A partially carved, unpainted wood mask depicts a deeply chiseled, grimacing devil’s face with furrowed brows, a creased forehead, and open mouth with sharply pointed upper teeth. — <i>Photo by Zvonimir Bebek, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives</i>

Diablo Mask

With chisel, chainsaw, knife, and Bondo, Alex Vásquez shapes the devilish masks worn by the dancers who perform for saints’ days and other celebrations organized in Central California’s Mixteco communities.

Bringing the devil to life

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Alex Vázquez performs in a red diablo mask made by his father on the Sounds of California stage.
Photos by Gregory Gottlieb, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections

When carving masks or suiting up as a diablo, Alex Vásquez expresses his cultural and religious devotion. Originally from San Sebastián Tecomaxtlahuaca in Oaxaca, Mexico, he is among the tens of thousands of Mixtecos who have settled in California, sustaining connections to their Indigenous heritage and homeland and, as essential workers, contributing significantly to the state’s agricultural, restaurant, and construction industries.

Members of Grupo Nuu Yuku/Danza de los Diablos de San Miguel Cuevas and Banda Brillo de San Miguel Cuevas pose outside the Sounds of California program area.
Photo by Josh Weilepp, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Vásquez participated in the 2016 Sounds of California program with a brass band and a group of dancers, Grupo Nuu Yuku/Danza de los Diablos de San Miguel Cuevas. They gave presentations related to danza de los diablos, a tradition practiced throughout the Juxtlahuaca district of Oaxaca’s Mixteca Baja, including Vásquez’s hometown, and historically derived from a dance drama commemorating the battles between Moors (Muslims) and Christians during the period known as the Reconquista (from the eighth century through the fifteenth century) in Spain.

To represent the devil’s opulence, the dancers outfit themselves in dress coats, goat-hair chaps, and leather boots. Their vivid wooden masks are hand-carved, painted, and topped with the horns of animals, such as ox and deer. Vásquez continues a tradition that has been part of his family for at least two generations prior to him. And since migrating to California, he has adapted the process to local resources. Instead of carving sabino (Mexican cypress), as is done in Oaxaca, he typically uses oak, hickory, or maple. To smooth and build up the mask’s features, he uses Bondo, a filler material he commonly works with in his job at an auto repair shop.

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Vásquez working on one of three demonstration pieces; detail of knife and replacement blade.
Photos by Erin Younger, Smithsonian

During the Festival, when not dancing with the group, Vásquez demonstrated the mask carving process, working from blocks of pine provided by the Festival or making repairs to the masks of other dancers. When his carving knife’s blade wore out, a metalsmith from the neighboring Basque program, César Alcoz, forged a replacement blade—an exchange that Vásquez cited as his favorite Festival moment.

—Sojin Kim, program curator