San Antonio Arrazola

San Antonio Arrazola is a small village at the foot of the western slopes of Monte Albán, about 7 km southwest of Oaxaca's centre as the crow flies, at roughly 1,600 m. It belongs to the municipality of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán and had 1,622 inhabitants in 2020, up from 266 in 1900. Its patron saint is Anthony of Padua, and the parish church, the municipal agency and a small plaza with a tiled kiosk form its centre. Colourful murals decorate walls along the cobbled streets.

Arrazola's fame comes from Manuel Jiménez Ramírez (1919–2005). As a boy of about eight he herded his family's animals on the slopes of Monte Albán and began modelling them in clay; because clay broke easily he switched to wood, using copal and other local timbers. In the 1940s he sold small figures in Oaxaca for a few centavos. While working as a guard at Monte Albán he met the anthropologist Daniel Rubín de la Borbolla, who helped place his pieces in Mexico City folk art collections, and by the 1950s collectors were coming to the village.

The word alebrije first named the papier-mâché monsters of the Linares family in Mexico City; it was later applied to the brightly painted wooden figures of Oaxaca, a tradition Jiménez helped shape. Other carvers began imitating his figures in the early 1980s, and today San Martín Tilcajete is another major carving centre. His sons Angélico and Isaías and their families still carve and paint in the family workshop, and many other households in Arrazola sell from their homes. In 2024 the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca devoted an exhibition, El tallador de sueños, to 59 of his pieces.