He is thought to have remained illiterate. The year 1931 found him back in Taos working as a teamster, having begun his carving. After Barela was hired on to the Federal Art Project, he did make sculpture full time for a few years. But his government pay was so little—less than he earned as a laborer—that he left the program and headed up to Colorado to harvest potatoes. He kept making sculpture, despite failing eyesight in his later years, until his death in 1964 in an accidental fire in his own studio. His life had been hard, but fiercely independent.
