Casa Cruz

Unlike others of the art forms commonly known in Mexico as artesanías (or “handicrafts” in English), the carved wooden creatures often called alebrijes have a history recent enough to be mostly traceable.

Pedro Linares López, a craft artist living in Mexico City in the 1930s, first came up with the term, giving it to his papier-mache fantastical figures. Manuel Jiménez Ramírez, another artist from Oaxaca, met Linares and took the alebrijes concept to his home state, where the medium changed to copal wood. Jiménez was from the town of San Antonio Arrazola, which shares the craft of wooden alebrijes with another town called San Martín Tilcajete.

The historical thread gets unclear here, as it is not certain when Tilcajete adopted the alebrijes tradition. Isidoro Cruz Hernández is often considered to have been one of this town's pioneers in the late 1960s. In both towns, alebrijes are usually carved out of wood from the copal tree, valued not only for its ease of use but also for the symbolic importance to the Zapotec people, to whom many carvers belong or trace their heritage. Within this cultural context, many masters of the craft favor other terms over "alebrijes." At the workshop of Jacobo and María Ángeles,  a distinction is made between carvings of real animals (usually based on a "Zapotec zodiac" system which assigns a "spirit animal" to a person) called "tonas;" and the carvings of animal fusions or fantastical creatures, known as "nahuales." The art of the Ángeles is among the most exhibited worldwide, with their decorations featuring on jerseys for Mexican soccer clubs, an F1 racing helmet, and monumental sculptures in the United States.

But before Ángeles, there was Isidoro Cruz. Born in 1934, Cruz is known to have tutored Jacobo Ángeles during his start in the woodcarving crafts. Between the 1960s and 70s, Cruz's works were exhibited in Mexico City and Los Angeles after having caught the eye of Mexico's then-director of the National Tourist Council. Therefore, many of the alebrijes and similar works seen for the first time outside of Oaxaca, were carved by Isidoro Cruz, raising awareness of the craft and establishing the imagery of Oaxacan "artesanías" (handcrafts). Following his passing in 2015, Casa Cruz is his legacy in Tilcajete, one of the many alebrije workshops trading in the town and decorated with a striking mural of the man himself on its outer wall. Casa Cruz is found directly across from the Ángeles workshop, showing how the man's influence continues to shape the alebrijes craft.