Cocuchas.com: Santiago Family

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Are you a "cocucha-sensitive"? If so, you will feel the unintelligible, yet profound centering quality of a truly artful cocucha. A truly artful cocucha is by no means just a pot. The artful cocucha resonates with an ancient past, call it cellular memory for lack of a better word, that is somehow grounding to the earth from whence it came. It wants to be remembered, even reverred for its awesome, majestic quality.

To really grasp and appreciate the true essence of the majestic cocucha, it may be helpful to know a bit about its birthplace and the village "artesanos" who birth it into form.

The cocucha and the town in which they are made, Cocucho, are inseparable. Cocuchas are not made outside of Cocucho. In fact, it has been tried by Lyman Fogel, and unsuccessfully so, to create a cocucha factory in Uruapan to make the transport of the cocuchas easier. It was an experiment that didn't last long. Lyman discovered that as strange as it may seem, the cocuchas artesanos of Cocucho are unable to make cocuchas when they leave the birthplace of cocuchas. The average time before the artesano lost his cocucha making ability was about two months. Thus, cocuchas are an expression of true Mexican folkart, an icon, embodying the traditions, values, and beliefs of the Cocucho pueblo and its people. When the artesano leaves the pueblo, the heart-bond to the pueblo leaves the artesano.

I am including the following photos of the family, the Santiago family, that make the gigantes that Cocuchas.com sells, to share with you a bit of the essence of which I speak. The first group of photos tell a bit about the Santiago family, their history, their hopes and aspirations; the second group shows the family working together to bring the gigantes down the hill from their troje that sits above the village basketball court to be transported from Cocucho to Patzcuaro, a major feat by any standards.