Discovering the Art of Santeros

by Courtney Allison


Under the shadows of the Rocky Mountains José Raul Esquibel sits in his Littleton, Colorado home, his brown hands meticulously carving Santos. José is a Santero, a traditional Hispanic craftsman who takes what would otherwise be firewood and carves images of saints. These hand-made, hand-painted, Santos take time, patience, and a love and respect for spirituality hidden deep in the grains of wood.

In his dim basement workshop, José bends his head of black and grey hair over his workbench feeling his way around a piece a piece of aspen. "It's Zen. You carve by feel," José smiles and hands me the figure of a child. As I hold the figure in my hand I am surprised by how light it feels, as if it were air. As José looks at me and the small figure in my hand I suddenly feel the incredible weight hidden in that small child, that piece of wood. I came to José's home looking for a lost form of expressing Hispanic and Catholic spirituality. I wanted to learn more about the quirky, colorful figures I had seen in churches and homes all over New Mexico. I knew nothing about Santos, or the forms spirituality could take.

Since Columbus sailed to the New World, Santos and Catholicism have spread from Latin America to New Mexico and Southern Colorado. The concept of Santos as religious icons spread due to intense religious devotion and general isolation. After priests taught villagers to build churches they encouraged them to carve santos to decorate the church. Unlike the European art of the time, Santos were meant not to direct thoughts heavenward. Santos were meant to direct thoughts toward the connection all people had with Christ.

"The Santero ascetic was not of a romantic nature. Nature was realistic. Weather was not a friend."

As a part of nature, Santeros of New Mexico and Colorado used what materials they had.

"There was no tin like in Mexico, and no canvas, so the Santeros used wood. Santeros take a piece of low usage material and they raise it by sanctifying the material. All's fair in folk."

José shows me his latest project using the edges of plank pieces. Lumber companies cut huge trees down to plank size and there are leftovers. The small edges with bark on one edge. There is little value in these thin slices of wood. They are scraps. The wood is too sappy be burned in fireplaces and many lumberyards often give the wood away to whoever will take it off their hands. José has taken four plank pieces and is making a retabolo, or flat panel carving, of Pedro Arrupe. What was once garbage is now art. Santos and the Santero enjoyed prominence until many religious leaders began to question the significance of Santos. In 1851 Archbishop Lamy was appointed to the diocese in Santa Fe. He began to ban Santos from the churches of Santa Fe calling them too primitive for religious worship. As a result, people began to throw away, or give away their Santos. Now people living outside the Southwest hold some of the best collections of Santos.

Santo making did not become popular again until the 1960's and 1970's along with the Chicano movement. In Colorado, Santo making is still trying to make a big showing. Colorado artists are finding their way into modern Santo making. They are also trying to find their way out of the more controlling atmosphere that New Mexico Santeros experience.

"Santos are unique to Colorado and New Mexico. They come out of their status as a frontier. But in New Mexico, everything has become a competition for Santeros. In New Mexico, you'd have to be in your 90's and doing it forever if you wanted your Santos in a church. That kind of competition is unheard of in Colorado. In the absence of control you see a looser style, loosening up from the idea that you must be Hispanic to make Santos. Personally I've found Colorado to be very open about Santos. I get to participate in a lot of general art shows."

José's wife Jean Esquibel interrupts from the kitchen, "You were the first Santero in a lot of those shows." José asks her for some tea and shakes off her comment. He seems determined to think that Colorado never questioned whether a Santero was an artist or not. When I first shook hands with José I didn't think he looked like an artist. He looked like a grandfather, and a fisherman. He had a slow patient walk and a way of speaking that reminded me of my grandfather and learning how to fish by the sides of Colorado lakes.

While we talk his hands play with the buttons on his shirt and the folds in his pants. He seems shy when he leads me down to his workshop.

"I don't let many people down here because it's a mess. They expect it to be clean, like a studio, but it's a workshop."

And a workshop it is. Halfway down the narrow stairs the smell of sawdust buffets me. At the same time, I notice that my fingers are leaving a thin trail in the dust that coats the banister.

Traditional Santeros are not artistically trained. José is no exception. He began his career as a Federal Employment Law Enforcement Agent.

"I worked in the White House under President Carter. We wrote a proposal that would move enforcement of the Equal Pay Act from the Labor Department to the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunities Commission] I got to meet with Carter about 10 times. He was a very uptight guy."

José laughs and looks up at the ceiling as if remembering his meetings with the President of the United States. He takes a long pause, "I have to say I had interesting jobs."

"We are in the Golden Age of Santos: a flowering. More Santos are being made now than ever, but Santos are still considered rare. The new, young Santeros have vitality and a sensibility about color. I love watching the young artists develop. The more Santeros the better."

Along with being opportunist when it comes to materials, traditional Santeros feel a call to the art. They are not trained and many of them begin much as José did, in the later stages of their lives. "I was working in a KAIRO ministry group with five other men for a long time, about 15 years. I never lost my spirituality, but I could see how other people had lost it. There are all these people hungry for spirituality, for what's real. The food for them was the wood. It occurred to me that Santos were my calling. The first Santo I made came from an aspen tree in my backyard. It was too close to the power lines so I had to cut it down. Then I made a Santo out of it. I planted a new aspen in the backyard and that shows how renewable wood is."

"My role as a Santero is to gently teach the Colorado Hispanic culture. Santos' language is universal which makes them the ideal teaching tool. I am an educator as well as an artist."

José describes to me the overflow of spirituality some people have when they see a Santo, "they will pick it up and touch it, kiss it, smell it." Watching José speak and touch the many Santos that fill his home I have to wonder about spirituality. I cannot say that I am a spiritual person. But I can say that sitting in that Santero's house that overflowed with Santos and the smells of wood, I felt calmed. On one of his walls was a retabolo of Mother Teresa. Her eyes looked out through his window to the aspen tree in his backyard. I couldn't help wondering if one day that tree would become Mother Teresa staring out the window at the Rocky Mountains.

I left José's home in time to experience typical Denver rush hour traffic and to get lost. Somewhere in the middle of Littleton suburbia I missed my turn and ended up making a series of illegal U-turns. While I was lost, on a street I had no business being on, a mini-van came over the median and hit the car in front of me. I shouldn't have even been on that street. As I ran over bits of the car in front of me the first image to appear in my head was the figure of that child resting in José Raul Esquibel's hands.

José Raul Esquibel's Santos can be viewed at artistsregister.com/artists/CO240, the Queen of Peace Church in Aurora, Colorado; Saint Gabriel the Archangel Episcopal Church in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado; Xavier Jesuit House in Denver, Colorado; and St. Mary Church in Littleton, Colorado. Contact José Raul Esquibel at: jresquibel@msn.com or by telephone (303) 979-5388.