Hecho a
Mano, by James S. Griffith. University of Arizona Press,
Tucson. Paperback: $17.95. 104
pages.
Driving through Tucson, Ariz.,
a visitor might not register the ornate front-yard fences and
low-rider cars along the city’s palm-lined streets. Yet in the book
Hecho a Mano, by folklorist Jim Griffith, what’s
everyday comes vividly alive. Griffith takes us inside the houses,
workshops and communities of Los Tucsonenses,
the city’s numerous Mexican-American residents. We meet Angelita
Montoya, with a basket of confetti-stuffed eggs called cascarones.
“Bambi” Gomez works leather into tooled belts, and Carlos Gonzales
shows how he creates a posh interior for a low-rider Chevrolet
Impala.
Unlike Phoenix, Tucson has deep Hispanic
roots. It was founded in 1775, as a cavalry fort for the Spanish
army, and it remained primarily Hispanic until the arrival of the
railroad in the 1880s. Griffith recognizes the interdependence that
has grown between the Tucsonense culture and its
folk arts traditions. Hecho a Mano (“made by
hand”) often reads like ethnography, as it pays attention to the
societal context of each art. Griffith points out that Tucson’s
artists often fuse the culture’s dominant religion, Catholicism,
into their work, while gender also plays a vital role. Men seem
more likely to carve wood, forge iron and bend neon inside
workshops; women often work in the home, designing cloth by
removing threads, cooking feasts and constructing yard
ornaments.
Perhaps most satisfying is the way
Griffith ties together established crafts such as making paper
flowers and newer ones like decorating and personalizing low-rider
cars and bicycles. In doing so, he shows that neither is all old or
all new; these folk artists constantly update and transform their
traditional arts.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Hecho a mano.
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