Knowledge that has endured for centuries

One strand of the origins of The Integral Management Society lies around the Posada Humboldt in Papantla and La Bola de Oro’s jewellery and watchmaking workshops. For decades, engineers, artists, merchants, travellers, artisans and people of different communities, languages and origins spent time together there. The posada and the craft gave profoundly different worlds a common language.

Totonacapan is one of the most complex human and cultural ecosystems on the continent. For centuries, markedly different communities of practice, languages, technologies and ways of life coexisted here, bringing together the ancestral and the modern, the Indigenous and the global, the ritual and the commercial.

Totonacapan’s cultural heritage is living practice as well as history. UNESCO inscribed the Ritual Ceremony of the Voladores of Papantla as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Papantla’s Centre for Indigenous Arts, Xtaxkgakget Makgkaxtlawana, was included in UNESCO’s Register of Good Safeguarding Practices and recognised internationally for its contribution to the living transmission of Totonac knowledge.

These recognitions are evidence of real continuity. Communities, families and individuals have kept alive knowledge, crafts, ceremonies and ways of knowing that would have weakened or disappeared in many other territories.

The Integral Management Society (IMSV.org) likewise maintains a century-old tradition centred on communities of practice and on the master–apprentice model for preserving skills and knowledge.

At the same time, that setting brought together the spirit of explorers, scientists, merchants and engineers with processes of technological innovation in one of the most complex and sensitive sociocultural territories.

More than a century of craft, memory and continuity in the historic heart of Totonacapan.

IMSV.org, the society behind the creation of the Institute, traces part of its origins to La Bola de Oro’s jewellery and watchmaking workshops and to meeting places such as the Posada Humboldt in Papantla. For generations these places served as communities of practice and as points of connection where artisans, merchants, engineers, travellers, artists and people from different Totonacapan communities and traditions could innovate and preserve knowledge.

A continuous history

In 1898, Genaro Vargas Tapia founded a jewellery and watchmaking shop in Papantla that has operated continuously at the same site ever since, through wars, revolutions, economic crises and decades of regional violence [1]. On the strength of that documented continuity, it is one of the longest-running jewellery and watchmaking houses in Latin America.

Genaro arrived in Totonacapan without capital or title and built on a slope that he levelled himself with a pick and shovel. His vision went beyond commerce. Around the workshop he formed an association of artisans grounded in honour, respect and mutual help [1]. From the start he brought Indigenous craft traditions together with techniques from Italian and French jewellers who had come to the region, making pieces unlike any previously seen in the territory. The workshop became a centre for Totonacapan’s communities of practice.

Alongside jewellery, Genaro introduced European precision watchmaking in 1900 and optics in 1902, technologies then reaching only major cities. The workshop gave the north of the region access to new techniques that could be practised alongside established crafts, bringing communities of practice together.

Jewellery, watchmaking and optics each kept their own technical discipline while sharing a bench, a workshop and mutual trust. In the same place, beside the Posada Humboldt, engineers, artists, travellers and explorers came and went, making La Bola de Oro a meeting place for craft knowledge, technical precision and the outside world.

Passing knowledge from generation to generation

Keeping the craft going took sustained effort. Most businesses founded in the region in the nineteenth century disappeared, changed hands or closed as crises came and went. La Bola de Oro stayed open generation after generation, through wars, currency devaluations, political changes, economic crises and profound transformations in the territory.

During the twentieth century, Totonacapan experienced the crisis of vanilla monoculture, deforestation, rapid cultural change, acculturation, new patterns of consumption, the arrival of major retail chains and, later, deteriorating security in the region. Many craft techniques began to weaken or disappear.

In response, subsequent generations at La Bola de Oro worked to keep the territory’s communities of practice alive. They travelled to the mountains, the coast and remote towns to find master artisans, often the last custodians of a particular technique. They learnt from them, commissioned pieces, maintained relationships of trust and kept that knowledge in circulation.

The jeweller’s craft thus retained a living way of being passed on: the master–apprentice relationship, a shared workshop, constant practice and continuity across generations. This jewellery was preserved by making it, teaching the craft and keeping connections open among those who knew how to do it. Display cases can preserve pieces. This tradition also endured through the practice itself.

La Bola de Oro remains active in Papantla, open practically all year, around 360 days, with pieces made in the traditional way. Alongside this living practice, the International Institute of Totonacapan Culture documents, catalogues, preserves and promotes this tradition internationally as part of the territory’s living heritage.

The roots: La Bola de Oro and communities of practice (1898–)

In 1898, Genaro Vargas Tapia founded La Bola de Oro, a jewellery and silversmithing shop in Papantla that has operated continuously in the same place to this day. From its early decades, the workshop brought together ancestral Totonac jewellery and master artisans from European traditions. Communities of practice worked side by side through the master–apprentice model characteristic of the territory.

This way of passing on skills, practised at La Bola de Oro for generations, has international recognition. Through UNESCO, the United Nations recognises it as a fundamental approach to safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. In Papantla people practised it decades before there was a framework to give it a name.

Active preservation when the craft was being lost

For decades during the twentieth century, traditional jewellery making in Totonacapan declined. Under pressure from economic change, migration and cultural shifts, many masters who carried specific techniques withdrew to remote mountain communities. Their knowledge was in real danger of disappearing with them.

At that point the workshop took on a role beyond making jewellery. Its members travelled through the mountains looking for those masters, contacted and brought them into the work, documented their techniques and kept the craft alive when the market alone could not have sustained it. That quiet work of active preservation, continued over many years, is central to the history of this association.

Translated from the Spanish edition. Read the Spanish edition

Documentary references

• Centre for Indigenous Arts (UNESCO)

What watch repair teaches

The interest in watchmaking includes diagnosing mechanisms, preserving tools, obtaining parts and being able to adjust and check again. Repair sustains an object’s life and circulates technical knowledge. In the story of La Bola de Oro, this craft exists alongside silverwork, optics and everyday service to the territory.

La Bola de Oro · Watchmaking and repair