San Lucas is one of those sleepy little communities lying along the shore of Lake Cajititlán, just 20 kilometers northwest of Chapala. Well, sleepy it may appear if you walk around the plaza and fail to spot even a stray dog, but don’t be deceived by appearances. There’s plenty of activity going on behind the scenes in almost every backyard, for this little town has been home to makers of metates and molcajetes for at least 600 years and probably a lot more. Metates, of course, are flat slabs of volcanic rock for grinding lime-softened corn, while molcajetes are round mortars traditionally with three legs, used for pulverizing chili peppers, tomatoes and other ingredients used in salsas. Today, as in the past, each of these kitchen tools is hand-made from appropriate native rock which, as you might suspect, can be found in great abundance only minutes from the village.
When we first wandered into San Lucas Evangelista, we had no idea where to find the basalt sculptors, but after knocking on a few doors, we were welcomed into the home of Victor Cocula, who told us he was one of some 300 local people who follow the long standing tradition of transforming the hard local rock into practical appliances as well as works of art.
Such items, in fact, can be found in every corner of Cocula’s living room and included busts, commemorative plaques and clever water filters along with the traditional mortars. “My ancestors have been making things like these for a very long time,” Cocula told me. “In fact, only recently a neighbor dug up a metate in the local cemetery which amazed all the craftsmen of the village. It appears to be some 600 years old, decorated with the head of a dog. The quality of workmanship is extraordinary. There are no tell-tale chisel marks on it anywhere—in fact, it’s so smooth it appears to have been machined. We can’t explain how it was done, but it’s proof positive that sculptors have been at work here for a long, long time.”
By now, of course, I was dying to observe the process by which these items had been made and I immediately accepted Victor Cocula’s offer to take me to the nearby basalt mines where the rock is extracted.
It turned out the mines—quarries really—were only a half hour’s walk from the village, just up the hill on the way to El Cerro Viejo, which looms on the horizon.
We climbed down into a long, deep man-made gully which seemed to go on forever. The steep walls on either side consist of basalt boulders undermined by decades of digging, and are anything but stable. “Over the years,” said Victor’s father, “we’ve lost five people to rock falls in these mines. Two of them died quite recently.”
We arrived at the family’s favorite spot along the trench and—while his father deftly turned out a dozen “manos” (pestles), Victor walked me through the process of converting a rock into a sculpture.
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