Shopping for Mexican Handicrafts

An extensive array of quality crafts and other items coupled with a favorable exchange rate make Mexico a paradise for shoppers. The range of handmade goods is nearly limitless and many products can be found at bargain prices.

Since each region, often each town, specializes in a particular craft — this is especially true in the states of Oaxaca, Michoacan and Yucatan — traveling to the source is best: selections are larger, you can buy direct from the artisans, and you often get a fascinating inside look at the production process. In Yucatan, for example, the town of Becal is famed for its Panama-style hats woven in underground caves; the dampness helps to keep the plant fiber the hats are made of from drying out.

Still, most of Mexico’s best buys can be found in the largest cities, in shops along major avenues, at the leading hotels and museums, and at the markets. In Mexico City, additionally, the National Fund for the Promotion of Handicrafts, known by its Spanish acronym Fonart, operates three large stores and serves as a showcase of crafts and folk art from all over the country.

Shopping at a market can be tricky since prices are not fixed and vendors are expert hagglers, which can leave you at a definite disadvantage. The concept of the flexible price, however, doesn’t have to be scary; after all, it’s no more than the traditional, local version of the globally sanctioned floating exchange rate; if it’s good enough for the IMF…. The key is to think of it as more of a debate than a dispute, as a more interactive and human form of shopping than the impersonal scanning of a bar code. So go ahead and admire all the lovely items on display.

What to Look For

Silver is a particularly good buy in Mexico, for years the leading silver producer in the world. Usually stamped “.925,” meaning the alloy contains 925 grams of silver in every 1,000 grams, sterling silver jewelry and silverware in Mexico have been turned in recent years into a high art form. The colonial mining town of Taxco in Central Mexico is the country’s silver mecca, but visitors will find incredible selections at great prices everywhere.

Mexico’s talented jewelry designers have branched out, incorporating gold, gems and semiprecious stones into their high-fashion pieces, as recent collections by the country’s top designers show, including Arianna Dall’Amico, Martha Vargas, Mauricio Serrano, Samuel Burstein and Victor Sabido.

Certain handmade items that are uniquely Mexican, or made here in a particular way, make excellent purchases, including Huichol yarn paintings, and beaded art and jewelry, acoustic guitars, devil sculpture, amate paintings, alebrijes, and huaraches, among others.

The Huichol Indians of Mexico’s northwest “paint” by pressing brightly colored yarn into beeswax on a board, creating psychedelic, often mystical images with ancestral meaning. They also “sculpt” using intricate beadwork and create dazzling jewelry with glass beads. You can admire their handiwork in the Riviera Nayarit on Mexico’s Pacific coast.

The town of Paracho, in Michoacan state, is famous for fine and moderately priced handmade acoustic guitars made in family workshops. You can plan for next Halloween with a visit to Ocumichu, also in Michoacan, where ceramic artists create devils of all sizes, shapes and persuasions out of clay.

Reminiscent of ancient scrolls, amate paintings are done on tree bark paper, representing an art form that probably dates back to before the birth of Christ. Alebrijes are wild and wooly fantastical creatures made of papier-mâché. A Oaxacan specialty, they sometimes feature multicolored two-headed fire-breathing dragons that can brighten any home.

The original earth-friendly product, huaraches were green years before the movement even existed. Made by combining leather straps with rubber soles made of recycled tires, these sandals come in a variety of styles, from rugged to flirty.