Meet the Maker: Abel Garcia López

by Federico Sheppard

Originally published in American Lutherie #119, 2014



Dusk has fallen in this little corner of Mexico. Our car covers narrow mountain roads, and when we reach higher elevations, the road is covered with hail. “Is this snow?” I ask. “No Señor, this is frozen rain. It falls silently here. These are magic mountains.” A few miles later, sandbags and a checkpoint appear out of the mist. Plain men in plain working clothes handle well-worked machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, lit by dim yellow lamps.

“Abel, what is this? Is there a drug problem here?”

He laughs softly in his gentle way. “I can see where you might think that. But the problem here is not drugs, but protecting our trees. This village is one of the most indigenous in our country, and the local people have come together to protect their forests. The pine trees here produce a most wonderful resin, and it has been collected here for hundreds of years to produce paints and other things. The people a few villages away have many carpinteros (carpenters) and they have killed all of their forests and run out of wood. So the local people are protecting their future. This program has now become a model for local villages who wish to protect themselves from crime, robbery, and drugs.”