Mexican puppet company created in 1979 by Alejandro Jara Villaseñor. “Tiripitipis” means “old gold” in the Purépecha language of Michoacán, the highland state of Mexico.

The company’s founder, “Teokikixtli” (in the Nahuatl language, “the one that makes someone come out, makes one dance, or represents the gods”), is a juggler who performs his work as a soloist. A travelling puppeteer, he passes on a large part of the cultural heritage that he has accumulated through his wanderings. Disciple of Don Ferruco Gilberto Ramírez Alvarado and Roberto Lago, who passed on to him the secrets of the trade, Alejandro Jara Villaseñor founded, in 1983, the Festival de Títeres in Tlaxcala, which turned international in 1990, and laid the foundations of the Museo Nacional del Títere (National Puppet Museum) in Huamantla, inaugurated in 1991.

In the early 1990s, having covered most parts of the country, Alejandro Jara Villaseñor again took to the road, this time abroad, to fourteen countries in the Americas, from Quebec to the Argentine Pampas, with his conference-show, Títeres prehispanicos de Mesoamérica (Pre-Hispanic Puppets of Mesoamerica).

In 2000, he received the Rosete Aranda prize in Huatmantla for his lifetime achievement.

(See Mexico.)