The indigenous people of Amatenango del Valle, Chiapas, have learned the craft of the gods from their ancestors. Amatenango del Valle is a Tzeltal community in which the inhabitants have worked with clay since childhood. Its streets are dotted with numerous fires where the clay pieces are baked.

Alberto Bautista Gómez, thirty-three years old and his wife, Simona López Pérez, form part of this selected group. Alberto’s grandmother taught him to work with clay beginning when he was fifteen years old. Pots and flowerpots were his first creations. He learned to transform different types of clay and sand into beautiful doves, figures that were imitated by various women and children in the community. Later he began to turn his hands to the moulding of lams in the form of giant tigers, with open, snarling mouths and decorated with natural paints which earned him recognition among his artistic peers.

Twenty-five years ago, the jugs produced in Amatenango were smooth, with only painted decoration. It was the children, among them Alberto Bautista, who began to adorn them with appliquéd designs.

White clay, quartz sand and bash stones “as shinny as mirrors” are ground up in a mortar to obtain the dark tones that characterize these pieces. Fine brushes created from reeds and bird feathers, as well as water and firewood. Elements from nature which man transforms into art.