Rocio Mendoza Bazan & Omar
Rocio learned the art of textile dyeing and weaving from her mother, beginning to work with yarn at the age of six and starting to weave at about 13. She began working in the family business after school and on holidays, and still credits her mother with motivating her to keep changing and improving her weaving creations.
Rocio’s husband, Omar, is the brother of two of our other weavers – Maria Luisa and Paco – and himself comes from a weaving family and weaving house, Casa Santiago. Both Rocio and Omar attended the University of Oaxaca, Rocio in tourism and Omar in architecture, though they make their living now in the family weaving business. (Omar, however, built their house in the family compound and managed to work in a castle-like rotunda and circular staircase.)
The couple has two young children, a boy and a girl in early elementary school, and raising them is Rocio’s top priority along with weaving. Both Rocio and Omar speak very good English, and Rocio takes twice-weekly classes in the English program of En Via, the microfinancing organization from which she has received several loans to grow the family’s weaving business.
“I love weaving and working with textiles,” says Rocio. “I especially love it when someone likes something that I make. I would like to take a course in designing and some day be a famous designer. Omar and I are both creative – he designed our house and gives architectural advice, though we are both weaving full time.”
Rocio is a true artist who loves the creativity of combining colors and patterns in new ways, as well as a skilled seamstress whose purse linings, zippers and leather straps are near perfect work. She says she thoroughly enjoys the process of design from first thought to final product, especially creating new color combinations and purse designs.
“Sometimes economic resources limit what we can do because the materials would be too expensive to make something that’s in my head, “ she says. “But weaving is a beautiful and noble work that allows me to care for my kids but still fulfill my dream of being creative. It’s what I love to do.”
