Between 2014 and 2023, El Huacal was an independent cultural center in the city of Oaxaca de Juárez (MX), dedicated to sound experimentation, creative processes, and curation.

 

I founded it in a shop I rented and lived in whilst in Oaxaca, with the intention of opening it to the local artistic community. This allowed me to quickly and fully immerse myself in the social reality I had arrived in, participate in it, gradually understand it, and not feel like a tourist.

 

Art in Oaxaca was booming, with numerous self-managed cultural centers springing up, dedicated to a variety of artistic forms, from dance to photography to graphics; as well as independent bookshops and artist residencies, and city cultural institutions open to dialogue with their own artistic community.

 

In this ferment, the sound scene was divided between the preservation and dissemination of local and Latin American musical traditions—jazz, the youth scene of rock and punk, and a small community of DJs performing in local clubs. More contemporary sound art was almost absent, and Oaxaca did not appear on the map of places where avant-garde music was produced and listened to.

 

El Huacal thus occupied a vacant space and immediately responded to the city's need for a reference sound and listening space, open to proposals and collaborations. El Huacal quickly established relationships with institutional and independent cultural centers in the city and began to develop its own program of internal cultural events (related to but not limited to sound art) and to curate or co-curate events in collaboration with other entities, both in the city and beyond.

 

Within a year, El Huacal had become a national reference space in Mexico, thanks primarily to the Oaxaca-Mexico City axis, the capital where everything happens. The first year of activity was representative of what would follow: painting exhibitions, film screenings, concerts, workshops, events organized in and with Oaxaca's cultural institutions, dialogue and mutual collaboration with independent spaces. I focused particularly on improvisation, as a tool for multidisciplinary dialogue, as an approach to artistic practice, and as a metaphor. We also sought some form of economic sustainability, the great utopia.

 

The second year was marked by the arrival of Gabriel Elías, who would become my partner-in-crime, and by ending up without a physical space, which forced us to curate and organize events in collaboration with other independent spaces, with which we forged and consolidated a close relationship of collaboration and friendship.

 

In the years that followed, we organized concert series, sound and music workshops, photography exhibitions, impromptu collaborations with local and visiting artists, a festival of independent spaces, and listening sessions, continuing to provide an open forum for the most radical sound experimentation.

 

El Huacal co-founded and co-organized the first 4 editions of international festival CANICAS, MÚSICA PERIFÉRICA, unique in its format and programming in Oaxaca, whose first edition included artists such as Peter Brötzmann, Moor Mother, Makoto Kawabata, and Gustavo Nandayapa.

 

Offering a wide range of activities focused on experimental music, El Huacal attracted an audience genuinely interested in the diverse possibilities of sound, as well as being an important hub in the process of maintaining and revitalizing the cultural and urban fabric of Oaxaca City.

 

Some of the artists who have collaborated with El Huacal:​ Moor Mother, Peter Brötzman, Heather Leigh, Kawabata Makoto, Nani Satoshima, MSHR, Ignaz Schick, Lieven Martens, Spencer Clark, Marc Richter, Blaise Siwula, Steven Brown, Israel Flores Bravo, Josué Vázquez, Selene Márquez, Andrea Neumann, Jacob Wick, Enrique Maravar, Chris Cogburn, Alex Muñoz, Juan Pablo Villegas, Rodrigo Ambríz, Fernando Vigueras, Misha Marks, Gudinni Cortina, Aimeé Theriot, Rodrigo Castellonos, Quimi Her-nández, Santiago Astaburuaga, Cristián Alvear, Felix Blume, Gabriela León, José Luís Romero, Israel Martínez, Alan Jones, Pär Törn, Martin Howse, Víctor Mazón, Mario De Vega, Juanjosé Rivas, Burkhardt Stangl, Angelica Castelló, Alfredo Bohorquez, Wade Matthews, Dario Bernal, Manuel Rocha Iturbide, Annelise Michoud, Berenice Guraieb, Damián López, Bruno Varela, Rosario Ordoñez, Nahú Rodriguez, Ram León, Ramis Dip Ramírez, Scarlett Mizraim, Zoon Diaz, Tania Bohórquez, Bárbara Lázara, Tania Solomonoff, Rolando Hernández, Gibran Andrade, Julian Bonequi, Arcángel Constantini, Carlos Camarillo, Cristiano Siri, Sonia Sguerri, Claudia Landavazo, Pio Cineamano, Mark Hegemann, Baltazar Castellanos, Kati Sandmann, Pere Soto, Gustavo Nandayapa, Manrico Montero, German Bringas, Kunt Vargas, Beto Cruz, Arodi Martínez, Emanuel Carrera, Tarha Erhena, Hugo Garcia, Andrés De Robina, Marcos Miranda, Geovanni Ortega, Rolando Beattie, Paulina Álvarez, Helmar Álvarez, Laura Vera, Carlos Ricardo, Vladimir Flores, Steve Jansen, Isai Gómez, Milo Támez, Aurelio Cuello, Dulce Trejo, Oscar Javier Martínez aka Oxama, Elena Pardo, Saúl López Velarde, Pauline Rosen Cros, Julian Dabien, Babboo, Jesi Jordan, Steph Yates, Erick García Gómez, Andrea Lange, Jennifer Eutebach, Ariadna Franco, Francisco Penilla, Matthias Mille, Aldo Porta, La Bande Son Imaginaire, Lucia Pulido, Austin Larkin, Juan García, Iñigo Barandarian, Julián Gómez.