalo in Mexico City features hundreds of hand-made masks from towns and villages throughout Mexico.

This is the same building that houses Diego Rivera murals, so if you go there soon, don’t miss this. Enter on side street through security, go to second floor.

 

I returned on my last day in the Federal District and spent about an hour-and-a-half learning more about Mexican art and culture. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In ancient civilizations one of the main functions of ritual masks was to represent gods to worship them in religious celebrations. This was designed to support natural and social equilibrium.

 

In pre-Hispanic Mexico, masks served as elements of transformation that allowed rulers and priests to assume the identity of their gods during ritual ceremonies.  This helped bridge communication between the spiritual and natural world.

 The gold mask, above right, was found in a Monte Alban, Oaxaca tomb.

Sculptures, reliefs, murals and figurines from throughout Mesoamerica show ancient members of the elite personifying deities with the masks and attire that empowered them.

If you come with us on Looking for Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Art History Study Tour in February or March, you can drop in to see this show.

According to the exhibition curators, since the time of the Spanish conquest in 1521, the invaders prevented pre-Hispanic civilizations from freely practicing their religious customs. The conquistadores imposed their will by force. The Catholic religious friars sought to supplant native ancestral traditions by incorporating Christian ideas into native rituals.

 

Despite these efforts, pre-Hispanic symbols survived and indigenous people continue to observe their ancient religion under the veil of Catholicism.  New masks arose from this cultural mixing (mestizaje) with an original combination of symbols that continue to the present in many regions throughout Mexico.

 

This provides continuity for ceremonial and celebratory traditions.  Many communities throughout Mexico, such as Teotitlan del Valle, where I live, practice rites and dances like Dance of the Feather (Danza de la Pluma) from viceregal times in which costumes and masks play a central role in the celebrations.

        La Malinche mask, left, called Maringuilla bonita, is from the Purepecha Danza de los Viejitos, Michoacan. Here she appears as a sweet, modest young woman.  To the right is Moor Mask from the Sierra Norte, Oaxaca, with eyelashes and red cheeks depicting cultural exoticism.

 

The masks are handmade from gold, precious stones such as jade, turquoise, malachite and coral, wood, paper, straw, textiles and other materials. All the indigenous people of Mexico, including Aztecs, Mayans, Zapotecs, Purepechas and others used them.

 

Sacred dances in pre-Hispanic Mexico were ceremonies of invocation that found resonance in Catholicism as indigenous people were folded into the Spanish concept of small towns or barrios under the sponsorship of patron saints.

  Right, Huichol mask from the Sierra Madre of Jalisco. The Huichol people do intricate beadwork.

Indigenous people adopted and venerated these saint along with their own ancestors and pre-Hispanic deities. Friars promoted village feast days during the liturgical calendar and introduced morality plays. These were dramas based on sacred history and events that focused on the struggle between good and evil.

 

Often featured in these dances are masks representing Judas, Jews, Moors and the devil. The purpose of this was to instill fear and respect in the local population along with the message that they were defeated and obliged to strictly obey the new religion. I have no personal evidence today of any anti-Semitism in Mexico, that continues to welcome dissidents and disenfranchised.

 MuralsSEP+Best81-7

We see in the Hall of Festivals at the Secretary of Public Education Building in Mexico City, many of these celebrations painted by Diego Rivera in his murals. Masks in this exhibit depict the Deer Dance from Sinaloa, also featured by Rivera.

  La mascara posee un extraño poder de sugestiøn sobre la imaginaciøn … es la sintesis, la               esencia de la deidad, del demonio, muerto o héroe qu se trata de representar.                           — Miguel Covarrubias

           The mask has a strange power of suggestion on the imagination … it is the                                    synthesis, and represents the essence of deity, demon, death or hero.                                           — Miguel Covarrubias

The exhibition takes a step beyond the traditional to include the work of Mexican contemporary artists who work in various media. This painting (below) by Frida Kahlo, My Nanny and Me, is on loan for this exhibition from its home at the Dolores Olmedo Museum.

Evoking Frida Kahlo: Making Altars and Shrines Art Workshop

The painting is part of this exhibition because of the masked wet-nurse representing indigenous culture that provides sustenance.

 

Also included are the work of artists Francisco Toledo (paper mask) and Germån Cueto (wood mask), and painters and printmakers whose names I didn’t record (sorry).

   

Today, we often hide behind the mask we present to the world as a way of self-protection, self-preservation. In the days before the popularity of mask-wearing for Halloween, the mask was a symbol for deception, hypocrisy, and lies.

Instead, we can hide behind a straight face, make-up, choice of clothing to present who we are — to project “our face” outward. It is interesting to think that an exhibition of this type can cause each of us to ask the question, Who am I?How do I present myself and how am I “seen” in the world?