In Mesoamerica, an ancient lapidary artistic tradition emerges, shaping human images from stones of compact volumes called "axes" in a conventional way, as testified by a large number of works in the Olmec style. The Guerrero region, with an abundance of mining resources and specialists in fine stone carving, has fully contributed to this tradition ever since. Sites such as Teopantecuanitlan, Juxtlahuaca, and Oxtotitlan demonstrate their significant participation in the extensive network of societies that formed an ideology expressed artistically in the system of forms and iconographic repertoire distinctive of the Olmec phenomenon.
During the late Preclassic a new style was created in Guerrero, with a different kind of iconography in the enigmatic development known as Mezcala. This is the name of a town in the municipality of Eduardo Neri in the center of the state, which is the name the Balsas River is also known as in the same area. We owe its identification to artist and art historian Miguel Covarrubias. The description of the class of objects that he published in the 1940s brings us closer to the features of the sculpture that we see. “They are generally very schematic and stylized, with a vigorous character that makes them unmistakable despite their technical mechanism. They are made on the basis of an ax shape with cuts and planes arranged in a symmetrical way with the features barely suggested.” We also enter into the appearance of the work through what this author indicates when distinguishing three modalities of the Mezcala style, from which it has received the same name. Covarrubias says that “it consists of flattened figures or clearly derived from a petaloid ax, with more subtle and complex shapes: masses or planes separated by grooves or edges, with a narrow head, plate ears, wide jaws, with extremely simplified facial features, made with channels or planes that define the supraorbital arches, the edge of the nose and the mouth. Generally it is lacking eyes or they are indicated by a point."
Our piece in green stone presents a pair of off-white shell applications as eyes that relatively diminish the radical abstraction of the full-body human image. In addition to considering the adhesion of a material whose color contrasts with the base material as a representational strategy, it is appropriate to mention that between these two types of materials there was a conceptual association that brings us closer to the peculiarities of the Mesoamerican worldview, obviously with different criteria than those from so-called "western" societies. In this sense, the ethnohistoric documents provide us with valuable testimonies. From them it is known that in the taxonomy of the Nahuas of Central Mexico, as regards the late Post-Classic and early colonial stage, the "precious stones" constituted a category that went beyond rocks and that perhaps is implicit in the art of the Mezcala people.
Based on the Florentine Codex, Marc Thouvenot and Lizandra Espinosa Ramirez have pointed out that the concept of “precious stone” was broad and in addition to green stones, turquoise, amber, and obsidian, among others, it included shells, sea snails, and pearls. According to this researcher, the explanation lies in its origin in aquatic environments, where the caves and hills where the mineral deposits are found had direct with the underworld stratum, which was conceived as an immense ocean. The Nahua scholars who collaborated with the renowned Fray Bernardino de Sahagun in the creation of the Florentine expressed such ideas both in the Nahuatl text and in the pictographic images that illustrate the eighth chapter of book XI of the codex. Likewise, they took care to differentiate them from the "common stones," abundant and without the qualities related to color, brightness, transparency, hardness, and limited availability typical of "precious" stones.
Espinosa detects that brilliance was another quality that unified the univalve and bivalve shell species with the fine stones; in this codex it is reported to as "being fattened" or "something greasy." According to the author, it is a "grease-like sebum that emanates from the bone marrow; it has a coating property that resembles a varnish and it is possible to polish it." In the case of shells and sea snails, the shiny surface can be external or internal. It is known that some, like the Spondylus princeps, have a rough coating, while the interior is naturally varnished.
The masterful execution of human representation that we are dealing with is intended to synthesize anatomical features to the extreme. Among the diverse mosaic of artistic styles in Mesoamerica, the Mezcala stand out as the most abstract, an adjective that is not entirely opposed to the iconic representation of the visible world, but rather concerns, according to the etymology of the term, an intellectual operation to separate an essential trait or quality from something. The polysemy of indigenous art requires attending to forms in association with the symbolisms that were culturally assigned to it; I emphasize that the formal symbolism transcends its appearance and constitutes a sensitive structure in which materials, creative processes, techniques, technologies, uses, settings, and ideologies are interwoven.
