Unlike others of the art forms commonly known in Mexico as artesanías (or “handicrafts” in English), the carved wooden creatures often called alebrijes have a history recent enough to be mostly traceable. Pedro Linares López, a craft artist living in Mexico City in the 1930s, first came up with the term, giving it to his papier-mache fantastical figures. Manuel Jiménez Ramírez, another artist from Oaxaca, met Linares and took the alebrijes concept to his home state, where the medium changed to copal wood. Jiménez was from the town of San Antonio…
