Angela Lazo Martínez

La Rueca Zapoteca

Angela Lazo Martinez, a 47-year-old Zapotec artisan, discovered her calling at just nine years old, weaving rugs alongside her father at the artisan market. As the years pass, she has transformed the ancestral tradition of spinning yarn on the spinning wheel into her life's work, inspiring the name of her business, "La Rueca Zapoteca" (The Zapotec Spinning Wheel). Driven by the determination to provide for her children, Angela has lived and worked in her home-studio for the past decade, where she intertwines wool and cotton threads to craft beautiful rugs, ponchos, and gabanes (traditional cloaks) designed to keep the winter cold at bay.