Feats of Clay.

A ceramics center in Mexico hangs on to tradition.

IN THE CENTER OF TONALA EVERY THURSDAY AND SUNDAY, Mexicans in search of bargains squeeze their way among the thousands of market stalls crowding the cobbled streets. Vendors hawk fake Levi's 501 jeans. Hypnotists sell appetite-sating charms for dieting housewives. And for US$2.50, you can even buy a video of Sylvester Stallone's latest movie, despite the fact that it has yet to be released.

Also displayed within the market, as it has been for centuries, is pottery. Lots of it. Much of it is mass produced for a broad range of tastes: teacups, baby armadillos, fruit bowls, techno-colored fish, flowerpots and skulls--it seems nothing is beyond the imagination of the local crafts people. If you look hard, however, you'll find the traditional pottery synonymous with this area even before the Spanish conquistadores arrived.

Juan Antonio Mateos Nuno is possibly the best known practitioner of burnished pottery or barro brunido the most traditional form of Tonalteca ceramics. Mateos Nuno takes fired clay objects and polishes them, first with a smooth stone from the local river then, after painting, with a piece of metal, to achieve the unusual finish. Other traditional Tonala techniques result in "cinnamon" ceramics or barro canelo pottery, so-called for its color; barro oxidado ceramics, made with sand and zinc for a rusty look; and barro petatillo, with fine lines that simulate the appearance of grass matting or petate.

Mateos Nuno acknowledges that the ranks of traditional potters are declining. Only about a dozen families still churn out authentic Tonala ceramics, compared to about 50 three decades ago. But he's not worried.

"Barro brunido was here before the Spanish. It is not going to die out," says the defiant 43-year-old, whose family workshop dates back three generations. He says his five daughters, aged nine to 16, are keen to take over when he retires. And, he notes, demand for the pottery remains strong.

Tonala already was a teeming market center generations before Beltran Nuno de Guzman and his 300 marauding conquistadores arrived in the village on March 25, 1530. The settlement, founded by the Zapotec Indians and given the Nahuati name "place where the sun rises," even had a weekly market where ceramics and other products were traded. Under Spanish rule, the market expanded to twice weekly. Today you can still find local products bearing the stamp "Galicia"--a holdover from when Tonala was, for a time, the seat of government of brutal Guzman's self-proclaimed New Galicia empire.

Although always an important ceramics center, it was not until the 1960s that the town's fame as a pottery enclave took off. In 1965, Tonala had 5,000 residents and two pottery factories. Now it has more than 100,000 inhabitants and about 80 factories.

Hanging tough. While the number of pottery factories has swelled, the focus on traditional methods has declined. At the same time, the smattering of family workshops still using the most time-honored methods are battling modern nemeses. The greatest of these is urban sprawl.

Where once there were bare hills yielding plentiful supplies of clay and natural dyes now there are sprawling housing developments stretching blocks through Loma Dorada--a suburb of Mexico's expanding second city, Guadalajara.

Like other traditional potters, Jose Bernabe Campechano must bring in clay from other communities. He says the texture and color are not perfect and the price of finished wares has risen about 50% because of the clay shortage. But he's not worried about his livelihood.

"Nature does not run out. For the artisans who want to keep on working, there is no need to give up," he insists.

Like Campechano, Ray Aguirre inherited a ceramics workshop through his family. And also like Campechano, he's hanging tough against the encroachment of Guadalajara--and the decline of clay supplies.

"If you know what you are doing, it is not a problem," Aguirre says. "You just have to be able to adapt a little to other clays."

Speaking in the cramped, single-room workshop where he and five co-workers work exclusively to order for U.S., Canadian and European customers, Mateos Nuno acknowledges "there is a real threat to the most traditional styles of pottery." But he points out that Tonala is a place where tradition long has outlived change. "We will adapt and carry on," he says.