ABRAHAM MAURICIO SALAZAR: BIOGRAPHY AND WORKS - ART - 2024

Abraham Mauricio Salazar is a Nahuatl Indian artist of painting, born in 1957 in San Agustín de Oapán, Mexico. Salazar has developed his artistic career with the use of ancestral techniques that were transmitted to him by his father and other relatives since he was a child.

These techniques continue to be used by various artists, achieving not only that this ancestral tradition is preserved, but also that it serves as a platform to transmit history in a different way. The place where Salazar was born is a small rural town in the Tepecoahuilco del Trujano municipality, Guerrero state, southwestern Mexico.

Currently the artist lives in the state of Oaxaca, in the southwest of the country. Salazar was born into a family of the Nahuatl community, which significantly influenced his personal development and even the techniques he used in his works.

Salazar biography

Descendant of the Nahuatl

Abraham Mauricio Salazar was born and raised in a family belonging to a community made up mostly of rural aboriginal descendants of the ancient Mayans, specifically the Nahuatl tribe.

Belonging to the Nahuatl lineage is decisive. The Nahuatl were heirs to a powerful group very advanced in economics and military arts: the ancient Anahuacs. When the Nahuatl were subdued by the warlike power of the Europeans, they came to be called Aztecs or Mexica.

The Nahuatl used to transmit their most important knowledge (both in spiritual and earthly matters) through images. Proof of this are the Mayan codices made on sheets of plant fiber centuries before the arrival of the European invaders. Abraham takes up this technique from his ancestors and paints on amate paper.

Use of amate paper

Paper amate is made using ancient methods from the bark of a tree called Jonote. Before the European invasion of American lands, this paper was used by the natives to transmit certain information. In addition, it was used to record the data that they considered most important.

However, after the invasion the Europeans rejected this technique and forced the colonists to use the European paper.

The invaders not only sought to destroy the material wealth they found on the continent to which they had just arrived, but also tried to eliminate the culture that characterized the original inhabitants and impose their own.

An example of this is the construction of large religious buildings on the ruins of ancient places that were sacred to the original inhabitants.

Likewise, the invaders went so far as to prohibit the original inhabitants from using their own language and forcing them to “civilize” through learning Spanish. The invaders also prohibited the practice of certain rites, which was even condemned to death.

Continuing tradition

The strategies of the natives for their culture to survive were many. Despite the European mandates to ban the production and use of paper amate, it continued. The production of the amate paper never completely disappeared.

The locals continued both with the production of amate and with the activities and rites related to it. This happened especially in the mountainous areas of Puebla and Veracruz, precisely in the neighboring states of Oaxaca, where Salazar currently lives.

Plays

It is on this vegetal paper that Abraham Mauricio Salazar makes his pictorial work. With the use of this vegetable format, pride and tenacity are shown to continue what centuries ago cost the lives of so many people.

Thematic

Salazar not only uses the bark paper, or paper amate, as a way to preserve the traditions of the people of his ancestors, but the theme that he develops in this format also transmits facts related to the identity of the natives to the public.

Whoever observes his works will be able to know part of the customs, habits, traditions and ways of seeing and relating to the world of his aboriginal brothers. Salazar also uses his artistic talents to denounce the conditions and abuses against his dignity, his customs, his spaces and nature.

Reflection search

Salazar's artistic expression seeks not only to delight and surprise the public momentarily, but it goes further. Through the stories told, Salazar tries to make the public reflect and make them extend a bond of solidarity towards the reported case.

To spread his message further, Salazar sought to form alliances. He was associated in a cooperative with his brother Roberto Mauricio Salazar and two painters friends: Felix Camilo Ayala and Juan Camilo Ayala. With them he did many works and participated in multiple exhibitions.

Exhibitions

One of the ways of making his work known, in alliance with his brother and his friends, was to exhibit it in national exhibitions to the delight and reflection of the visiting public. Some of these exhibitions are the following:

- “Advantage! A taste of the permanent collection ”, in 1999.

- "Multiplicity: impressions from the permanent collection", in 2001.

- "The African presence in Mexico: from Yanga to the present", in 2006.

Books and illustrations

According to worldcat.org, the publisher books by Salazar are:

• Magic windows: drawings. Princeton, NJ: The Squibb Gallery, 1985.
• The magical cycle of days: testimony of an indigenous Mexican town. Antonio Saldívar; Abraham Mauricio Salazar; National Council for Educational Development (Mexico); Mexico. Secretary of Public Education. General Directorate of Publications.
• Girón, Nicole, and Abraham Mauricio Salazar, El Barrio. Patria, Mexico, DF 1983.

References

1. Macías, P. (2015). Los Algodones BC La CD. Further north of Mexico. Recovered from: cuervos.com.mx
2. Hersch, P. (2014). Painting on bark paper as an expression of sensitivity and struggle: the calendar of the struggle against the San Juan Tetelcingo Dam in Guerrero. Magazine En el Volcan Insurgente. Recovered from: enelvolcan.com
3. Monzón, M. (2009). The economic activities of migrants from indigenous peoples. Aldea mundo magazine. Recovered from: saber.ula.ve
4. Raby, D. (2014). Zopilote meals. Magazine Amérique Latine Histoire et Mémoire. Les Cahiers ALHIM. Recovered from: journals.openedition.org
5. Amate paper, pre-Hispanic legacy of Mexico. Travel By Mexico Magazine. Recovered from: travelbymexico.com
6. My town is called San Agustín. Books México.MX. Recovered from: Librosmexico.mx