Reid Park Zoo collaborated with the Huichol tribe of Mexico on a conservation effort that showcases stunning sculptures of various endangered species. The collection, “Wild Wonders: The Art of Beauty, Culture, and Conservation,” features nine larger-than-life sculptures.
“I love this jaguar because it’s the closest animal to my heart among the others we’ve seen,” Tucson resident Francisco Javier Villalpando said in Spanish, while observing the sculptured animal in its stalking-prey position, plotting its victim’s ambush. “I am from Sonora [Mexico], and there are some jaguars there.”
At present, there are at least a dozen male and five or six female jaguars patrolling the 56,000 acres of the Northern Jaguar Reserve located in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains, the southernmost part of the country’s state of Sonora. They had roamed across Northern Mexico’s rugged landscapes for centuries but were poached to almost extinction until the animal’s conservation project began in this Sonoran reserve in 2002.
“I’ve read that they could come back to Southern Arizona,” Villalpando said.
The last jaguar in Southern Arizona was spotted in the Huachuca Mountains southeast of Tucson on Dec. 20, 2023. It was the eighth jaguar ever documented in the U.S. Southwest since 1996. After that, he’s been seen in two other mountain ranges that span across the traditional homelands of the Tohono O’odham people.
“Jaguars were definitely on our traditional lands,” Tohono O’odham Nation resident Wynona P. Larson Yazzie said.
That wandering male jaguar was awarded the name O:ṣhad [Jaguar] Ñu:kudam [Protector] in the language of the O’odham people.
“O:ṣhad Ñu:kudam’s presence serves as testament to the resilience of nature and the importance of conservation efforts,” wrote the Chairman of the San Xavier District of the Tohono O’odham Nation, Austin Nuñez, in a release on May 9, 2024.
“Jaguars and Tribal nations share a similar history,” executive director of Conversation CATalyst and University of Arizona Professor of Mammalogy, Aletris Neils, wrote in that same release. “Each jaguar that returns to their native lands is a symbol of hope that past injustices can be overcome.”
But jaguars face serious challenges for their revival in Southern Arizona because nearly two-thirds of the U.S. Southwest Border is walled off, blocking their migration routes.
The largest cat in the Americas, third largest in the world after tigers and lions, the jaguar has lost 50% of its historic habitat and has gone extinct in the United States, El Salvador and Uruguay, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Believed to be a predator of the stars and of the earth, the jaguar is worshipped by many Indigenous civilizations across the American continent.
Among these are the Huichol [also known as Wixárika] people inhabiting several, tiny and isolated villages scattered across Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, spanning the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Zacatecas and Durango. They speak Wixáritari, a tongue that belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family, like the Cora, Tohono O’odham and Hopi.
For their location, they cohabit with the northernmost jaguars of this continent. But just like this animal of light and darkness that they protect, the Huichol people’s traditional way of life is threatened too.
Approximately 48,000 Huichol people remain in Northwestern Mexico, with many having moved to cities to sell their artwork in order to survive.
They are the Indigenous artists who carefully crafted the giant reddish jaguar sculpture displayed inside Tucson’s Reid Park Zoo. But it’s not the only one. Alongside the jaguar, eight other larger-than-life wildlife sculptures stand proudly among the zoo’s live animals: two baby elephants, a rhino, a crocodile, a grizzly bear, an eagle, a beaver and a flamingo.
These nine giant sculptures will be resting at Reid Park Zoo until April 30 and amplify the unique beauty of eight animals who need protection to survive in this net of life and time.
Each sculpture is in Tucson for the very first time, part of the exhibit “Wild Wonders: The Art of Beauty, Culture and Conservation,” handcrafted into life by Huichol artisans in Mexico’s Menchaca Studios, founded in 2010 by Mexico City resident Cesar Menchaca García.
“With ‘Wild Wonders,’ we want to give voice to these species in danger of extinction,” Menchaca said. “And to these native [Huichol] communities who are also in danger of extinction.”
“Through these sculptures, we valorize the cultural roots that we have in Mexico,” Menchaca said.
Each sculpture took 1–2 years to create, as its surface texture and design are rooted in Huichol’s ancient beadwork tradition. The sculpture’s body is entirely covered in tiny, colorful beads, tightly fitted together to form intricate shapes, symbols and patterns that reflect the tribe’s spiritual and cultural beliefs.
These nine artworks at Reid Park Zoo embody the timeless expressions of this Mexican Indigenous civilization while adding a modern flair.
“To make the sculptures, we employ materials that are affecting the Earth to raise awareness about them, like plastics,” Menchaca said. “We also began using more colors and epoxy resin so that the colors can resist in the sun.”
What’s undeniably stunning, however, is the myriad of tiny, colorful beads meticulously arranged to form the intricate images visible to the naked eye on the sculptures’ massive bodies.
Each tiny bead adorning the animals is a crystal produced in the Czech Republic. A total of 50 million crystal beads were used to create the nine “Wild Wonders” sculptures.
Fourteen-karat gold was used to craft some of the animals’ features — such as the beaver’s paws, the jaguar’s claws, the grizzly bear’s and crocodile’s teeth, the rhino’s horn and the tusks of the two baby elephants.
“He made the rhino’s horn with gold because he wanted to call attention to the value that is placed upon rhino horns in the poaching world,” Deborah Carr, Reid Park Zoo’s director of communications and marketing, said. “A similar fate is shared by the elephants, vanishing for the sake of their tusks.”
There are in fact very few rhinoceros’ left: there exist around 3,000 black rhinos, 3,500 greater one-horned rhinos, 13,000 white rhinos, 18 Javan rhinos, 30 Sumatran rhinos and almost no northern white rhinos. As for elephants, only 400,000 African and 40,000 Asian elephants are still alive in the wild.
Wixárika artisans have worked on over 200 sculptures with Menchaca over the past 15 years. Tucson’s “Wild Wonders” is one of 13 exhibits that Menchaca brings to audiences around the world.
So far, Huichol (or Wixárika) beaded sculptures have reached New York City, China, Russia, the Middle East, Europe (including Milan and Paris) and Menchaca’s hometown, Mexico City. The exhibits have centered around themes such as Mexico’s Día de los Muertos, jaguar protectors and the conservation of both land and marine animals.
Through these globally-traveling artworks, Menchaca helps sustain the Huichol’s ancient traditions — providing space and resources for them to support their lives and preserve their culture through art.
“I wanted to revitalize their art, and let them know that they can live with dignity through their artwork,” Menchaca said. “The work they do on these pieces gives them the resources to preserve other aspects of their traditions, too, and so the whole culture that they have.”
Huichol artists travel back and forth from their villages to Mexico City to work on sculptural projects in Menchaca Studios, where there’s often 20–50 working together on one or more pieces.
“They are very culturally committed,” Menchaca said about the Wixárika he came to know through art. “And they also like soccer, music, art and feasts, like I do, so we get along, we created a big family.”
With the “Wild Wonders” exhibit at Tucson’s Reid Park Zoo, Menchaca marks his first ever display at a zoo, where he combined the Wixárika people and animal worlds’ need for conservation into the symbol of these nine giant sculptures.
“He agreed to display the sculptures here only if we are involved in conservation projects because that’s the core of Menchaca Studios,” Reid Park Zoo President and CEO, Nancy J. Kluge, said.
Reid Park Zoo supports the Tanzania Conservation Research Program working to maintain safe habitat corridors for elephants to migrate for water and food, as well as the International Rhino Foundation, among other projects.
Just like he did in Tucson, Menchaca brought awareness about the Wixárica tribe’s existence, culture, and art “del piso a los mejores lugares del mundo,” [from the ground to the world’s best places], because he believes that art is a tool that serves to tell about the happenings of this world, including animals’ struggles.
If both were to vanish, art would remind the observer that they once lived. “Art is the footprint of our existence on Earth,” Menchaca said.
Be sure to visit Reid Park Zoo to experience the true beauty of these sculptures in person!
