Esperanza (65) and Tio (72) walk to work at the brickyard. It's 3:30 AM and it's 39 degrees.
Archeologists have found bricks in southern Turkey made from mud and dried in the sun about ten thousand years ago. In Mexico, sun-dried adobe bricks made from clay and straw were used for centuries. The Aztecs used them around 200 AD to make the massive Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán (Mexico City). It’s just south of 2000 years, and the pyramid is still standing - you can walk and climb on bricks right up the side of it. At this writing, it’s the winter of 2021, and in Mexico, over time, some things don’t change all that much.
The weather report on the phone app says sometime today it will reach 26C (79F) at 6400 feet in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, but right this second, the desert cold wants to slice pieces out of you and not give them back. It’s 3:30 in the morning, January 22, and it's 4C (39F) in this large brickyard. It’s not the intense cold that some US and Canadian ex-pats in Mexico know as cold, but in the high desert, the cold carries a machete, and it makes a clean cut. At this moment, most of the city is asleep and warm, but not Esperanza Socorro and her husband Tio. Using the occasional streetlight, they walked on cobblestones for a half-hour from their home in the local neighborhood of Pantoja, on the dust-covered, wind-whipped, rolling desert, 4 kilometers (2 miles) west of San Miguel - the city those slick gringo travel magazines, web sites, and blogs justifiably call one of the best and most beautiful in the world. But here in the shadow of San Miguel, the word beautiful doesn’t apply. In Pantoja, life is exposed, ragged, and raw. Here, people don't try to prosper so much as they try to get by. The beauty of Pantoja resides in the hearts of the Mexicans who live here, and in the mind of the beholder. Esperanza and Tio walked the streets to this brickyard of raw ground, so they can start work three hours before sunrise. They start early because, by mid-day, the quality of the sunlight (even at a relatively cool 79 degrees), is so bright, and angular it makes it almost impossible to see for work. It's harsh now, but in a couple more months, the sun can rip you apart with heat. Next to the work area, 25 meters away, two industrial lights from the street fill the brickyard with just a little more than not much to see by. They don’t use and probably don’t own flashlights. As they have for decades, they build a fire out of used plastic sheeting, some garbage, a few sticks, and gasoline. On top of the plastic fire, they put a couple of pieces of thin bent rebar, and they start to heat up a bucket of water and some coffee, and then they get to work making bricks using what’s left of the streetlight and a waxing crescent moon.
Tio shovels the lodo into the small gas run mixer called a mezcladora and Esperanza spreads sawdust on the yard to prevent the wet bricks she will make from sticking to the ground.
Bricks are made in Mexico pretty much as it’s been done for generations, and this morning will be no different. Tio makes a composite cement-thick mud they call lodo, by shoveling and mixing heavy clay, sawdust, straw, water, and cow manure. For the correct formula, he guesses on his measurements, and after this many years, his guesses are exact. On the flat dirt yard, Esperanza, working on her knees, scoops up a load of this wet mud from a wheelbarrow into her arms. She cradles the mud like she’s carrying a baby, and it clings to her. She then drops and presses the mud into a wooden frame (molde) in the shape of five bricks lying side by side on bare ground they previously covered with sawdust, so the bricks won’t stick to it. As the lights from San Miguel continue to track along the horizon behind them, Tio keeps bringing wheelbarrows full of mud from the miniature cement mixer they call a mezcladora. Esperanza slides on her knees backward as she forms bricks five at a time, and her clothing slowly gets soaked in the cold wet mud mixed with manure.
Esperanza kneels and cleans the form for five bricks as San Miguel sleeps in the background.
It’s now maybe 6:00 AM, and the sun is still an hour and a half from coming up. As it gets closer to sunrise, it gets colder (3C, 38F), and most of San Miguel is still asleep. A streetlight silhouette appears walking off the cobblestones, coming over the top of the short rise just off the edge of the brickyard - a mother carrying a small child wrapped in blankets. It’s their daughter Sylvia, who is somewhere “about” 31, and her child Saira, who is “about” 3. Sylvia has come to work the yard and help her mom and dad make bricks. Saira has come to the yard to help her mom and her grandparents get through another day, which she does, simply through the grace of being 3 years old. They gain energy in her presence. Tio and Esperanza take a break, and the family gathers next to the fire. There are almost no trees around to provide a source of wood for a working family's morning fire in Pantoja, so Esperanza adds another sheet of plastic, some more garbage, and a couple more sticks. The fire smells nothing like what you might imagine, nothing like a gringo camping trip. It smells like…… Mexico - a mix of whatever you can find, whatever you got, and whatever works. The environmental consequences of making a small fire with plastic can't be considered as part of this equation. They are not being irresponsible polluters - they are just trying to get by on what they got. Everyone sits together getting a little warmer, drinking coffee, eating cold biscuits, and having some quiet conversation. Sylvia wraps Saira in blankets, and the child sleeps peacefully on a small sheet of old, beat-up plywood placed on the dirt next to the fire. Then the adults go back to making bricks.
The family gathers around the early morning fire, and Saira sleeps peacefully near the fire as Sylvia and Esperanza stay close, before starting to make more bricks.
Esperanza walked over to near where I was standing. She stood stooped low, facing her growing marching army of bricks, almost as though she had respectfully approached a shrine. She stood still for a moment, with her head bowed, and then she kneeled on the ground, to mold the next set of five bricks. I had glanced away for a moment in the dark, but as she kneeled, I heard a gasp of air mixed with an aged sound of pain that old people make when they crouch down on their worn-out knees and what’s left of their fighting spirits. But Esperanza's pain sound was hushed, as though she didn’t want anyone to hear. This was just between her and the bricks. Her sound felt like it had an ancient connection with all those who made the bricks before her. As the sun climbed over the hilltop to the east, Esperanza, Sylvia, and Tio continued to make bricks until they walked home around noon or so, and then they do it all again the next day and the next day and the next. In Mexico, over time, some things don’t change all that much.
Tio and Esperanza try to make about 1,000 bricks a day, leaving them to dry on the ground in the midday sun. For their efforts, they get 250 pesos apiece per day ($12 US). Tio started making bricks when he was 16. Today, he is 72. Esperanza started making bricks when she was 18 (Tio taught her how). Today, she is 65. They make bricks because it’s all they know how to do. As they grew up, they never knew there were any alternatives, and nobody showed them any. They are a traditional Mexican couple - happily married for 50 years. They believe in the saving grace of the Virgin of Guadeloupe. They have 11 adult children, all of whom were born next to bricks such as these and warmed next to fires such as this one. They have 40 grandchildren (or so), and right now, I will say with confidence, they appear as elegant a husband and wife as I have met in my lifetime. As far as I can tell, standing here on January 22, 2022, I would say both these wonderful people were birthed from a mix of clay, sawdust, straw, water, cow manure, unflinching faith in God, and molten steel. In Mexico, over time, some things don’t change all that much.
In these photos, Tio and Esperanza work in their bare feet, shoveling and mixing clay, sawdust, straw, water, and cow manure into the right mix to make bricks. As of this writing, I've never seen Tio in anything other than a white dress shirt. I'm guessing he will remain the only guy I've ever actually seen shoveling poop every day in a white dress shirt. I might have seen some corporate guys doing that over the years, but that's another story.
The prior images show Esperanza and her daughter Sylvia working to form bricks five at a time using a wooden form that acts as a mold to hold the mud as the bricks are pressed into shape.
Watching and photographing the efforts of Tio and Esperanza was humbling for me. I had to fight the feeling I was intruding. It’s clear to me Esperanza wants the best for her family. When she learned I wanted to photograph them working, at first, she was worried she might be perceived as looking ugly in her labors. I believe she felt a little embarrassed by her circumstances, as compared to other folks in other circumstances. But my production coordinator and translator friend Margo Luna (Mexican), convinced her and Tio that we were only interested in showing their dignity, their strength of purpose, and their pride in their work. Margo told them this is not a negative story, but a truly positive one. A story told on the square. They believed us.
People like Esperanza and Tio have much to teach those of us who, by nothing more or less than a Las Vegas roll of genetic dice, were born into good money, good opportunities, good luck, and good educations. As I walked back to the car a couple of hours later, on my way home for a serious nap to help me recover from getting up so freaking early, I paused on the top of the rise next to the brickyard and looked back at the now sun-filled workplace. Esperanza, Tio, and Sylvia were all working, talking, and laughing at the same time. Maybe they were joking about the crazy gringo with the camera and notebook. Saira was up and running around the yard with her sister Nadia, both of them screaming in fun and playing with a skinny street dog in between the rows of bricks that had been stacked up to dry better in the sun. I looked up at another iridescent blue and cloudless Mexican sky, took a deep breath, thought about my own "circumstances", and yet another line from a Bruce Springsteen song came to mind. “It struck me kind of funny, funny yea to me. How at the end of every hard-earned day people find some reason to believe.” In Mexico, over time, some things don’t change all that much.
An early morning portrait of Esperanza, Sylvia, Tio, Nadia, and Saira standing next to bricks stacked to dry in the sun.
It's not exactly like seeing closeups of Michelangelo's brush strokes, but for me, the effect of seeing the smooth pattern of Esperanza's hands across these new wet bricks is just as impressive and just as timeless. The process of making bricks appears to have no end.
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