CultureLeñateros WorkshopSan Cristobal de las Casas

Founded in 1975 by the Mexican poet Ambar Past, Taller Leñateros, The Woodlanders Workshop, is an artisan society of Mayan women and men who produce handmade paper, artist books, silkscreen and wood block prints, pansey graphs, natural dyes, and magic spells.

Among its multiple objectives we’ll mention the documentation, praise and dissemination of Amerindian and popular cultural values: song, literature and plastic arts; the rescue of old and endangered techniques such as the extraction of dyes from wild plants; and generating worthwhile and decently-paid employment for women and men who have no studies, no career.

The Woodlanders Workshop is designed to promote ecology, agricultural and industrial waste recycling to create crafts, artwork and survives thanks to the sale of art-object books, postcards, t-shirts, and posters.

"The only resource we have had, and the most valuable, has been ourselves and the ideas of the collective, our rural-indigenous folk-wisdom."