Taller Lenateros: The Woodlanders’ Workshop

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Loxa Jimenes Lopes, Xunka’ Utz’ Utz’ Ni and Maria Tzu paint amid the odor of the honeysuckle.

The Woodlanders come to door of the Workshop. They bring a load of madrone-wood to feed the fire. They bring withered flowers from the churches, and pine needles trampled in yesterday ’ s festival. They carry rattan, lichen, banana-leaves, corn-husks, bridal-veil, mahagua, bean-pods, maguey-tongues, reeds, coconut-shells, gladiola-stems, palm-fronds, grass, papyrus, cat-tails, pampas grass and bamboo, along with recycled paper and old clothes; the raw material of dreams is nearly always something «useless.»

Ideas and images come to us in dreams. That’s how it is with the Woodlanders: the Moon and the daughters of the Lightning give us dreams to light our way. We recycle our visions to turn them into art;

Taller Lenateros is a cultural society, an alliance of Mayan and mestizo women and men, founded in 1975 by the Mexican poet Ambar Past. Among its multiple objectives we ’ ll mention the documentation, praise and dissemination of Amerindian and popular cultural values: song, literature and plastic arts; the rescue of old and endangered techniques such as the extraction of dyes from wild plants; and generating worthwhile and decently-paid employment for women and men who have no studies, no career, no future.

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