Mario's Journey Back to Colombia to Share a Long-Lost Metal Casting Technique
Mario Alberto Mutis Rodriguez, 2012 Graduate Scholar, University of Florida
The Mhuysqa people of Sesquilé, Colombia were declared extinct in the 19th century for political and territorial reasons. Since then, they have fought for legal recognition, and are currently focused on cultural revitalization after decades of cultural erasure and forced assimilation.
In 1990, the Colombian constitution was rewritten to allow Indigenous people more autonomy. Sesquilé is one of five cabildos (Indigenous governments) recognized by the federal government of Colombia. The other four are Suba, Bosa, Cota, and Chía.
As part of their cultural revitalization, some members of the community have adopted new record-keeping techniques to further preserve their traditions and history. For John (@laguebadeljohn), YouTube has served as a platform to share out about his Mhuysqa indigenous culture using an ethno-educational approach.
Cooke Alum Mario Mutis first met John while he was on a tour of Sesquilé’s sacred lagoon, Laguna Guatavita, with his partner. Mario was moved by John’s spirit and love for educating others on the Sesquilé community. John’s use of social media is primarily for the advancement of the community’s culture and knowledge.
John and Mario shared the mutual goal of ensuring that the community and the culture stay alive. John, through his use of education and video production, and Mario through his use of education and visual language, as an Assistant Professor in Visual Arts at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, FL. They exchanged social media handles and vowed to stay in touch over the next few years.
When Mario returned to Gainesville, FL, his art focus shifted slightly as he adjusted to the workshop he had access to: his backyard. After he graduated with his Masters of Fine Art from the University of Florida in 2015, his access to 21st century art tools were limited.
Instead of the 4-foot tall kilns and unlimited resources he had access to in his graduate program, Mario started creating sculptures in his backyard using firewood instead of electricity, and smaller porcelain and earthenware flutes.
Deep down, Mario has always been interested in understanding ancient techniques from his country related to sculpting and art creation. Alongside this shift in access to resources came the opportunity and interest to rediscover indigenous metal casting techniques that Mario had heard about through stories and family histories.
The general process of metal casting typically involves using a kiln and a cast. A kiln is a heated enclosure used for melting materials, and the resulting liquid metal is poured into a mold, which is an empty shaped space.
This interest in the indigenous metal casting technique was shared by his friend Sylvester Reyes, and together they decided to work together to learn the practice. Sylvester, a jeweler from Mexico, connected with Mario through culture, art, and their shared passion to learn this ancient technique.
Up until this point, the metal casting technique was lost to the people of Sesquilé through decades of colonization in Latin America and the erasure of indigenous practices.
“We have to realize that the history of Colombia is present in what we are allowed to learn, what we forgot, and what we retained,” said Mario. “There’s ancient history preserved in our culture but not to the extent that it is honored properly or even respected.”
The task of understanding the metal casting technique was a challenge due to the above factors and the lack of documentation that existed.
“The theoretical knowledge existed in some way – textbooks, museum exhibits,” said Mario. “But to my knowledge, it had never been brought in a context that was thinking about culture.”
The kiln, which is made out of clay, is about 8-10 inches wide and stands 14-15 inches tall.
Mario and Sylvester began a casual process of trial and error as they designed kiln renditions, but this process evolved more as they read different articles and visited museums for insight into what the finished products of metal casting looked like.
During one visit to Colombia, Mario saw an ancient kiln from the Mhuysqa community of Sesquilé on display in a museum. Through observation, Mario began to have a clearer idea of how they could better recreate the kilns used in the ancient metal casting technique.
Using their recent learnings to influence the design, they worked together and crafted a kiln out of clay and began to attempt metal casting, which they soon discovered was a physically demanding process.
Unlike the museum’s depictions of Mhuysqa metal casting, which showed the melting process with a propane torch, Mario and Sylvester wanted to stay true to the ancient technique and relied on the power of their lungs to blow onto the burning coals to melt metal. This physically demanding process would often leave both men out of breath and lightheaded from the exertion.
Although they were consistently able to melt aluminum, the most they were ever able to melt was silver, and it would only be slightly melted. That was because a key component of the process was missing: more lung power from more people.
“The metal casting technique wasn’t a process of the individual,” said Mario. “It was a process of the community.”
Once Mario felt confident enough in the metal casting process, he reached out to John, the Mhuysqa tour guide he had previously met in Colombia, with an offer. He volunteered to visit the community and share what he had learned about the ancient metal casting technique.
John was immediately on board and brought the idea to his community. Everyone responded with similar excitement. The governor approved the teaching visit, and one of the community elders was ecstatic to learn.
In July 2022, Mario packed up his metal casting tools, and carried the twenty-pound kiln onto a plane headed to Bogotá.
John and Mario organized a five-day workshop during his week and a half visit to Sesquilé. The workshop was held at an elder’s house from 6-9PM. His attendees had full-time jobs and would come straight to the workshop after they ended their shifts.
In addition to the technique, Mario also taught some of the workshop attendees how to make the tools, so they could make more if they wanted.
Mario spoke about how different of an experience it was to teach the Mhuysqa people versus his classroom of students at Santa Fe in Gainesville, FL.
For a while, Mario has always felt a sort of disconnect, one that he wasn’t able to place until this trip. When he teaches his students, he is blown away that they have such privileged access to a metal casting technique that was lost for 500 years.
“With the Sesquilé community, I didn’t have to express how significant a learning moment it was,” said Mario. “The community was receptive, and eager to learn a technique that was so connected to their culture for so long, but that they didn’t have access to until this moment.”
Over the course of the week, Mario worked together with the community to teach them the entirety of the metal casting process: from creating the clay molds to blowing into the kiln. At one point, nine individuals, including Mario and the community’s elder, were blowing into the kiln to melt the metal.
Using the strength of their combined efforts, they were able to successfully melt gold and silver, and Mario had the elder break one of the molds to reveal the finished object.
The items cast were reminiscent of offerings used for religious and sacred purposes. In ancient practices, the Mhuysqa people would often make payment towards the systems that allowed them to be.
From the start, Mario was intentional in making sure that he was learning this technique with the Mhuysqa people and context in mind. It wasn’t just a process to create jewelry or a gold item. People spent time turning the material (copper, gold, clay, etc.) into an object, which they then gave back to their life systems. When the Indigenous Mhuysqa community would make payment in sacred places, for example, the Laguna Guatavita, it would establish a relationship between an individual and its territory.
“Regardless of whether we believe it has some kind of impact in our world or in our life to give a little metal object to a lake. Regardless of whether the lake acknowledges or cares, what’s valuable is it creates a different environment between the human and the environment,” said Mario. “I wanted to make sure we got to the point where that would be an option. Not just to make things we could sell or use to decorate our homes, but to make things we could use as payment.”
After their successful metal casting, Mario was invited to the lagoon to make payment. While the community doesn’t allow just anyone to access the lagoon, due to decades of harmful dredging and draining and necessary restrictions now in place due to ecotourism, John was approved to bring Mario. Together they had a conversation with the lagoon to explain why Mario was there and what he brought.
Mario compared the experience to landing on the moon, “I never thought I’d be able to do that even though it’s right there and the possibility of doing it exists.”
At the end of his visit, Mario left the kiln and materials with the community because he wanted to ensure that they had everything they needed to continue creating and practicing the technique. He also promised to visit again in a year to check in on how the metal casting was going.
In October 2022, Mario got a call from his friend Sylvester sharing some exciting news. Sylvester had been gifted a book from the 1970s that included a diagram of a kiln used by the Indigenous communities of Colombia. It was an exact match to what they had created, down to the way they had drawn up the rendition.
They were thrilled to know that they had figured out how to create the kiln without the actual blueprints. They trusted their instincts, talked to family, read books, and relied on certain scientific data that existed. More than that, they were thrilled that the information was back in the hands of the Mhuysqa people.
“I was excited to come to the realization that if I died right now, the technique wasn’t going to die with me,” said Mario. “The connection to our people is the most important part of this.”
Mario was born in Bogotá, Colombia and moved to the United States in the early 2000s. After receiving the Graduate Scholarship from the Foundation in 2012, Mario enrolled in the University of Florida’s Masters of Fine Art program. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in Visual Arts at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, FL, and enjoys being a full-time faculty member. Mario was recently awarded 2022 Professor of the Year Award by the Association of Florida Colleges.
You can follow Mario’s art here.
To watch videos from Mario’s workshops with the Indigenous Mhuysqa community of Sesquilé, Colombia, check out La Gueba del John’s YouTube videos: