Tanya Agui iga, Crossing the Line, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA, 2011.
The highly skilled labor of artisans migrating from Mexico and Latin America are the backbone of high-end design and retail in Los Angeles, producing exquisite furniture, textiles, and design goods. But they represent a creative force that seems invisible to the city. Artbound uncovers their stories and their role in making Los Angeles and Southern California the creative capital of the world in a new documentary Artesanos, debuting May 17 at 9 p.m. on KCET. Check for rebroadcasts here.
C sar Castro's workshop is nothing more than a small shed behind his home, on a steep hillside overlooking the eastside neighborhood of El Sereno. Dusty blocks of wood share space with chisels, electric sanders, a drill press, and other tools, while jaranas -- eight-stringed instruments from Mexico -- hang from the ceiling in various states of disrepair. One wall has a colorful mural of musicians performing, but the other three are no more than plastic sheeting to keep the sun and wind out. The structure's modest form belies the important function this space plays in the preservation of Son Jarocho -- the regional folk music from the Mexican state of Veracruz -- in Los Angeles.
Born and raised in Veracruz, Castro studied typical Western music in school, but his connection to Son Jarocho was totally extracurricular. He began volunteering in local music workshops when he was 13, and it was through them that one of his teachers took him to a countryside fandango -- the lively, communal performances central to Son Jarocho. Thats when I fell in love with this. Socially it was what I was missing from my life in the city, he said.
Castro moved to the U.S. in 2005 as a musician, but soon the skills he had learned as an instrument maker became sought after. People were bringing their instruments from Veracruz, and the first thing I had to do here was to fix them, he said. That was an easy in for me to start getting my tools. Now, in addition to playing with his group Cambalache, Castro makes and repairs jaranas and four-stringed requintos using traditional methods. The body of the jarana is carved from one solid block of wood, unlike most guitars which are made from thin, shaped strips of wood. Castro uses African woods -- mahogany, ebony, and padauk -- types of woods readily available in L.A. It's kind of a joke that I make African-Jarocho instruments in Los Angeles, he said, though the connection to Africa is more appropriate than one might think. The jarana has a number of influences, from Spain, Arab Northern Africa, and West Africa through the slave trade. Like so many cultural expressions from Mexico, Son Jarocho is less a static artform than an evolving, living tradition.
C sar Castro at his workshop in El Sereno. | Photo: Matt Stromberg.
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Although Castro's instruments are not cheap, they are not the sole way he supports himself. Im not doing it because of the money, he said. It's not a business, people have to understand were talking about culture, he said. This raises an interesting question of the role that economics plays in what crafts get brought across the border and for what reasons. For many immigrants, simply establishing themselves financially is of primary importance. One of the challenges is that you come here to a different environment and one of the first instincts is to survive and that takes you way off of your traditional practices, Dr. Gaspar Rivera-Salgado of the UCLA Labor Center said. But after you have solved that problem, you see a lot of people going back and retaking their traditional crafts practices.
Castro experienced this first hand, by introducing Son Jarocho to Mexican-Americans who may not have a connection to Veracruz. In my case theres the Chicano community interested in a bridge between themselves and the Jarocho community. Through that consciousness, we were able to work together. People wanted to learn how to play and participate in the fandango, it's a living culture.
Artist and designer Tanya Agui iga similarly began incorporating traditional Mexican techniques into her work to connect with her roots. She was born in San Diego, but raised in Tijuana, and began exploring traditional Oaxacan weaving and dyeing while at graduate school in Rhode Island. It was a way of exploring the lack of Mexican identity that I grew up with on the border, she said at a recent visit to her Atwater Village studio. Despite her experience with Oaxacan weaving, Agui iga did not know of a thriving community of these kinds of artisans in L.A. If youre already doing highly skilled craft in Mexico, then you have your own business. You might not have as much of a reason to leave, she opined.
Tanya Agui iga, CRAFTA: Craft in the post-NAFTA Era, PEEL Gallery, Houston, TX, 2012.
Then there is the sticky question of authenticity. Would people be willing to pay as much money for a rug made here in L.A., than one in Oaxaca? Is it as authentic, the art that is made by Mexican immigrants here? Rivera-Salgado asked rhetorically. This kind of essentialist vision of craft however, overlooks the fact that many seemingly authentic crafts in Mexico were tailored to the tourist market. He mentioned Navajo-style blankets made in Oaxaca in response to the U.S. craze for Navajo design. As living traditions, these crafts change as they are carried across borders, as they changed in Mexico as various cultures have influenced them.
In Mexico, theres a long tradition of craft, but a lot of the stuff I've seen here, it comes from that but it mutates, artist and curator Rub n Ortiz-Torres said. In East L.A, they have these Aztec dancers, concheros. They make their own outfits, their headdresses here, but because they make them here, theyre a bit more spectacular th
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Tanya Agui iga, Crossing the Line, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA, 2011. 
