The Ways of the Past Must Not Be Forgotten

Interview with Robert Garcia

By Jessica Rath

​Whenever I get the chance to talk to an Abiquiú “native” I’m delighted to be able to learn more about the village’s history. With cameras, computers, and mobile phones just about every trivial activity is being immortalized these days, to the degree that it seems like information overload at times. However, if we go back some thirty or fifty years, the situation changes, and more drastically so the further back in time we go. That’s why I’m so grateful when people who grew up in Abiquiú agree to an interview, so we can preserve a sliver of the past.

One such person is Robert Garcia, known as “Bobby” to his friends. He’s an invaluable source of information and I hope we can repeat our interview in the future, but for this piece we’ll focus on two stories: the first one chronicles a restoration project of La Capilla de Santa Rosa de Lima de Abiquiú which happened in the late 1970s, and the other one offers some background and history of the Abiquiú Land grant.

Robert and his four siblings grew up in Abiquiú. Born in 1961, he’s the oldest, followed by sister Angela, brother Randy, sister Victoria (called Vicky), and his youngest sister, Monica – “We tease her and call her ‘the cabouse’, because she was born in 1974”, Robert said.

“We all were raised in Abiquiú,” Robert went on. “When we grew up, we didn't have much, but we protected what we did have, and my Mom, my Dad, and my Grandparents instilled in us the value of a dollar. We planted large gardens where we grew corn, chili, cucumbers, pumpkins, and what not, and whatever we didn't need we’d sell to the community.”

“And my gosh, how times have changed! We used to sell a dozen ears of corn for 50 cents. We just went to the store the other day, and the wife picked up four ears of corn for $2!”

Bobby continued: “We also had chickens, and we stored the extra eggs in a refrigerator until we’d get phone calls from the neighbors  who wanted one or two dozen, usually on Saturdays because they needed the eggs for their Sunday morning meal. We kids did the deliveries.”

“My Grandfather and my Dad ran cattle, and my brother and I spent the entire summer chasing cows. We also helped with the branding and vaccinating and other ranching efforts, mending fences for example.”

“One of my clients was Georgia O'Keeffe. She would order eggs. Her caretaker, Agapita Lopez, who retired recently from working with the O'Keeffe Foundation, would call us up and ask, ‘could you deliver a dozen eggs, or two dozen eggs?’ On occasion Miss O'Keeffe would be there to greet us and we would chat with her. My Dad was employed by Miss O'Keeffe when he was in high school, he used to drive her around. He accompanied her on several trips to Hollywood because Miss O'Keeffe had a sister out there. They would take the train, my Dad accompanied her, and then Miss O'Keeffe bought him a ticket to get back to Espanola. My Dad and Miss O'Keeffe were pretty good pals.”  I’d love to hear more about this!

Next, Robert told me about the group of high school students who were involved in and helped with the restoration of the ruins of the Santa Rosa de Lima church between Highway 84  and the Rio Chama.

“When I was in high school, there was an effort not only to preserve, but also to study the history of the Santa Rosa De Lima church. Anthropologist Gilbert Benito Cordova and a few of his colleagues started the Association de Santa Rosa de Lima, and they collaborated with the state of New Mexico to hire high school students who would work the grounds of the ruins.  At the same time, the Association petitioned Mr. Alva Simpson who owned the property on that side of the river where the church was located, to donate the land. Well, he did, but he donated it to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, so it became church property.”

From 2002. Image credit: Jessica Rath

“In the first year we didn't do much preservation work but we mapped the area. There were foundations of homes within the area. An archeologist taught us to use a device that would take probes from the ground, and the probes measured the water content of each probe. The looser material contained less water than the areas where an adobe or a rock mortar type structure was located. So we laid out a grid, and we mapped a good portion of the two acres and validated the homes that were no longer existent.”

“The following year we worked the entire summer, and this was my sophomore year. The Association asked us to delineate the perimeter of the existing church, of the ruins. At that time, the association had hired an archeological student, also from  the University of New Mexico. And this was the famous Santero, Charlie Carrillo. He was young, eager, and he was our next-door neighbor there in the village. I used to chop wood for him so he wouldn’t freeze his butt off during the winter.  With Charlie's help we did some excavating, and we determined where the perimeter of the church was.”

“During my senior year, we had built up the perimeter of the church to about three feet, maybe four feet tall. We were making our own adobes on site.”

​“One day some folks from the State Historical Preservation Office stopped by
and they told us that the site was on a national registry of historic places, and we had to stop the reconstruction. These folks were worried that the highway department would realign the road. To this day, that perimeter wall is still in place. It's about four feet tall.”

From 2002. Image credit: Jessica Rath

“One of the things we discovered while we were excavating the interior of the old church was the burial site of a child, and it freaked us out a bit! But we were also curious and very interested. Mr. Carrillo taught us the archeological procedure to very intricately excavate the skeleton. A unique feature that we found was a cross made of wax, within what would have been the chest of the child.”

How exciting this must have been! They took the discovery to the elders of the community, and somebody remembered that it used to be a custom to place a wax cross on the chest of a male child, and a crown of flowers on the head of a female, before the burial. Robert and his fellow high school students had discovered the bones of a little boy. There was even an article published about this old, almost forgotten custom, he told me – the students must have been so proud!

Next, I asked Robert to explain the land grant to me. It’s a term I’ve heard a lot, but what does it really mean, what does it involve? It came up recently: “The land grant bought the property around the post office from the Tres Semillas Foundation.” Who and what is this, I wanted to learn. Robert was the right person to ask.

“Land grants are a concept that was brought over by the Europeans when they landed in the New World,” he explained.  “It’s essentially a socialistic concept; an area is typically deeded to a community which has the right to utilize that land and to live off of it. It's a shared area where they can run cattle, their sheep, or their goats. They can collect firewood. They can collect building materials for their homes. Usually there's an area within the land grant with smaller
portions which are dedicated to families so that they could build a garden.
So that is what a merced is.”

“The Spanish discovered an abundance of resources here in the New World, in the New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, California, Southern Nevada, and Utah area. They found that the indigenous people that lived here were thriving. In an effort to establish a tax base, they encouraged the founding of villages. Expeditions of people coming primarily from Mexico City started building settlements, and then the governor would issue a tract of land which was called a merced, a land grant, to this community. Later on, the Mexican government started issuing land grants not to communities but to individuals, as a reward for military service or for other accomplishments.” 
​
“So, Abiquiú was issued a land grant in 1754 by the then-governor, his name was Tomás Vélez Cachupín. He used a very simple meets and bounds type of survey to identify the boundaries: from this arroyo south to that hill, from the hill east to this point, from there to the river, and then from the river back to the original point. Ever since then the Abiquiú land grant has existed.”

“Abiquiu was a busy hub of activity at one point in time, it had more people than Santa Fe and lots of caravans were passing through. This was an opportunity for the locals to trade the goods that they produced for salt, coffee, sugar, and other food stuffs that they couldn’t get in and around Abiquiú. Right there in the Pueblo, on top of the area that we call moque, the expeditions would stay overnight to gather enough provisions to make the long trek to Los Angeles or San Francisco.”

“During this period there were lots of raids going on, the Spanish would steal Native American people's kids, and Native Americans would steal Spanish or Pueblo Indian kids. After a few generations the settlers intermingled with  the locals, with the indigenous people, and over the generations these individuals got the name genízaros. The root word of genízaro is janissary, a Turkish term, I believe. Its definition is a militia, a militant type of people. The armies in and around Turkey would get individuals to supplement their troops, and these individuals were called janissaries. The Spanish named the individuals that were stolen and assimilated genízaros.” Interestingly, the Federal Government, in drafting the Patent for the Merced, identified the recipients of the title of land, as the “converted half breed Indians of the Pueblo of Abiquiu”, aka Genízaros.”

“Right after the Civil War, the United States was beginning to annex states on the western side of the nation, and there was much interest in the properties out west.The U.S. government established an office that was tasked with identifying the ownership of the lands out west, particularly the Native American pueblos and the communities that were created by the Spanish and Mexican governments.”

“Right around the turn of the 20th century they sent out a number of U.S.surveyors to map the areas. And the village of Abiquiú was mapped. And as a result of this mapping, Abiquiú was awarded a patent to the property, when William H Taft was the president. The Land Grant is actually recognized by the U.S. government. It's a document which  has more security than a deed that you get from a bank,” Robert explained.

“A number of land grants were recognized by the Surveyor General over a period of 30 to 40 years, but in some communities the people left and there was nobody there to sustain that land grant. So the federal government started assimilating these properties, and they became BLM and Forest Service lands. Back then only a small percentage of the population could read. The federal government started, for lack of a better word, condemning these properties, taking these properties back, essentially stealing them.”
 
“Around 1937 or 1938 a letter was mailed to the mayor of Abiquiú. The village didn't have a mayor but there was a post office, and the postmaster said, ‘I wonder what this is all about.’ It was obviously from the IRS, so the postmaster opened the letter, and it was a notice to the mayor of Abiquiú stating that the Abiquiú Land Grant was delinquent on property taxes, and if payment or arrangements could not be made, the land grant would become federal property. The postmaster handed the letter to some of the senior gentlemen within the village and they arranged a meeting of all the heads of households.  It was decided to seek out legal advice. One of the gentlemen had connections to an attorney in Santa Fe, and the attorney read the letter and advised the people of Abiquiú to arrange a reimbursement schedule to the federal government over a period of time.”

​“Ultimately, each head of household provided $20 to commence the reimbursement of these back taxes. There were 81 or 82 heads of households, and each came up with $20. At the same time, the attorney advised them to consider incorporating the land grant as a 501c3 livestock Co Op, a non profit. That way, the property would be assessed and taxed as agricultural land.”

​“In order to be incorporated as a 501c3 the community members had to establish bylaws. These bylaws were, for the most part, written in Spanish, and they govern how the land grant was to proceed. They contain a number of articles that delineate how and who and what each individual is entitled to. And one thing became a rather touchy subject, which is the transference.”

“All the heads of households became members of the land grant. Each head of household, towards the end of his life, had to decide, who am I going to leave the membership to? One of the criteria that was identified in the bylaws was that the member was required to pass his membership to kin, to blood. It could be a son, or a daughter, or a nephew, or a cousin, but the cousin had to be on his side of the family. Initially, this was not an issue, because back then families had so many kids. So that process continued from the late 30s into, I'd say, the 70s, two to three generations removed, maybe four generations.”

“In the early 2000s Governor Bill Richardson championed a bill which established that the land grants would become political subdivisions of the state. So far, the land grants were not eligible to receive state assistance, and they could not petition the state for help with infrastructure, community centers, or any type of funding. Governor Richardson championed a bill that would allow  the land grants to become a political subdivision of the state, if they so desire. And that bill became law, it passed the legislature.”

“So in the early 2000s we had a special meeting with a couple of state representatives, and they pitched this new law allowing the land grant to be recognized as a political subdivision of the state. The members of the land grant voted to allow the Merced de Abiquiú to become a political subdivision.
So now, the Merced is subject to all the state requirements.”

“Every year the Merced has to put together a budget. They are audited by the state auditor. When candidates run for office, the election has to meet the election code as delegated by the state. Notices for meetings have to be posted in accordance with state law and in the time period required before the meeting is held. All of this work is the flip side of the coin of becoming a political subdivision, but the land grant is now eligible to petition the state for funding, and the village has received funding. So that's the benefit.”

“Of the 81 or 82 families, the original heads of household, there are currently 62 active members. That doesn't mean that the other 19 or 20 members have been abolished, but these families may have moved out of state, to California or to the east. Some of the families have moved to Texas, and their kids, they're not from here anymore. But at the same time, we hold those memberships in the event that an individual comes back to the state of New Mexico, and they're interested, and they can show that they are kin to an original member. The board requires the submission of a family tree, a genealogy, tracing your family back to an original member.”

“My earliest recollection of attending an annual meeting was with my grandfather, Casimiro, when I was eight years old. My Dad actually served on the board of trustees. He was the treasurer for a number of years, so I would chat with him, and go to meetings with him. I attended many meetings over the years.”

“Our bylaws state that it should be one of the primary goals of the board of directors to repurchase any properties when they become available. So when the land that Tres Semillas had for a number of years was up for sale, the land grant had some money saved up, which allowed them to purchase that property back. They want to maintain pretty much what was there, the little farmers’ market, the little plot of land where they used to grow produce, they want to keep all that going.”

I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Because of space I had to leave out quite a bit of what Robert told me, both about the Santa Rosa de Lima ruins and about the land grant. He’s a veritable treasure trove of stories about Abiquiú’s history both ancient and recent, and I wish that he will let me interview him again. I noticed the same qualities that I found so special when I talked to other people who grew up in Abiquiú: a deep appreciation for their history, their community, the strong connection to their unique culture.  No wonder that most of the original land grant members still live in Abiquiú. Thank you, Robert, for such an informative talk, and for the link to an article from Youth Magazine, January 1979, about the Santa Rosa de Lima restoration project with great photos – from nearly 50 years ago! Plus, Robert provided us with an additional historic document, a copy of the original Patent for the Merced de Abiquiú from November 15, 1909 – check it out!