Brujo de la Mancha

I am an multidisciplinary, self-taught artist. Born in Mexico city, in a mixed family of Mexican Indigenous and Spanish working class. In my childhood during visits to my father’s family around Xico, Veracruz in Mexico, I experienced the surviving Mayan, Olmec and Catholic cultures: traditional farming, and popular crafts that represent and express the life of the indigenous Mexican people. Later, I cultivated a sense of freedom to express my personal dreams and reality by immersing myself in indigenous cultures in the states of Oaxaca, Veracruz, Puebla, Michoacan and Tlaxcala. I grew up believing and experiencing independent thinking, realizing that people are rich in resourcefulness in their own power for self-control. My paternal grandmother migrated from Xico, Veracruz to Mexico City before I was born, and I have continued this family experience with my own migration to Philadelphia PA. USA, on February of 1998, where I have joined the diversity of lives and cultural exchanges of this city. In Mexico, a great emphasis is placed on the connection between human beings and the natural world. In 2007, I got my Aztec name “Tletxayacoatl” (The Snake with the Face on Fire) in a summer solstice ceremonial in Chicago with Master “Ocelocoatl” (The jaguar & Snake) and Master “Xavier Quijas Yxayotl”. I Also I won a grant from The Institute for Cultural Partnership to learn how to make “Tlapizcalli” Clay flutes, with the Master “ Xavier Quijas Yxayotl”. This has been the first time that, I have received some training in art, and yet I later went on to make a clay instrument, of my own called “Ehekachiktli” -The Dead Whistle- an instrument that is very old.