Blow My Mind: The Art of the Alebrije

by Juan Carlos Dozal Varela

Human Heritage

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Ever dreamed of having a pig with angel wings, chicken feet and the tail of a cock? Or even better, a three-headed giraffe with shark faces, anfibious extremities and mind-blowing colors?

The only limit is your imagination with Mexican Alebrije sculpture. The skeletons of these fantastic animals are usually made of wire (or wood when the alebrije is too big for wire) and papier mache. But there are also wood-carved alebrijes, where oaxacan towns San Martín Tilcajete and La Unión Tejalapan stand out.

An intricate mixture of prehispanic motifs and dream-like, colorful pattern combinations usually make these hybrids shiny and inspire vivacity and freshness. The way vivid colors are used in Mexican handcraft arts is probably the most caracteristic feature they have.

And what's the story behind them?

Well, what happens with history is that you can trace origins as back in time as you want (and of course, as back in time as the theme allows you to). If we think about the origins of hybrid animals, we can look at prehistory: some cave paintings represent humans with animal features and also other hybrids. The interpretations for these can vary a lot since we have no codex to decipher what cave paintings represent. They are present in animal worship, totemism... and almost every mythology mentions these fantastic creatures, since they have been represented for centuries in almost every culture.

But let's concentrate a bit on the alebrije itself. The most popular version was that Pedro Linares, a cartonero (a paper maché craftsman) from Mexico City, invented them after a revealing hallucination. In 1936, young Pedro was in the midst of a fever which threatened his life. He was poor as also was the city's healthcare system, and his sisters assisted him with traditional herbal treatments. Linares' life expectancy was below zero, and, according to some versions of the story, he was taken to his mortuory wake.

While in this tricky feverish state, he found himself on a beautiful forest, which he started to roam and discover. But soon appeared enormous, strange figures, full of color and different animals' bodyparts. Apparently, they too roamed the forest; but you know, its not the same when a 15 ft tall chimera walks around. Frightened, Linares started hiding from these wild creatures, whose only words were the (at the time) gibberish words “Alebrije”, which they spoke with their booming voices.

One version of the tale says that he found another man, which told him he wasn't supposed to be there. In another one, it is two girls who warn him, and yet in another it is only a voice from the sky¹. The fact is that they told him the way out of that beautiful-forest-gone-wrong, and he awoke in the midst of a mortuory-wake-gone-a-bit-better.

As he recovered his health, he decided to elaborate the alebrijes in scale for his family to see. It was a hit, and they slowly became popular, until being the national sensation they have been for some time now.

They also became well known abroad when film maker Judith Bronowski made a short documentary on Pedro Linares, and arranged an itinerant demonstration workshop in U.S.A. participating Pedro Linares, Manuel Jiménez and a textil artisan (today also an icon of the psychonautic community) Maria Sabina from Oaxaca. Here was where Pedro Linares met Manuel Jiménez, wood carver from the Oaxaca Valley, where colorful animal representations in wood were also commonplace. The two techniques (cartonería and copal wood carving) found the common expression of whimsical animals, and soon oaxacan figurines started to be called alebrijes too.

1This is interesting because you can tell an event's symbolic richness and strength by looking at how many versions the tale has.

And indeed, tourism and an incipient handcrafts market met in Manuel Jiménez an inspiring source of art, and also a very well known one. After him, who was from Arrazola, came the towns of San Martin Tilcajete, La Union Tejalapam, and other neighboring towns. People started complementing agriculture with the production of alebrijes, which was good for the local economies.

Perhaps too much? Well high demand and irresponsible copal tree exploitation has rendered the local tree's population numbers alarmingly low. There are no more such trees in Arrazola and Tilcajete, and illegal wood trade has been affecting the region. Only recently have sustainable exploitation projects been impulsed, although more are needed.

There are occasional discussions that try to find the original alebrije . One can hear that “only paper maché alebrijes are alebrijes in the right sense. Others, like myself, think that it is in animal motifs and colorful patterns where the alebrije might be defined. Nevertheless, as in every other cultural expression, the alebrijes are constantly resignified, innovated and changed in context. For example, for many people, alebrijes scare away evil spirits and/or put you in touch with your animal soul, the nahual^1,: these are beliefs based on previous ones, but totally new in the aspect of using the alebrije, which wasn't invented with these purpose.

There is yet another version which says that the inventor of the idea was José Antonio Flores Rosas, a painter nicknamed El Hotentote , who asked Mr. Linares to make an alebrije . Asked what that was, El hotentote told him to make a Judas figure with bat wings.

Whoever be the “inventor” the fact is that entire towns live off the alebrije market, there is an alebrije parade organized annually in various Mexican cities, it's taught at schools for children to make, and it has become, for many, a symbol of their origin, the place where they were raised; in a nutshell, an identity symbol. The importance of these symbols to maintain solidarity and community sentiments, along with the economic benefits they represent, surpasses by much the question of who was first, or what is to be called an alebrije and what isn't.

Moreover, it is also the techniques which form part of communities' heritage. As I said before, cartonería is basically papier maché handcraft. It can be found as back as ancient egypt and as widespread as the world itself. In Mexico, it has been used for more than two centuries now for the ellaboration of piñatas, traditional dance masks, and for the representation of Judas, which was Pedro Linares' specialty.

In the documentary produced by Bronowski we can see Linares with a bunch of human shaped cartonería dolls all tied up, and a keen crowd around them choosing which one to take. You can see Mickey Mice, calaveras (human skeletons representing death)and the typical chamuco style Judas (the one with devilish features). At the end, we see how they magnificently explode and burn down in flames. In this tradition, which was imported by the Spanish, a large figure of Judas Iscariot is burnt down on the Saturday of Glory, almost at the end of the Holy Week. In some episodes of the history of this tradition, not only were dolls burned and publicly bashed, but also real people. But that will be the next issue of this blog.

In the documentary, we can also watch Linares working with his sons in the making of Judas and alebrijes. Given his success and familiar tradition, his offspring became also prestigious alebrijeros and cartoneros. We have interviewed Pedro's grandson Ricardo Linares, who shows us his wonderful work.

Wanna fly? You might as well end up with wings and chicken feet yourself.

1Nahualism is the name of the belief that every human has a tona , something like a “human” part of the soul, and the nahual , the animal counterpart which accompanies individuals from birth. Individuals who are very close to their nahual are said to be able to transform into animals at night and cure certain illnesses, and they are called nahuales . The words are nahuatl, but the belief trascends languages in Mexico's indigenous world, where it coexists with catholic traditions and, in recent times, with Evangelism.