Women, continuity and the politics of value in the pottery of Huáncito, Michoacán

Abstract

This article analyzes the agency of women potters in Huáncito, Michoacán, in the face of cultural commodification and the State’s patrimonialist narratives. The research aims to understand how these artisans sustain the social reproduction of their craft within a context of economic precarity, how they manage intergenerational tensions arising from access to formal education, and what strategies they deploy to dispute the “politics of value” of their pieces in an unequal market. The study follows a qualitative design with an ethnographic approach. Fieldwork was conducted through intermittent visits to Huáncito between November 2023 and August 2024. Participant observation and in-depth interviews were employed with five artisans from different generational cohorts, selected through snowball sampling. Access to the field required a careful strategy due to the regional context of insecurity. The potters sustain their craft through self-management in family workshops, where they articulate production and care work, assuming a double working day that renders reproductive costs invisible. The incorporation of formal education among younger generations has transformed intergenerational transmission models, generating adaptations in workshops and new forms of participation. To dispute the value of their pieces, the artisans have turned to social media to bypass intermediaries and have capitalized on institutional recognition through signing their work and participating in programs such as “Grandes Maestros del Arte Popular”. Women potters are not passive guardians of a cultural heritage, but economic and political actors who ensure the continuity of the craft through everyday resistance. Their agency is exercised by transforming the domestic space into a center of productive decision-making, hybridizing ancestral knowledge with digital tools, and disputing the value of their work against dynamics of accumulation by dispossession. Craftsmanship thus reveals itself as a living vehicle for defending existence, dignity, and territory, challenging patrimonialist visions that reduce culture to an economic resource.