by Hope MacLean
Lupe told me that when she was growing up in the 1920s, the main colors they worked with were red, blue, and black. She remembers that they used only blue and white or black and white for beadwork. For textiles, they used the natural colors of sheep wool, such as brown, black, and white. They also used the natural white of a native cotton plant. Thus, the early style of Huichol work used one or two dark colors contrasted with white or natural beige.
Nowadays, there has been a tremendous increase in the variety of colors used. One factor is that the Huichol can now buy a wide range of dyed yarns at a reasonable cost. The invention of aniline dyes and acrylic yarns, which are cheaper than wool, has put a wide range of colors within the Huichol’s economic grasp. Their increased participation in the wage economy has given them cash to buy materials.
Lupe also pointed out that there are regional variations in color use, which are particularly apparent in how people dress. The older style of dress is preserved in Santa Catarina. Often, the men wear only one or two colors, usually with strong contrast, such as a solid dark-blue shirt and white pants. Many crafts from this community maintain the strong contrast of a dark color against white. Woven belts are often dark blue or black on white. A man’s cape might feature dark-blue and red embroidery on a white fabric with a dark-red flannel trim.
In contrast, Lupe said that the “Lupeños”—the Huichol of San Andrés and Guadalupe Ocotán—emphasize color “combining.” They put together a number of different colors and are admired for how they combine the colors. This practice is particularly evident in embroidery. In the Lupeño style, one often sees wide bands of geometric or semiabstract patterns around the borders of clothes. These are filled in with embroidery, sometimes by using shading that runs through a gamut of adjacent colors, such as pink to rose to red to orange, and sometimes by using strong primary-color contrasts, such as bright red, blue, and yellow. In the Lupeño style, there is also more emphasis on filling in the patterns, creating solidly worked blocks of embroidery. In the Santa Catarina style, the embroidery tends to be more open, with white space showing through and incorporated into the design.
My own observation in the Sierra is that there is now a fair amount of movement, intermarriage, and sharing of ideas between Huichol communities. Thus, this contrast between the Lupeño and Santa Catarina styles is not solely a regional one, although it may be regionally emphasized. One also sees multicolored work in Santa Catarina, although it may be less common, and one- or two-color contrasting in communities such as San Andrés. In Lupe’s own family, which has roots in several parts of the Sierra, both styles are used, and they can identify in which style a piece of work was done.
Lupe’s comments indicate that there are several main styles of Huichol workmanship and use of color and that the Huichol are quite conscious of these different styles. Perhaps the style with high contrast and limited colors was used more in the past simply because it was harder to get colored materials.
The use of relatively simple colors is often preserved in sacred offerings even now. For example, Lupe’s family makes an offering bowl decorated with a small figure of wax that includes a few white or blue beads to indicate the eyes and heart. Sacred arrows are made with designs in dark red and blue paint. Modern sacred yarn paintings use a limited range of highly contrasting colors, such as bright red, yellow, blue, and white (Negrĺn 1986, 42; Ortiz Monasterio et al. 1992, n.p. [73]).
Since the 1960s, yarn painters have been using progressively finer yarns and a broader palette of yarn brands and colors. This change of materials has allowed them to incorporate finer detail into yarn paintings, and to increase the number of colors used, both in a single figure and in a painting as a whole. As more colors are used, the combinations of colors become even more complex and important than they were in the early paintings.
One aspect of color combining is outlining. This is the practice of using two, three, or more colors to form a shape. Once again, this may reflect an underlying indigenous aesthetic preference. Gladys Reichard (1936, 116–117) noticed that the Navajo had a strong preference for using a second and even third color to outline a figure when making rugs, even though the additional color might be only one warp wide and involve much additional labor. She realized that outlining was also an outstanding feature of sand paintings, such as the very thin lines of white used to pick out the red and white stripes in a rainbow; these details were never omitted. She also pointed out a related feature, which is “contrast to the contrast”; for example, a tiny feather in a sand painting might have a contrasting color at the end and a tiny dot of another contrasting color at the tip.
Many Huichol artists use similar principles in yarn painting. They use multiple colors for borders and for outlining. Even in a very small painting, an artist may make outlines only one thread thick, but use several different colors around a figure. Small dots of contrasting color, like punctuation points or exclamation marks, are a feature of the work of many better artists. The small dots of contrast often bring alive the rest of the work.
Both outlining and the small dots of surprising contrast colors are also outstanding features of modern commercial Huichol beadwork, particularly some jewelry patterns. They are also used when making flowers, stars, or peyote flowers in embroidery; the juxtaposition of undulating multicolored lines is also found in traditional bargello-like, zigzag designs. The technique does not seem to be found in traditional Huichol arts such as the two-color weaving used to make belts and bags.
Looking at color combinations, and the bravado that the Huichol use in combining them, I began to think there must be some theory, implicit or explicit, guiding how colors were put together. In fact, I wondered whether the Huichol use of color—such a striking part of the culture—might have deeper aesthetic or philosophical implications. These intuitions were confirmed as I talked to artists.
Fig. 9.1. Miguel Silverio Evangelista; wood, glass beads, beeswax; 2005. 10 ¾” x 9 ½” (27.4 x 32.5 cm). The Huichol now press beads into wax to make many commercial products, such as this beaded eclipse. Note the small dots of contrast color and the use of traditional symbols such as deer. Photo credit: Adrienne Herron.
Fuerte and Bajito
My first lead came from listening to the San Andrés artist Vicente Carrillo Medina talk about a large papier-mâché deer he was decorating with beads. He said he was using colores fuertes (Sp.: strong colors) so that the deer would appear muy fuerte (Sp.: very strong). I asked whether he always used strong colors. He replied that he could if he wanted to, but he preferred to use a combination of fuerte and bajito (Sp.: low or soft) colors because the combination was subtler than using only fuerte ones.
Because of the implications of the terminology he used, I will continue to use the Spanish words “fuerte” and “bajito” in the following discussion. In Huichol, he used the term “arrukai,” meaning “muy chico” (very small, little), for “bajito,” and the term “waukawa,” meaning “grande” or “mucho” (large or a lot), for “fuerte”; then he thought a bit and added “echiwa,” meaning “chico” (little), as an intermediate. When I asked Lupe, she gave the Huichol word “tukwilye” for “bajito,” and “tükali” for “subedito,” a synonym for “fuerte.” Eligio gave the Huichol words “tulükau yemi” for “fuerte,” and “nene a neme” for “bajito.”
I asked Vicente to point out which colors of beads were fuerte and which were bajito. I had heard Huichol use these color terms before, but thought that they meant color terms similar to those used by Westerners (Itten 1973, 17, 34–36). Bajito colors might be pastel hues with white mixed in, or greyed or dull shades with black mixed in. I expected fuerte colors would be pure or intense.
However, when Vicente pointed out the colors, they were not what I expected. Some colors that I would call dull, greyed, or pastel he called bajito, but sometimes he called them fuerte. Colors I would call strong, like a bright orange, he defined as bajito. Often, two shades of the same color, which I thought were virtually identical
, would be categorized differently. A blue of one shade he would call bajito, and a very similar blue (to my eyes) he would call fuerte.
I began to think his judgments were based on a system of categorizing colors that was different from the Western concepts of pure hues and shades. I tested this idea with other artists. They all understood the terms “fuerte” and “bajito” and, if asked, would immediately categorize any color into one of the two categories. Nevertheless, the artists’ definitions of fuerte and bajito were idiosyncratic. They each defined the colors differently and explained the reasons differently.
Several years later, I returned with a set of Pantone color swatches, which I intended to use as a research tool, to define more precisely the colors and their symbolic meanings. Pantone colors are widely used to identify colors of ink in printing and the graphic arts. (Pantone swatches are similar to paint-color swatches.) The advantage of the Pantone color system is that it is an international, standardized system of numbering colors. Any printer can reproduce the desired colors by knowing their numbers. Computer graphics programs also use Pantone numbers for identifying colors so that the colors can be reproduced electronically. The Pantone swatches I used were a set made for printing. They had colors numbered from 100 to 877, plus separate swatches for basic colors I and II (colors frequently used by printers) and the four colors used in four-color-process printing.
Using the Pantone color swatches, I tried to get the artists to be more precise about the differences between fuerte and bajito colors. The results were somewhat mixed, since artists still had idiosyncratic interpretations. Most artists became bored with the exercise after a few minutes and either went off on a more interesting conversational tangent or refused to continue (a lesson to those of us who think that Western research methods may be easy to use with indigenous people). Nonetheless, some interesting ideas emerged, suggestive of further research directions.
For example, Vicente pointed out that the individual Pantone swatches were arranged from bajito to fuerte and back to bajito. The swatches for a particular color family go from very light hues to dark shades. Vicente said that the top color is bajito, then it moves to fuerte by the middle range, and back to bajito in the darker shades at the bottom. His definition indicates that a very dark color may be bajito to the Huichol, even though the color is strong or intense in Western terms.
The artist Chavelo González explained that he considers bajito colors to be the colors one finds in nature; so, for example, the blue of the daytime sky, the brown of the earth, and the green of leaves or plants are bajito. He also defined the natural white of cotton or wool, as well as black wool, as bajito. Man-made colors, or colors not found in nature, are fuerte.
Vicente Carrillo agreed that natural colors are usually bajito, and added that the sun is always fuerte, whereas the moon is bajito when it is new and then becomes more fuerte as it becomes full. He added that people were also fuerte or bajito. He commented that I was very bajito, and defined it as “tranquilo, calmado” (quiet, calm). I asked which type the mara’akate were. He replied that there were all types, but that most were bajito.
Eligio Carrillo was willing to use the color swatches to give a more systematic definition of fuerte and bajito. I prompted him with the Spanish term, such as azul fuerte, and asked him to identify the Pantone color and give me the Huichol word for it. Table 9.1 shows his definitions of some common colors. Spelling is based on my transcription of his words.
Since this research is still preliminary, I am reluctant to draw many conclusions from Eligio’s categorization. Some interesting points are that in several cases, he selected adjacent colors in a swatch—that is, colors that were quite similar shades—and defined one as fuerte and the other as bajito. His definition of tarauye (yellow) is intriguing, since there has been some discussion in the literature of what tarauye (taaxauye) signifies. For example, Grimes defined it as the yellow of dried grass (Bauml et al. 1990, 100). Eligio’s selection of a very warm orangish red as tarauye fuerte, and a bright yellow or a dull yellow as the bajito version, suggests that the cultural category of tarauye runs a gamut from orangish red through orange to yellow (and in another exercise, Eligio also identified yellowish green as tarauye). The Huichol may define or cut the color continuum at a different point than the English or Spanish do.
Table 9.1. Fuerte and Bajito Colors, according to Eligio Carrillo
Fuerte and bajito are more than just categories of color. Vicente Carrillo talked about the importance of combining colors for subtlety. An artist has a choice. He or she can use only fuerte colors, in which case the object will appear extremely strong, or a combination of fuerte and bajito, in which case there will be a subtle change from one to the other. If the artist prefers, he or she can use only bajito colors. Not all Huichol color combinations are intense contrasts, and some artists prefer to work in bajito colors.
The alternation of fuerte and bajito describes an artistic strategy of complementary opposition. The alternation between the two poles is important. The use of all fuerte or all bajito colors is sometimes less interesting than the movement back and forth between them. I began to see that the preference for movement between poles described a great deal more than color combinations. In fact, fuerte and bajito were key concepts in Huichol philosophy and aesthetics, and an understanding of this conceptual structure helped explain some of my experiences living with the Huichol.
Fig. 9.2. Santos Daniel Carrillo Jiménez, yarn painting of a shaman curing a patient who appears very pale and weak, 2005. 8” x 8” (20 x 20 cm). One technique for combining colors is to move through a gradation of colors, such as pale yellow moving to dark yellow in the flowers, and the dark red moving through pinks to white in the figure of the shaman. Color combining of this type became increasingly popular in yarn paintings of the 1990s, particularly among artists from the Huichol community of San Andrés. Photo credit: Adrienne Herron.
From my first encounters with the Huichol, I noticed profound mood shifts in the tenor of events. Days might go by with very little happening. The women would make tortillas, the dogs would bark, the men would chop wood or work on crafts. Everything would seem even, unexciting, almost too calm. When I first visited the Huichol, I learned Huichol embroidery in order to occupy myself during these long periods when nothing seemed to be happening and I had no real job to do. Then suddenly, a startling event would shake me out of my complacency. We would suddenly shift into mystical time and supernatural events. A mara’akame would arrive and might begin a healing, waving his shaman’s plumes and sucking objects out of a family member. We might stay up all night for a ceremony, fasting and singing. Intense emotions would be aired, people would cry and talk. The gods might visit. The ceremony would rise to a crescendo of emotion, then gradually taper off until after dawn, when we would finally stagger off to sleep. The next day, I would be left groping for some explanation or swimming in a state of excitement while everyone else went about his or her business as though nothing had happened.
At first, I thought that my perception of excessive shifts of emotion was an inevitable part of fieldwork, a result of being in the midst of another culture. Everyone else knows what is going to happen and what it means. It seems so obvious that they do not think to explain it to someone from another culture. Since I alone did not know what to expect, events took me by surprise and seemed particularly intense. However, as time went on, I noticed that these pronounced mood shifts seem to characterize most Huichol ceremonies I attended. Ceremonies often begin very quietly, with a rather contemplative air. A mara’akame may begin singing while children run around him and women continue cooking. People fall asleep and wake up again. During the course of the ceremony, more and more attention is paid as the ceremony builds to a crescendo of power and emotion and then moves back again to a state of tranquility and alegrĺa, or good humor.
As I listened to descriptions of the differences between fuerte and bajito, I began to realize that movement between poles might, i
n fact, be a central value in Huichol culture. To test this theory, I described to Chavelo González the state of mind that I aim for in my own life, a state of calmness and equilibrium, sometimes described by the Buddhist concept of the one-pointed mind. He laughed at the notion and asked me, “When are we ever the same? Only when we’re dead!”
He and another family member, a Huichol schoolteacher, went on to explain that staying the same, which I thought of as calmness or equilibrium, is not a goal in Huichol culture. In fact, equilibrium is seen as unattainable. Rather, the goal is to move back and forth from one extreme to another through a range of emotions while maintaining one’s balance and control. This is what is meant by fuerte and bajito. It means to run a gamut back and forth from powerful and intense to restrained and subdued, rising and falling. Maintaining this rhythm—orchestrating the moods of fuerte and bajito—is what the mara’akate try to do when they sing and conduct ceremonies, and participants in a ceremony judge the mara’akate on how well they orchestrate the movement.
The concepts of fuerte and bajito may be similar to a concept termed “shamanic equilibrium.” Furst (1974, 59–60; 2006, 35–51) and Myerhoff, interviewed by DeMille (1980, 336), described an incident in which Ramón Medina tried to explain to them what he meant by balance. Ramón took them to the top of a waterfall and proceeded to leap across slippery rocks, close to a steep drop into the barranca below. Furst described this event as a concrete demonstration of shamanic equilibrium, the balance required during the dangerous journey over the chasm between the worlds, when a moment’s hesitation or misstep may mean death.
