Note - This is the third in a series of my stories about the stone Carvers of Escolasticas in Central Mexico. I'm honored to say that on March 21, 2022, an edited consolidation of these stories was published in the New York Times in their section titled The World Through A Lens. I want to thank the New York Times for the opportunity to tell a worldwide audience about these wonderful people and their art.
Ruben Ortega Alegria is a stone carver and a corn farmer. Every morning, he leaves his home in Escolasticas and walks about 2.5km (1.5 miles) along a torturous desert road to a cornfield he cut out of stone and dirt. He rents the use of the land from a local property owner, and he works the corn in the early mornings, so he can provide more supplemental food for his family. He puts in a hard day’s work first, and then he walks the same road back to his stone carving shop in town. And then he gets to work.
I see Ruben as what you and I would call a seasoned factory journeyman. His working collar is worn-torn and a high desert bleached shade of blue. You know this kind of guy. There aren’t many left among us. Stone hardened tough; he radiates the soft pleasant calm of a life lived on the square. He comes to the job with a smile, and he gets all the work done every single day of his life. He does not take a siesta. He learned to carve when he was young because he had to. He learned alongside his friends and together they figured out how to do it. He’s 50 years old now, and he says he gets inspiration for his stonework from looking at the drawings of Michelangelo. He concentrates on the stone until he sees the patterns of what it will become. Carving and farming the small field of corn with his wife Raquel is all they know, and all they got, and that’s just fine. Ruben is a contented man. Who amongst the rest of us can truly say the same?
Ruben’s 10-year-old son José Juan Ortega Contreras is acting like he wants to learn to carve. After school, he comes to his dad’s little open-air workshop/factory out next to the highway, he hangs out, he watches, and he learns. José Juan doesn’t have access to a computer and he has never heard opportunity knocking. But he has Ruben to show him the way. His dad picks a moment here and there, to guide his son’s hands over the stone, so he can feel the life inside. Ruben says “You need to touch it and feel how it moves. You need to feel it before you can carve it.” And that’s the truth.
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