An alebrije is a brightly colored fantastical creature, and the dictionary definition quietly contains the argument people have about them: a small handmade sculpture, made of paper, cardboard, or copal wood.1
Those are two different crafts, from two different states, with two different histories. They share a name and not much else.
One word, two traditions
| Mexico City | Oaxaca | |
|---|---|---|
| material | paper and cardboard, cartonería | madera de copal, carved |
| technique | built up in layers over a frame | cut from a single piece, then painted |
| origin of the name | this is where it comes from | adopted later |
| what to call the maker | cartonero | tallador or artesano |
| where you meet it | CDMX workshops, the October parade | Oaxaca villages, especially San Martín Tilcajete and Arrazola |
The Oaxacan wood carvings are the ones most visitors buy, and they are genuinely spectacular. But the word did not start there.
Copal is worth a note, since it does double duty in Mexican culture. It is a resin from trees of the Burseraceae family, burned as ceremonial incense2 — and the same trees give the soft, pale wood that the Oaxacan pieces are carved from. The tree that scents an ofrenda is the tree the carvings come out of.
The dream, and the man who had it
The name comes from one person. Pedro Linares López was a cartonero in Mexico City — papier-mâché was the family trade, inherited from his father.3
At thirty he fell seriously ill and, by his own account, dreamed of a forest full of impossible animals: a donkey with wings, a rooster with bull’s horns, a lion with a dog’s head. All of them were shouting the same word, which was not a word — alebrijes. When he recovered he began building what he had seen.3
He was awarded the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in 1990, two years before he died. And in 2024 Mexico City formally recognized the Linares family as creators of the alebrije and the craft as heritage of the city.4
So the tradition is not ancient. It is roughly ninety years old and it has an author, which makes it unusual among the things sold as Mexican folk art — most have no name attached, and this one has a name, a date, and a hospital bed.
The Museo de Arte Popular runs an annual Desfile y Concurso de Alebrijes Monumentales — hundreds of artisans build pieces up to four metres tall and walk them through the historic center. It started in 2007 and it is free. If you only ever see alebrijes on a souvenir shelf, this is the correction.
The parade is a city-backed event rather than a private one, run with the Secretaría de Cultura, and the winning pieces stay on display afterwards.5
What Coco did to the word
Most people outside Mexico met alebrijes through the 2017 film, where they appear as glowing spirit guides. That is a lovely invention and it is an invention.
- ¿y cuál sería mi alebrije?so which one would be my alebrije?
- jaja eso es de la películahaha that's from the movie
- ah perdón, ¿y esta de qué madera es?ah sorry, and what wood is this one?
- copal, mire, todavía huelecopal, here, it still smells
The second question got him the piece in his hands. Ask about material and method, not meaning. The spirit-guide framing is film mythology, and artisans field it about forty times a day.
None of this means you should feel bad for loving the film. It sent an enormous amount of attention and money to Oaxacan workshops. It just is not where the tradition comes from, and knowing the difference is the whole gap between a tourist and a good customer.
Buying one properly
Good questions
- ¿Usted lo talló? — did you carve this one yourself?
- ¿Cuánto tardó? — how long did it take?
- ¿Es de copal? — is it copal wood?
- ¿Lo pintó a mano libre? — freehand, or with a stencil?
Poor questions
- ¿Cuál es mi animal espiritual? — film, not craft.
- Haggling hard on a piece that took three weeks.
- Asking if they have it in a different color.
- Calling it artesanía típica to the person who made it.
The haggling one deserves saying plainly. Bargaining is normal in Mexican markets and nobody will be offended by an attempt. But a hand-carved, hand-painted piece is priced against weeks of labour, and pushing a carver down forty percent because a mass-produced version exists three stalls along is a different transaction from negotiating over a keyring.
Ask what makes theirs different. Usually they will tell you, at length, and the price stops being the point.
Ninety years, one fever dream, two crafts, and a film that got the look right and the meaning wrong. That is the entire story, and it fits in the answer to “what is that?”
Hero photo by AlejandroLinaresGarcia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources
-
Diccionario del español de México, alebrije - El Colegio de México ↩
-
Diccionario del español de México, copal - El Colegio de México ↩
-
Infobae, quién fue Pedro Linares López, creador de los alebrijes ↩ ↩2
-
Secretaría de Cultura CDMX, reconocimiento a la familia Linares, creadora de los alebrijes - Gobierno de la Ciudad de México ↩
-
Secretaría de Cultura CDMX, Desfile y Concurso de Alebrijes Monumentales del Museo de Arte Popular ↩
Test yourself
Tap an answer.
¿Qué es un alebrije?
¿Quién está detrás del origen de los alebrijes?
¿Los alebrijes son animales espirituales?
Difícil: ¿qué conviene preguntar antes de comprar uno?
Más difícil: ¿por qué se confunden las dos tradiciones?
