MCMP Spotlight
Click the title above to read about one of our community archivists Kathleen Jimenez
MCMP Spotlight
Click the title above to read about one of our community archivists Dana Maestas!
EULOGY for ANTONIO VIGIL,1929-2020
My last meeting with “Tone” – as we knew him – was about 6 weeks ago. I delivered him a box of apples which I had just picked from my orchard. The apple visit had become an annual ritual: I would drop by his house, deliver the apples, and we would sit on his porch or around the kitchen table and visit. Tone wore his feelings “on his sleeve” as the saying goes. He was warm and friendly, but more to his nature he was genuine, unpretentious and sincere. I always felt welcomed in his home; that he was glad to see me.
Memorializing the Fallen Soldiers of WWI
More than 500 men from New Mexico ended up as casualties of World War I. In the War’s aftermath, the New Mexico Board of Historical Services launched an initiative to memorialize those fallen men, culminating in a memory gathering project and archive.
Regalo: The Book of My Ancestors
As a small child about 7 years old I remember my grandmother Martha inheriting a beautiful old photo album shortly after the passing of her father Abe. I remember my grandmother bringing the album home, setting it on the table, dimming the kitchen light and stressing that we had to look through it quickly to preserve the photos. I remember asking my grandmother who the people in the photos were and her response, “old people,” followed by a chuckle, “they…
Narrating Death
This blog post features 20 obituaries that were published by La Revista de Taos on November 22, 1918.
HIPÓLITO ESPINOSA – And the Old Spanish Trail
Imagine that this is how it must have looked when, in the Fall of 1842, 19 New Mexican families gathered along the Chama River in the grassy fields below Abiquiu. They would be the first colonist settlers to set forth on the Camino de California or the California Road – later to become known as The Old Spanish Trail. CAYETANO HIPÓLITO DE JESUS ESPINOSA, our great, great, grandfather, had recruited family and friends from El Rito and the surrounding region with the offer of free land in California, and he would help lead them to their new promised land. This is his story of how this all came to be.
Community Cuentistas – Mapping the Storytellers in Juan B. Rael’s ‘Cuentos Españoles de Colorado y Nuevo Mexico’
One of the core lessons I learned from my grandmother was that the best storytellers are those that have mastered the ability to lean in and to listen. In this, I think of the work of now renowned linguist and folklorist, Juan Bautista Rael. As a native son of the region, he had no doubt been raised on stories, however, in the summer of 1930, he returned home, freshly minted with a Master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley….
Los Argüellos – Connecting Migrations and Memories
My interest about my family history began as a young child during our annual visits to my grandfather Jose Tiburcio Argüello and Antonia (Tonita) Cordova Argüello’s farm in Llano de San Juan Nepomuceno, now known as Llano, New Mexico. During our visits to my grand-parents farm my grandfather always reminded me of how our ancestors were the ones who settled all the villages in the surrounding area many years ago. In 1946 after my father Clarence Argüello completed his military…
Reflections of Africa in New Mexico
Every village has a remarkable story and Las Trampas, named for the River of Traps that flows through it, is no different. This village in northern New Mexico was settled in 1751 and holds the legacy of the remarkable families that gathered ground, tilled it and through the centuries made community. These families had come from Santa Fe, but at least one of their progenitors had himself carried an older origin story, one that reflected a journey of thousands of…