One day at the Casa de Cultura in Teuchitlán, I spent a while chatting with Chava Villalobos, one of the most knowledgeable guides at the Guachimontones archaeological site. Chava was born in Teuchitlán and for a long time his teacher was the late Phil Weigand. When I mentioned that I was interested in obsidian, he told me about a deep mine he knew of where the Indians had been extracting the biggest pieces of obsidian he had ever seen. Not even Rodrigo Esparza, “The Obsidian Detective,” knew about this place, he said, and offered to take us there whenever we’d like.
The result was yet another expedition to a little-known site. A few weeks later, we set out for El Pedernal, Jalisco’s biggest obsidian deposit, four kilometers square, which lies just west of Teuchitlán. The rainy season had turned the dirt roads in the area into canals of soupy brown mud, but the sun was shining and we couldn’t complain. Soon we were out of the car and hiking along a wide camino which looked more like an abandoned road than a trail. It was strewn with thousands of pieces of obsidian, many of which sported razor-sharp edges which would have made quick work of car tires. Every few steps the archaeological experts among us would stoop over and pick up long flat shards of shiny black obsidian, neatly chipped to make formidable knife blades. “There’s nothing sharper than an obsidian blade,” they told me. Metal blades, they explained, can only be sharpened down to the size of their molecules, but because obsidian is a glass, with no crystal structure, there’s no limit to how fine the edge can be. I was told that obsidian scalpels are being used more and more for important operations because they make the smoothest cuts imaginable, allowing the flesh on the two sides to reunite and heal quickly and easily.
“Por Aquí,” shouted Chava from somewhere in the nearby maleza. We pushed our way through the bushes just in time to catch his son Daniel walking backwards down a steep slope into a dark hole, while holding onto a rope.
The mine was about three meters wide and ten meters deep. At the bottom of the steep slope was a huge gaping mouth lined with black, jagged “teeth” of obsidian. Soon we were all inside the room at the bottom where another Teuchitlan guide, Oswaldo, pointed out that the wall at the end of the mine contained a single piece of obsidian over two meters high. He also showed us a small hole from which a bat was peering at us invaders. “Several of them live in this mine,” stated our guides. The fact that they were insect-eaters we immediately deduced from tiny wings we could see in the bat guano on the floor.
This mine was found by Chava’s son Gabriel who came upon it while hunting in the woods. It’s the second known underground obsidian mine in Jalisco. The other is La Mina de San Isidro Mazatepec, located north of the town of the same name and measuring 30 meters in length. “Before the arrival of the Spaniards,” said Chava, “owning an obsidian mine was like owning an oilfield today.”
As we trekked back to our vehicle, Chava pointed to the little black balls on his bracelet. “These are obsidian, from right here,” he told us, “but no one in Mexico knows how to make spheres of obsidian so small, with holes neatly drilled through them. You may be surprised, but the workmanship on this bracelet was done in China.”
We topped off our day with a visit to the Taller de Lapidaria workshop in Teuchitlán, where the owner, Alfredo Nova, showed us several new colors of obsidian he has found. “Manto Huichol” has all the colors of the rainbow, but somewhat blended together. We were also shown a kind of egg-yolk-amber colored obsidian and then to the great surprise and delight of archaeologists Rodrigo Esparza, Alfredo handed him a large chunk of what appeared to be white obsidian, a “holy grail” he had been searching for over many years (and for which he had sent many friends like me on wild goose chases). “At last I am vindicated,” gloated the Obsidian Detective. White obsidian does exist and this is the proof!”
That made Rodrigo’s day and mine as well, but lab tests must first confirm that the milky white rock is really volcanic glass.
How to get there
Drive 522 meters past the Teuchitlán gas station and turn right, immediately after the cemetery. Set your odometer here. Now go north through the town and 900 meters from the highway turn left onto an unimportant-looking dirt road. Go northwest on this, “following the main drag” until you come to a spot 2.8 kilometers from the highway. Here take the closest sharp right. At 2.9 kilometers you should be passing a pump house. If so, jump for joy, for you have nearly arrived. If you are somewhere else, you’ll have to start asking, “¿Dónde está el basurero? (because that’s what lies at the edge of the obsidian deposit). After driving through the dump, you’ll find a nice parking spot at 3.5 kilometers from the highway. You are now standing at the south end of El Pedernal obsidian deposit. The Gabriel Mine is still about 1.6 kilometers to the northeast, at N20 42.907 W103 51.643. Good luck finding it! Driving time from Guadalajara: about one hour and twenty minutes.