Teotitlan del Valle Fam. Lazo Mendoza Weavers

Gracias. Erick y Ron esto es un gran Trabajo. Que ustedes hicieron

In fact, Chichicapa, a small village hidden away in the mountains between Ocotlan and Tlacolula, has long been a producer of fine woolen yarns, which today are still sold at Sunday market in Tlacolula and at Friday market in Ocotlan. The current practice of purchasing woolen yarn is therefore not a degenerate, inauthentic practice (in the photo to the left, recently washed wool is hung out to dry on a roof top).

Contrary to popular conception and following a centuries' old tradition (of bartering for cotton at market), for at least the last 400 years Zapotec weavers have bartered for or purchased wool and sometimes yarn rather than raising their own sheep and spinning yarn themselves.

It was common for the Aztec to take tribute in products locally produced and as a consequence it seems highly likely that the towns in the Valley of Oaxaca near Teotitlán were involved in textile production. Paying tribute in the form of cotton textiles, however, was quite common in pre-Hispanic Mexico and therefore, this area was not unusual in this respect.

Our first concrete and reliable information about Zapotec textile production comes from the period of the Spanish conquest. The Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Valley of Oaxaca in the early 1520s and Aztec tribute lists from just prior to their arrival indicate that the area around Teotitlán, ¿Santa Ana?, and ¿San Miguel? supplied large quantities of cotton textiles to the Aztec " "Empire" " as tribute.

Archaeologists believe that this area of the Valley of Oaxaca was settled more than 2500 years ago; however, the archaeological record doesn't tell us very much about pre-Hispanic textile production. Fragments of a cotton textile were found by archaeologists excavating in a cave near Mitla and ceramic spindle whorls are present in the archaeological record, but little else remains.