Person and Place: The Life-World of Maestro Jesús Pérez Ornelas

Maestro Jesús Pérez Ornelas was a gran cuentista, a master storyteller with griot-like powers. His rhythmically pronounced, Michoacán accented Spanish was poetic, embellished with emotion and morality tales. Visitors would come to sit near him in the forge to listen to his life stories embroidered together with the history of Santa Clara and the development of popular arts and crafts in Mexico. These autobiographical stories form the radial core at the heart of this anthrohistorical account of person and place. Maestro Jesús’ stories tell about being a father, husband, leader, community pillar, a man with an idealist’s spirit, altruistic, ambitious, yet realistic, neither rich nor poor, and a dedicated non-conformist. His life illustrates the meaning of a buen vivir, a life lived well, cultivated from what he inherited and what he transformed. He introduces us to his friends, Santa Clara’s “three musketeers,” his artisan buddies, Maestro Etelberto Ramírez Tinoco and Maestro Felix Parra Espino, all considered living legends of Santa Clara, present despite their absence. His stories spoke of faith and afterlife, about leaving traces and tools for the future generation, endings and beginnings, and an insatiable curiosity and desire to learn. Maestro Jesús had a skill for saying the unpleasant truth of things, sharply, even as his eyes twinkled. It was a talent and character flaw. He had no patience for fools or for things that are not as they should be. How was Maestro Jesús able to create an extraordinary life out of an ordinary one? How did he hew a life of agency, whose political power was its integrity?