November 16, 2023. Tocuaro

 November 16, 2023. Tocuaro

Before jumping into our day in Tocuaro, I’ll give a little back story.

Last winter, the Museum of Arts and Culture (MAC) had a fabulous exhibit on Mexican Masks. It was curated by a professor at Gonzaga, Pavel Shlossberg. The master mask maker, Felipe Horta, and many other people and mask makers in his village, were featured in little videos in the exhibit along with these very ornate masks that are part of the Pastorela Dances in Michoacán in February every year. Felipe came several times to the museum and did workshops and demonstrated his masks and showed some of the ones he had for sale. In March, Michele and I went to a mask-making workshop done by Felipe Horta where we got to know him a little. Then on the very last day of the exhibition, I commissioned one of his masks. 

It was sent to Pavel, the curator. When I picked up the mask, Pavel said that Felipe would like us to visit his workshop in Tocuaro so if we ever go to Mexico, we should drop by. When I told this to Michele, she said, “Let’s go to Mexico to see Felipe in Tocuaro.” I thought this was a good idea so plans were laid. We had some communication delays with Pavel, who was giving us information about visiting Felipe so as it turned out, Felipe was at an exhibition in Mexico City when we went to Tocuaro. In truth, this turned out to be a good thing because we met other people and had a very fine time. So read on.

On Thursday, our 2nd day in Patzcuaro, we took a combi to what we thought was a bus station (Combi: a kind of special van that picks up people and takes them to places around a town or between towns.) At the place where the combi driver said was the bus station, we wandered around trying to find a “bus station” when in fact, we were let out at a “bus stop” and all we had to do was stand on the corner where the combi let us off and wait for another combi. With the help of a nice young man, we got straightened out and finally got on a combi for Tocuaro. People are so helpful here. On almost every combi we have been on, we’ve found helpful people steering us in the right direction.

Back to getting to Tocuaro. It took about 30 minutes to get there. We were dropped off at the edge of town and walked a few blocks to get to the houses. Tocuaro is a village. We didn’t see a church or a square of a store or anything. We did not have an address for Felipe’s house and, at first, we didn’t see any people. BUT As we walked along, we met an old man and asked him about Felipe’s house. I’m not sure how it happened, but, we ended up at the house of Juan Horta, the cousin of the famous Felipe Horta. We knocked on his door and he invited us in and showed us his workshop of wonderful masks which were very good but of a different style than Felipe. We even bought some. Here’s a photo of part of his display. And a photo of him, Juan Horta.

Juan pointed out Felipe’s house down the street and we trotted down there and knocked on that door.

Felipe’s daughter was expecting us and let us in. We immediately saw some unfinished masks on the ground. They were drying in the sun. Then we saw his workshop which was quite small and had only a few masks. I guess his masks were at the exhibition in Mexico City. 

We also saw some costumes that were made by his wife and daughter. These are ones used in the Pastorales. 

I was most impressed with the variety of masks in a special room off of the workshop. Felipe has a collection of masks from around the world. Most of them have been given to him. Some are very very old masks from Mexico. At least two of them are from the American Southwest but I forgot which tribes. Take a look.

After leaving Felipe’s house, we wandered a bit but soon came upon the Artesanias Puerta Del Sol….

This is a little shop of carved masks and other carved things like birds. Gustavo Horta lives there and he has this little shop. Another cousin? He’s younger than Juan and Felipe so his work is much simpler. Why don’t I have a picture of his stuff? I don’t know.

We wandered a bit more and saw the streets and some houses and the water tower(?) of Tocuaro. …even a Chinese style house with a Buddha(?) on the roof. (Zoom in)

We walked back to the main road and caught a combi back to Patzcuaro.

Thus ends the saga of the masks.