High above in the Guatemalan mountains, among its majestic lakes and rivers that nourish the earth like living veins, there is a land that safeguards the millenary memory of ancient populations. The Poqomam people, and their territory, have lived and survived there through their art, through clay, which is an essential resource for the creation of a variety of objects and artistic works.
In this land, the generational legacy of manual work done with clay survives. The art of handcrafting is a historical practice that involves creativity, memory, ancestry, and the dedication that goes into each object created. It is the representation of the Poqomam people’s collective memory, located in the municipality of Chinautla, in the community of Santa Cruz, Guatemala.
The clay which the artisans work with can be found on the banks of the Chinautla, Zapote, and Las Vacas rivers. María Filomena, a Poqomam artisan, explains that they used to be sources of life, where seeds flowed that would later flourish on the banks and around the river. Here they also found different types of clay, including the finest and highest quality to work with, such as yellow, purple, and white clay.
Clay, being part of Mother Earth, makes people’s connections, sharing of energies and emotions, visible, from being in constant contact with the earth. To return to clay is to return to the memory of their grandmothers and grandfathers who historically worked with it. Here I want to remind readers that this work practice, as a form of expression, was used by our ancestors. The many artifacts, objects, or works of art that have been found in archaeological sites in Guatemala are a testatement of this, which can now be found in different museums, including community museums that have been created for the preservation of our history.
The daily work of the craftswomen who make the connection with clay is not exclusively economic, since their work generates an emotional bond with Mother Earth, who provides them with goods and natural resources. Being aware of the territory that we inhabit and that we build, is a daily struggle.
“Our children grew up playing with clay and watching how we worked our craft with my mother.”
The process of working with clay requires sentiment, knowledge, memory, and creativity. María Filomena tells us about some of the steps involved in preparing the clay, the way she learned as a child with her mother and grandmothers. Making pottery is a complex process that requires skill, experience, and attention to detail. In her own words:
“When I was little, I would walk with my grandmother and my mother until we reached the river, we would collect mud and white sand, sometimes we would walk a little further and go into the hills. These lands are where we can find these vital places.”
“We would return home and start by cleaning the mud, we as children would help by removing stones or roots that we found. Then my grandmother would kneel on the floor to break up the larger stones of mud with the grinding stone, so that it could be better hydrated.”
“What we had before was like a gold mine.”
“We then poured a bucket full of water on the mud to moisten it, this takes quite some time depending on the amount of mud we were going to use, it can be a few hours or even a whole day. In the meantime, we strain the white sand so that it could become fine sand.”
“After completing these processes, we mix the wet mud with the white sand and begin to knead it together with our hands until they are completely mixed, with a dough consistency to be able to manipulate it.”
“Feeling the clay and working with it has also helped me to distract myself and release some emotions that sometimes run around in my head. Yes, I can connect with the earth, as my grandmothers used to say.”
“After the clay has a dough consistency, we can start to carve and elaborate whatever we want, we work many kinds of figures that can be used in the house or as decorations. All of these come out of our imagination and what we feel, although sometimes we get personalized orders, but they always carry our essence, our time, and our feelings, in each piece we leave a lot of us.”
“Once the figure we carved is finished, we leave it in a place so that the humidity retained by the clay can dry, this can take a day or half a day. When it is ready we make an oven with bricks and inside it we leave the red embers so the fire can embrace the clay and each piece is fired, turning it into a durable and water-resistant ceramic.”
“Our grandmothers would open a hole in the ground and bury the pieces with the burning embers from the fire.”
“This final process carries its risks, as some pieces may come out burnt and black, but also others may burst or crack, which are considered lost.”
It is important to recognize that when you buy from an artisan, it is not only an object, but also the creation and transmission of memory into clay, and from clay into memory. They are not manufactured products, they are products that carry a connection, ancestry, a living memory, and are part of the territory.
This work is rarely recognized by people who buy theaw handicrafts to resell them in tourist places, who have even exported them, without giving economic, cultural, or artistic recognition to these millenary craftswomen.
This is just a sample of the process involved in the creation of objects, including pots, pitchers, plates, and figurines. Objects that may be in our homes, but we do not know their origin and work behind them, the process involved in their elaboration. Also, this is an invitation to recognize what we have around us and make conscience-based purchases.
It is important to recognize that when you buy from an artisan, it is not only an object, but also the creation and transmission of memory into clay, and from clay into memory. They are not manufactured products, they are products that carry a connection, ancestry, a living memory, and are part of the territory.
The challenges of the craftswomen in Santa Cruz Chinautla
One of the challenges today is that the river has been polluted by wastewater from the city. “Now we only find plastics and garbage in the river; we have to buy mud,” says María Filomena.
As mentioned above, contamination and the lack of recognition for their work has made it increasingly difficult for these women to sell and continue working, which has caused members of the community to migrate due to the high poverty rates, since pottery work is not enough to sustain life in the territory.
In this process of getting to know the work of the artisans, it is worth mentioning that, according to the registry of the Ministry of Energy and Mines of Guatemala, there are six mining companies operating in the territory of Chinautla, which extract sand and other materials such as mud, thus limiting the raw material for the artisans’ work and privatizing most of the areas. Currently, these same companies sell the mud by the kilo to the people of the community at a high price.
These mining operations have also caused respiratory illnesses due to the extraction of sand and cracks in several houses. In the winter, flooding and mudslides are common due to the extraction of larger rocks that leave dangerous holes.
But this situation is not only limited to the licenses granted by the ministry, as there are other companies extracting mud, white river sand, who work only with the authorization of the municipality, falling into illegalities that affect these communities.
And despite the difficulties established by the same state entities, these artisans continue working, not only to survive, but to leave a legacy to future generations, the memory of the work with their hands, the creation of art through the natural resources that Mother Earth gives us, remembering the ancestry of creating.
For this reason, it is important to continue to make visible the work and resistance of the Poqomam people in the community of Santa Cruz Chinautla.
