The marine coast of the Gulf of Mexico is a region almost devoid of stone, except for a few basalt outcrops as in the case of the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, and the foothills of the Sierra Madre in north-central Veracruz which allowed for the building of the ancient city of El Tajin with sandstone slabs, which are extremely rare. Moreover, it is a vast plain that reaches the Papaloapan River basin, where settlements were entirely built with adobe; even river stones become scarce.
These were earthen cities, even though they do not lack true pyramidal temples and beautiful palaces decorated with figures modeled in raw clay and painted with bright colors. Ceramics reached a level of technical development achieved in few other places of ancient Mexico and probably led them (to a certain extent) to take on the role that in other regions of Mesoamerica was conferred to sculpture. Not only the most beautiful clay figurines were made there, but they also produced large terracotta sculptures which, due to their size, had to be made in parts so that once fired they could be assembled, so as to form true works of art worthy of the temples of the Late Classic period (ca. 600-900 A.D.).
These magnificent specimens over a meter and a half high remain as vestiges in El Zapota, El Cocuite and other various parts of the municipalities of Veracruz of Tierra Blanca and Tlalixcoyan, both due south of the Laguna de Alvarado. The piece that concerns us here, a personage of a complete body, is an example of modeled clay that has left the torso separated from the legs. The two pieces that form it would have been ed at the waist by matching a sort of system of "pin and box" that ensured its stability once assembled. Now only the head and torso remain; the legs have been lost, but you can see where the body ends below the belt, a flange that would have helped it to fit precisely into the missing piece.
The torso and arms were decorated with the technique of pastillage, using cords of clay as a way to form bracelets, the nipples of the character and a series of forms which appear directly added to the body and which might have eventually appeared as the representation of scarification, a technique of body adornment that was in use in Pre-Columbian Mexico. that Gonzalo Guerrero, castaway of the Spanish expeditions to Mexican lands in the sixteenth century, refused to accompany Cortes in his military enterprises because, among other reasons, his body was full of scarification. The piece was reassembled after its acquisition, it was found in pieces and this condition is likely the result of being discarded in Pre-Columbian times in a ceremonial burial site. It would have been a site reserved for pieces of worship and is where they were thrown after use in certain rituals after which they were considered contaminated and therefore no longer usable.
The marine coast of the Gulf of Mexico is a region almost devoid of stone, except for a few basalt outcrops as in the case of the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, and the foothills of the Sierra Madre in north-central Veracruz which allowed for the building of the ancient city of El Tajin with sandstone slabs, which are extremely rare. Moreover, it is a vast plain that reaches the Papaloapan River basin, where settlements were entirely built with adobe; even river stones become scarce.
