Faces of San Miguel: Working For The Long Haul, Carmen Rioja
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By Natalie Taylor.
Carmen Rioja has been a part of San Miguel de Allende for many years, and she has served the community in various roles, yet always connected to the arts in some way. Born in Monterrey, Mexico, she acquired a taste for the arts because of her mother, who she says was “a builder and an artist,” as well as a photographer, and painter.
Carmen began her university studies in the school of architecture, and also learned art restoration during that time. Then in 1993 she happened to come to San Miguel and was immediately captivated by the city itself, and especially the artistic offerings at Instituto Allende, and began taking sculpture classes with Lothar Kastenbaum.
The 1990s were amazing times here, with excellent artists teaching and interacting with students, art flourished everywhere. Carmen decided to remain in San Miguel, and her first job was at the Pérgola Art Gallery with legendary Dottie Vidargas. In the late 1990s Atotonilco was named one of the 100 artistic legacies in danger of being lost. The magnificent murals painted by Martinez de Pocasangre in the 1700s were deteriorating and restoration was badly needed.
Carmen Rioja became part of a team—which included Dottie Vidargas and several others—that began the meticulous work of bringing the murals back to their original splendor. Eventually those murals were an integral part of the decision of UNESCO to make both San Miguel de Allende and Atotonilco a World Heritage site.
The restoration work, begun in 1996 is now over 20 years in progress. It continues to this day, with Carmen still part of the team working on preserving the murals inside the church of Atotonilco, the very murals that gave rise to the moniker “the Sistine Chapel of Mexico.”
History has always fascinated Carmen, which she traces back to her childhood when she heard stories about her family origins. Her father had supposedly originated “…from Portuguese seafarers,” and her maternal family, her mother claimed, had come from “wandering Jews.” These tales awakened a sharp desire to know and ask yourself who you are, which, of course means learning about the past. In addition to the preservation of the murals in Atotonilco, Carmen has also worked on restoring the ancient wall art within a small alcove on top of the pyramid in Cañada de la Virgen. Those date back to pre-Hispanic, meso-American art done by indigenous people more than 1000 years ago.
Carmen’s artistic connection is not only with the visual arts, she has also studied literature and enjoys writing. She wrote articles for a magazine that existed for a while in San Miguel de Allende, and also for other Mexican magazines. For a period of time, she was the editor in chief of Atencion, the weekly bilingual newspaper that was a staple of San Miguel for almost fifty years. She has also written for Mexico News Daily. Currently she writes for an online Spanish language publication “Fusilierías,” which is published every fifteen days. Her latest entry was a book review of the renowned author-photographer, San Miguel based Janet Sternburg’s “Looking at Mexico, Mexico Looks Back.”
Carmen Rioja’s art restoration at Atotonilco is ongoing; it requires not only the skill involved in bringing back the former beauty of art, damaged by time and the elements, but it also involves a continuous search for funding.One would imagine perhaps that it is possible to begin such a work and do it in increments as the funds become available. But that is not so. The funds collected must be sufficient to complete the entire task. That is because it is impossible to halt due to lack of paint or other material—a stop mid-task can make the entire project null and void.
One of the major contributors to art restoration, including the work at Atotonilco, is a US based organization based in New York: World Monuments Watch, which has provided most of the funding. Carmen continues to work tirelessly at her two-decade commitment to restoring Pocasangre’s work in Atotonilco. However, there is more to Carmen’s community involvement than the Atotonilco restoration project, her past as editor-in-chief at Atencion, and her writing.
She has been on the board of the Biblioteca Publica for a number of years, and just last month she was voted as the incoming president, following in the footsteps of Debra Broussard from that position after many years of dedicated service.
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