Crispina Lopez Mendoza & Family

Crispina has been married to her husband, Fernando, for nearly 30 years. Though her father was a farmer, she began weaving at the age of 9 after her brother learned the craft at the home of neighbors. Fernando’s parents were both weavers; both his and Crispina’s families had lived in Teotitlán for many years.

The couple has three married adult children and three grandchildren. The family compound in Teotitlán has several living areas and a main kitchen, as well as various pets that include a pair of squirrels (one named Bruce.)

Their son Manuel and his wife Celyflor, in their early 20’s, live and work in the home and weaving shop. Manuel is a creative designer who plots out his new designs in pen and ink on graph paper; he is always thinking of new ways to combine traditional designs and natural dyes into new creations. Celyflor is a talented weaver who herself learned to weave at age 12.

Crispina is one of our few weavers who also works in cotton, borrowing the backstrap loom of a neighbor (backstraps being the original looms the Zapotec people used on their backs before the Spanish brought the larger treadle looms to the area) to weave fabric to make cotton table runners, shawls and bags. Her sewing machine is a prize possession, and she recently upgraded from a manual foot-treadle model to an electric machine, a huge advancement in how quickly she can work.

Crispina and Fernando both weave at home; Manuel has a booth in the city of Oaxaca’s main market where he sells daily, and Crispina also sells their wares at a shopfront in the city as well as the Friday market.

Though family circumstances didn’t allow Crispina to continue school beyond the third grade (when she had to go to work), she has no problem musing how life might be different with a little extra money. Or thinking what she might have done if she hadn’t become a weaver. She and Celyflor think about how things might have turned out with more education.

“I would have liked to become a teacher or a lawyer,” says Celyflor. Crispina thinks a little larger. “At one time, I thought of becoming a secretary,” she says. “But then, maybe I would have just gone ahead and become a political candidate. Or the president of Mexico.”