SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE – Since her childhood in the northern Mexican city of Sabinas Hidalgo, between Laredo and Monterrey, La Esquina Mexican Toys Museum founder and curator Angélica Tijerina traveled to neighboring Texas border cities like Eagle Pass, Laredo, and San Antonio to buy toys.
Tijerina, a teacher by profession, recalls that she loved the toys made in the United States and because of this she began collecting whatever Mexican made toys came her way, as they were very different from those in the United States.
Her father owned a girls garments factory which led her into playing and recognizing different types of fabrics.
She recalls that, “We played using pieces of fabric to make dolls. My father, who traveled all over Mexico selling washable girls’ uniforms, began to bring us handcrafted toys. They meant a lot to me because it was something new compared with the influence we [my sister and I] had from the United States.”
The first difference she noticed was that most of her toys were plastic.
“Toys made with natural materials, woven baskets, rag dolls sewn by hand, little kitchen dishes, and even the utensils we played with were dear to us. I saved many of these toys and acquired more over the years.”
Eventually, Mexican popular art crafts became a passion to her and when traveling with her husband, lawyer and mezcal manufacturer Alfredo Pérez Salinas throughout Mexico, she began visiting markets, handicraft fairs, and began to meet the toy makers themselves. Her toy collecting hobby became a passion for toys.
“How long have I been collecting toys? Counting my early youth years and those I’ve been married, I’d say I’ve been doing it during 50 some years.”
Originally she considered setting up the museum in a large city like Monterrey, but fate would have it that in the 1980s she and her husband decided to make San Miguel de Allende their second home and bought an old battered house on the corner of San Francisco and Núñez streets, which eventually became the La Esquina (The Corner) museum.
Angélica Tijerina says that there was many a toy she wanted to buy during her travels throughout Mexican fairs and markets, but many of them were out of their budget and she still keeps them “at an inspirational level” (meaning imaginary) but claims that what she bought are now set up in the 10 different displays.
Tijerina and her husband used their old house to open up the museum on Sept. 11, 2010, and since then it has grown significantly adding new displays of popular art following her curator style of showing toys that served as toys to children and which were never thought to have museum exhibit value.
She says she practiced her curating abilities (besides taking specialty courses) at her home in Monterrey where she had “a little museum in a corner” which she changed according to seasons.
“They varied among Independence Day, Day of the Dead, Corpus Christi, and many more of the fiestas I knew about. The most significant was the Day of the Dead. I’ve always made offerings, not to show but more for myself and out of tradition.”
In describing the collection now on exhibit she says it has dolls from all over Mexico and it now includes a full collection of a favorite of Mexican boys: wrestling masks.
A salient feature of Tijerina’s work is that in her travels and toy purchases she has met the people who actually make a living from making the toys and now organizes a yearly contest with cash prizes awarded by the museum as well cultural federal government institutions such as the National Fund for Promotion of Crafts (Fonart) which sponsors handcrafts.
But eventually she settled in San Miguel de Allende.
“I think it’s the ideal place for a museum. It should boast more museums than those it already has. The history of San Miguel is open to a lot more, but it should have the finest popular art museum.”
Though small in appearance, La Esquina Mexican Toys Museum houses several thousand different pieces of popular art memorabilia, which were once available in markets but many of them have disappeared from popular taste.
Yet for those who were not children in Mexico, it represents an excellent opportunity to travel through the timeless memory of innocent art simplicity and a chance to share the Mexican psyche of childhood fantasies.
