QUIROGA: a MEXICAN MXJNICIPIO — BRAl^ 



167 



BATEAS 



The most important cottage craft, until the 

 appearance a few years ago of the chair industry, 

 was the making of bateas, chests, and writing 

 tables. Only the bateas are now made, and it is 

 difficult to locate any of the painted wooden 

 chests and writing tables outside of museums. 

 During most of the colonial period Cocupao was 

 widely known for these manufactures whose 

 beginnings are commonly assigned to Bishop 

 Quiroga. By 1822 the writing desks or escritorios 

 had dropped out of the picture, and Martinez 

 de Lejarza (1824) mentions only bateas y caxas 

 pintadas. In 1884 both bateas and painted chests 

 were produced in important numbers according 

 to Le6n (1887-88). From what we could learn in 

 Quu-oga, it seems that painted chests and trunks 

 ceased to be made about the turn of the century or 

 shortly before the Madero Revolution. It is 

 fruitless to attempt to determine whether the 

 Franciscan missionaries or Don Vasco de Quiroga 

 assigned to Cocupao the oficio of woodworking. 

 The essential fact is that some time between ap- 

 proximately 1530 and 1560 an attempt was made 

 to balance the economies of the Indian villages 

 in the Province of Michoacan by assigning to 

 each village within a region a distinctive handi- 

 craft or occupation and a market day which 

 would not conflict with those of its neighbors. 

 According to this plan Tzintzuntzan was assigned 

 pottery making, the tanning of hides was given to 

 Teremendo, Capula was authorized to cut timber, 

 etc. The origin of woodworking in Quiroga can- 

 not be determined. Apparently the making of 

 chests, trunks, and writing tables was a Spanish 

 innovation. The painting or "lacquering" of 

 wooden bowls and trays (bateas) probably is 

 native, but this cannot be proved in the case of 

 Quiroga. We know, from the Rclaci6n de 

 Michoac&n and other som-ces, that the Tarascans 

 of the Patzcuaro Lake Basin had the specific 

 occupations of woodsmen, carpenters, makers of 

 drums, canoe makers and makers of oars, painters 

 in general, and painters of xicales (presumably 

 half-calabash bowls, but possibly wooden bowls), 

 and other workers with wood. From archeologic 

 finds and from early sixteenth-century records we 

 know that a variety of gourds and calabashes 

 (Crescentia cvjete L.) were decorated before the 



arrival of the Spaniards. The moot point is 

 whether wooden bowls also were painted. In this 

 report we are not concerned with the controversy 

 over the Tarascan or Mexican origin of lacquer 

 decoration since the technique used in Quiroga is 

 definitely not lacquering or encrustation of the 

 Japanese and Chinese types. Although some 

 people believe that the Quiroga technique has 

 degenerated from a technique that once was 

 identical with that used in Uruapan, we could 

 find no evidence for such a change. The principal 

 changes have been in substituting linseed oil and 

 pigments purchased at the store for local chicalote 

 oil and pigments, and in the designs. 



We have already outlined the making of the 

 crude bowl or batea en bianco. When the batellero 

 brings in the crude bateas they are given to mem- 

 bers of his family to be slipped or are consigned 

 to some woman who specializes in maquea and who 

 does not have a batellero in her family. However, 

 there are some painters who purchase the bateas 

 and farm them out to be slipped. Also, there are 

 some merchants who buy bateas and contract with 

 various individuals for the operations from slipping 

 through "varnishing" to painting. Let us start 

 with the operation of the maquea or slipping. This 

 is always done by women and girls, practically all 

 of whom live in El Calvario (one woman lives in 

 cuartel I, and three or four women live in cvxirteles 

 II and III outside of the Calvario area). The 

 munber of women who maquean varies consider- 

 ably, since this work is done in addition to the 

 regular household chores. The 1940 census did not 

 list any maqueadoras, but we found 44 women and 

 girls, between the ages of 10 and 60, who were 

 doing this work iu the winter and spring of 1945. 

 The time they devoted to maqueando varied from 

 only a part of one or two days in a week up to full 

 time employment (in the case of a few unmarried 

 and widowed women who were not loaded with the 

 full responsibility of running a home) . More than 

 half of the maqueadoras were in families which had 

 one or more batelleros. The equipment consists of 

 a metate (tlalmetate) , usually legless (ticuiche) and 

 of a smooth grain, and mano or muUer for grinding 

 the earths used in the slip; a zalea or piece of 

 sheepskin with which to apply the slip; and a trapo 

 or rag of linen, hemp, or cotton used to burnish. 

 The raw materials, besides the bateas en bianco, 



