A tiny Zapotec rancho of potters and corn farmers...

YOJUELA

Remote and hidden, electricity was wired into Yojuela in 1989; the dirt road connecting this narrow green valley to the rest of the world was completed by the villagers in 1994. Yojuela is a string of wood and adobe houses along a foothill creek; a tiny Zapotec village of potters and corn farmers.

Almost all of the forty or so women here make pots. When the rainy season has passed and the corn is harvested they work the clay, producing enough pottery to keep the surrounding villages well stocked in cookware.
Their pots are brushed with a dark stain, made from boiled oak bark, at the moment they are removed from the fire, giving them a rich mottled finish. The Yojuelan men, who peddle the pottery from village to village with their loaded donkeys, say that they stain their pots because folks out there believe the blacker the pot, the better fired it is.

You will find more examples of the pottery of Yojuela here.

Steam rises as oak bark dye is splashed onto a pot hot from firing.

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