Otomi on My Mind

Otomi on My Mind

Kim can’t speak a lick of Spanish and her pronunciation is worse. And here we are, living in an Hispanic culture where almost 90% of the people who come to the house to work on things for us, from the house cleaners to the gardeners are Mexican. Handy Brad is from the Pennsylvanian part of México, but most of the rest are from the Altiplano or Mexican Plateau. This is where the truly indigenous people of Mexico come from. These are the truly native Mexicans that were there long before the Spaniards under the leadership of Conquistadores like Hernan Cortés came over in the early Sixteenth Century and decimated the population with guns, germs and steel, as Jared Diamond would say. The people who dominated that region were the Aztecs, but as well known as they are in storytelling to us with their calendars and sun gods, it was the Otomi people that predated them and were spread all across the Mesoamerican plain. The Otomi were a nomadic people, which meant they were flexible as to where they lived. Get your ass kicked by the Aztecs, move on. Watch the Aztecs get their ass kicked by the Conquistadores, move on. Moving on and adapting were the Otomi way of life and how they survived the tumultuous centuries of the Mexican conquest. Steering clear of the Spaniards was a good policy for many reasons.

In our home, I have quite a collection of Mesoamerican antiquities from our years of living in Central America. I have a broad collection of pre-Colombian artwork that was mostly found in burial mounds. The relatively undisturbed nature of such graves combined with the ancient polytheistic cultural norm of burying people with a bunch of stuff they might need in the afterlife provided this treasure trove of antiquities. By now, the world at large, including those less respectful of history and more about making a buck, have come to realize that where there is a burial mound there is likely some good picken’s. In the 1950’s we had our choice of antiquities, whether we dug them up ourselves or bought them for pennies from itinerant grave robbers. Among the gems were many artfully crafted pieces of pottery (sort of a glazed terra-cotta in color and surface) and many pieces of carved pumice. Volcanic stone is very plentiful in Central America because the ridge line of mountains that start up in Canada, run through the Western U.S. and end in the Andean peaks that go down the length of the Western South American continent, pass down the length of Central America and dot the landscape with latter-day volcanos and the lava rock that they spew forth from time to time.

Pumice is very easy to carve since it is a porous and light stone formed from volcanic ash. We have bowls and statues fashioned from the stuff, all depicting, in one way or another, the smallish and compact-featured people of the Altiplano. I venture to suggest that these smallish folk were often Otomi since their nomadic ways made them the likely candidates to carry arts and crafts throughout the region, and specifically along the North-South spine of the two continents. We have other artifacts of interest as well, including the solid brass stirrup shoes of the Conquistadores. These are particularly interesting artifacts since they are so much more “modern” than the pumice and pottery of the natives. They scream the Bronze Age and the advances that Europeans had achieved by the Sixteenth Century that had eluded the Otomi and Aztecs. They speak of men on horseback with metal implements to bolster their spirit of domination. They also remind us that as macho and aggressive as the Conquistadores were, they managed to do all that wearing a size seven shoe. These stirrup shoes are small.

When we renovated our kitchen out here on this hilltop, Kim made two decisions. We had a good many wonderful framed photographs of indigenous Latinos done by our friend David Taggart. We knew we wanted those to adorn the walls, and while they had some color, they tended, as photographs do, to be more black and white than not. To bring color into the kitchen, Kim picked out a lovely hanging lampshade that had a colorful Otomi pattern with birds and flowers. It makes the kitchen come alive with local color. Based on that, we had my nephew, Jason, come and tile all of the backsplashes and under the counter bar with a white background and a brightly colored mosaic with local birds, animals and plants (cacti) as the theme. Jason did a fabulous job with the mosaic and his artistry comes through loudly, as does the local southwestern theme. I’m not sure if the tile work would qualify completely as Otomi in an exact manner, but it clearly has a n Otomi theme and the colors are very similar.

Based on our great pleasure with that kitchen element, when Kim and I started building out our Cecil Garden, it was hard to miss that there was a large wall of the house that a garden visitor would notice that dominates the northern side. We asked Jason if he thought he could design something for the space since one of his specialties is outdoor mural art, a direct descendant of his graffiti days as a young Las Vegan. Jason exceeded our expectations by drawing up a series of Otomi designs for the wall mural. We settled on one that combines the quail and hummingbird themes of our garden with vines that surround them and mirror the vines we are trying to grow against the garage.

Jason arrived two days ago and with the help of a pneumatic lift I rented to make his work easier (moving a ladder back and forth may be fine up to twelve feet or so, but for the higher twenty foot elevations, a more secure platform seemed advisable. What he has produced is simply stunning. It is truly a piece of art and it feels so personal and tailored to the new Cecil garden that we are in love with it. I find that the fact that we have embraced our local culture to the point of connecting our home to the cultural heritage of the people who live and work here, as they have for years, is a good feeling. We may not be fluent Spanish-speakers, but we speak Otomi in this household.