San Publito, Puebla: August 10, 1978. Very good.. [28]pp. Small quarto. Accordion-folded amate paper, with original wrappers and orange silk ties. Twenty-eight cut-out paper figures tipped in throughout, manuscript text accomplished in red ink, with the artist's signature in black on the front wrapper. Light fading to silk ties, scattered faint spotting (possibly paper irregularities). Alfonso Garcia Tellez is an important, Otomi Mexican book artist, whose work in the 1970s and 1980s brought traditions of Mesoamerican papermaking and mysticism into new light. The present work is one of a series of five books by Tellez, which he produced individually in multiple but unique copies over a period of several years. The manuscript text describes an array of rituals of healing and protection, accompanied by tipped-in examples of intricate, "amate" bark-paper figurines that were utilized in those rites. "García Tellez...learned how to make and cut amate from his father, Santos García, the self-described 'brujo mayor de San Pablito' (brujo is Spanish for witch). The brujos and brujas (also called curanderos, or curers) cut the paper-made from the inner bark of wild fig and mulberry trees-into muñecos (dolls) representing various spirit entities. Shamans and other religious specialists use the muñecos in rituals ranging from rainmaking to sorcery to curing illnesses. In the late 1970s, Otomí artisans-including García Tellez-began making amate and muñecos to sell to tourists in the craft markets of Mexico. García Tellez is the most accomplished of just three Otomí artists to have produced bound books made from amate with muñecos pasted in. The books include handwritten descriptions, in Spanish, of the muñecos and the ceremonies in which they were used.
"[Historia de la Curacion de Antigua de San Pablito Pahuatlan] is a manual for mystical cures and healing, and includes muñecos from Otomí mythology.... The perfect mirror imaging in the muñecos is the result of a long-established technique of folding pieces of amate in half then cutting them to the desired shapes, but García Tellez's muñecos are often much more complex than those of any of his predecessors or contemporaries. The last few pages of Historia de la Curación describe rituals honoring Mother Earth mixed with Christian iconography" -- Fleming. A significant transmission of native Otomi traditions and crafts by one of its artists and participants.
Robyn Fleming, "Power Paper: The Amate Manuscripts of Alfonso García Tellez," https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/power-paper, April 2019.
