COMMUNITY Tixcacalcupul

Tixcacalcupul is located in the south-eastern state of Yucatan, in adjacency to the end of Quintana Roo. Is well connected because the road linking the city of Valladolid with the town of Carrillo Puerto crosses the town from north to south at kilometer 19.

According to the 1990 census, the population of Tixcacalcupul amounts to 1891 inhabitants (INEGI 1991 ). In most families work in the cornfields combined with the development of two crafts that are hipiles embroidery and warping of hammocks. Regarding the latter, Tixcacalcupul has distinguished himself for some time by the quality of its production (Teran and Rasmussen 1982).

As they tell the old community since the early nineteenth century every family prepared its own hammocks with instruments that were obtained from the mountain by its members, using fibers from two regional agaves: ki or sisal (Agave Sisal Perr) and elche elem (Agave fourcroides). Around the sixties, this way of doing hammocks was losing importance due to the spread of other raw materials that were more suited for sale to the tourism and the use of own people in the region.

 These materials were, first, the cotton or hemp thread and then the nylon thread. Along with the transformation of raw materials they emerged changes in the instruments used to weave hammocks, within families that produce and most commercial importance acquired production. Then we will address in some detail these changes, dividing the exhibition into two stages: the hammock before 1950 and the transformation of the sixties to the present.