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Amate: When Ancient Bark Tells Stories

  • Feb 27
  • 3 min read

In San Pablito, Puebla, morning light filters through the workshop where Otomí artisans spread strips of jonote bark across a wooden board—a technique once used in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica for codices, ritual texts, and administrative records.

Today's paintings tell different stories; they capture vibrant parrots perched among flowering vines, jaguars prowling through tropical gardens, and hummingbirds hovering over brilliant marigolds.

This is amate today: ancient bark transformed into contemporary chronicles. Visual stories documenting Mexican life and indigenous flora and fauna.


From Sacred Codices to Contemporary Chronicles


For centuries before Spanish colonization, bark paper served as the foundation for Mesoamerican knowledge systems.

The Mexica (Aztec) empire incorporated bark paper into tribute and record-keeping systems, and production involved communities across central Mexico (Peters, Rosenthal, & Urbina). Colonial suppression of indigenous ritual practices led to the destruction of many codices and restrictions on paper production, driving the craft underground. Yet Otomí families in San Pablito preserved technical knowledge through kinship networks while maintaining the paper's ceremonial associations (Jackson).

The tradition's contemporary revival began in the late 1960s, when Otomí papermakers brought amate to Mexico City markets and encountered Nahua painters from Guerrero's Balsas region. This intercultural exchange merged Otomí technological expertise with Nahua iconographic traditions, creating the naturalistic scenes featuring birds, flowers, and wildlife that characterize modern amate art (Peters, Rosenthal, & Urbina; Jackson).


Contemporary Documentation: Flora, Fauna, and Community Life



Today's amate paintings carefully record regional biodiversity: tropical birds such as parrots, native flowers including marigolds and hibiscus, and symbolic animals such as jaguars and hummingbirds (Museum of International Folk Art). These works function as visual catalogs preserving knowledge about local ecosystems alongside community celebrations.

Artists including Juan Damaso Gaspar and Eutimia Mendoza Fabian—who have painted on amate for decades—create comprehensive cultural records. Wedding paintings capture church ceremonies and family dynamics alongside characteristic birds and flowers. Agricultural themes depict traditional milpa polyculture while reflecting environmental change and evolving rural life.

The National Museum of Mexican Art’s 1995 exhibition The Amate Tradition: Innovation & Dissent in Mexican Art highlighted how contemporary artists such as Nicolás de Jesús use traditional visual language to address migration, identity, and cultural adaptation within modern Mexico.


Family Production Networks

Understanding amate requires recognizing production as embedded family practice. In San Pablito's extended family compounds, bark collection involves specialized ecological knowledge transmitted through working relationships—optimal tree species, harvesting seasons, and sustainable techniques (Peters, Rosenthal, & Urbina).

Amate is commonly made from bark known locally as jonote, a term that can refer to several species used in production, including Trema micrantha and Heliocarpus appendiculatus, depending on region and availability (Peters, Rosenthal, & Urbina; Jackson).

As contemporary papermaker Efraín Daza explains, his family has maintained production "for three generations" using "methods passed down from precolonial times" (Hiromi Paper). Increased demand has depleted local bark supplies in some areas, requiring sourcing from other regions and affecting traditional harvesting patterns.


Supporting Community Storytellers

Samuel Correa, coordinator of Ya Mumpot Ei Pati ("those who make the healing amate paper"), emphasizes that amate production represents "an expression of indigeneity, an assertion of the collective rights of the community, and a connection to the past through techniques passed from one generation to the next" (Jackson).

When visitors encounter amate paintings, understanding their documentary depth transforms transactions into cultural exchange. These visual chronicles support contemporary livelihoods while preserving ways of understanding social change that emphasize collective knowledge over individual achievement. Every amate sale sustains communities, maintains traditional production methods, and supports cultural interpretation systems.


Living Chronicles

The rhythmic sound of stone on bark continues in San Pablito's morning light, but the stories pressed into these sheets carry mountain communities' voices far beyond what their makers could once imagine. Where ancient scribes once recorded tribute and ritual knowledge, contemporary artists render hummingbirds and wedding celebrations. These are living chronicles—bark that breathes with contemporary stories while preserving visual languages older than European contact.



© Spanish Learning Edge. Angélica García Genel, Editor.



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