For The Wild

Grounding this conversation within Teotitlan del Valle in Oaxaca, Mexico, guest Samuel Bautista Lazo, brings listeners into an insightful conversation on the value of craftwork that connects us to the past and plants seeds for the future. Here, Samuel outlines the weaving traditions of the Benzaa people, offering insight into a trade and lifeway shaped intimately by ancestry and the land. Through his family’s weaving business, Samuel emphasizes the importance of creating connection and meaning with the objects we need to sustain life. In an age of mass alienation and mass consumption, intimately knowing our relationship to the objects that sustain, to the skilled labor that creates, and to the land that provides is a radical act. How might we cultivate such connections within our lives? Dr. Samuel Bautista Lazo is a Benzaa (Zapotec) weaver from Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico. In 2013 he obtained his PhD in Engineering from the University of Liverpool in the UK, doing research in the topic of Sustainable