 Jimenez began carving wooden figures since he was a boy tending animals in the 1920s.By the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jimenez's work was being sold in the city of Oaxaca, which led them to being shown to folk art collectors such as Nelson Rockefeller.By the late 1960s, he was giving exhibitions in museums in Mexico City and the United States and tourists began visiting his workshop in the 1970s.