Release from Cibola: Conquistadors, Eisenhower and Me

By Andres C. Salazar

Reyes Córdova is a young boy tired of being poor and feeling hopeless. He is a descendant of religious and starry-eyed settlers from Spain that came to Cíbola seeking a fortune but found nothing but an inhospitable climate and an unstable relationship with Pueblo Indians. A stubborn lot, the settlers worked hard to make a living out of farming and ranching in a Rio del Norte valley in what is now Northern New Mexico. Now three hundred and fifty years later, and nearly a century after becoming part of the United States, Reyes’ Spanish-speaking, impoverished culture has made little inroads to assimilating into America. Reyes learns from teachers that mastering English can help him become more American and that will give him an opportunity for a good job. He becomes obsessed with learning the language, a task made difficult by his handicaps—illegitimate, a mother who speaks only Spanish, subsisting on public welfare—in addition to being part of a culture that promotes conformity, immediate gratification, close family relationships and xenophobic rejection of Anglophone society. Reyes’ story is told in a poignant and picaresque series of journal-like portraits that trace his emergence from the mystical realm of Cibola that is a blend of an ancient Pueblo culture, an archaic Spanish heritage, and an encroaching American dominion in the age of Eisenhower and its cataclysmic events—the hydrogen bomb, the Communist Menace, Sputnik, accelerated farm-to-urban migration, and momentous protests for minority and women’s rights. Release from Cibola is the first novel in a trilogy on the life of Reyes Córdova.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sunstone Press
• Release date: Nov 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781611392203

Andres C. Salazar

Andres C. Salazar has had careers spanning decades in industry, education, and literature. He is the author of several books that include Seasons, a poetry book selected as a finalist in the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards in 2016, and Release from Cíbola, the first book in the Cíbola trilogy.

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Release from Cíbola

Conquistadores, Eisenhower and Me

Andres C. Salazar

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

River from Cibola (Chapter 3) was previously published in Azahares 2013 by the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith.

© 2013 by Andres C. Salazar

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher,

except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Sunstone books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use.

For information please write: Special Markets Department, Sunstone Press,

P.O. Box 2321, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504-2321.

Cover design › James Patrick

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Salazar, Andres C., 1942-

Release from Cíbola : conquistadores, Eisenhower and me / by Andres C. Salazar.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-86534-951-3 (softcover : alk. paper)

1. New Mexico--History--20th century--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3619.A433R45 2013

813’.6--dc23

2013010081

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www.sunstonepress.com

SUNSTONE PRESS / Post Office Box 2321 / Santa Fe, NM 87504-2321 /USA

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This volume is dedicated to those wonderful mentors in the Española School System in Española, New Mexico during the 1950s that took the time to inspire as well as teach. They saw in me what I didn’t know was possible until I tried it. It took many years for me to realize what gift they had given me, an undying love of learning, empathy and tenacity. Especial thanks go to Sally Gonzales, Gary Kellogg, Robert MacNeely Norita Plummer and Charles Pompeo.

Preface

The narrative is done as a series of coming of age stories in the southwest in the mid twentieth century or during the epochal term of President Eisenhower. The backdrop is the mountainous region of northern New Mexico, the location of Spanish settlements started in 1598 that was part of the American annexation in 1848. The entries relate to the boyhood memories of Reyes Córdova who is caught up in the historical and cultural contradictions of growing up in a place that is part of the United States but still clings to traditions hundreds of years old in language, mysticism, poetic manners, Pueblo Indian relationships and delectable food. His journey to becoming Americanized occurs in a decade that witnesses the growth of the atomic age, the anti-Communist fanaticism, and the rights movements of Blacks and women. The young man attempts to assimilate into an American society grappling with the forces of these movements and that still rejects strangers who do not conform to stereotypical attributes of white skin, an Anglo-Saxon surname and unaccented English pronunciation. He yearns to escape from a milieu that appears to entrap its young by imposing old traditions at the expense of being successful in the new American society.

Memory is thus that aspect of human freedom which is most determinative in the construction of historical reality. It gives meaning to historical events without reducing them to natural necessity and recurrence; and it thereby gives the agent of action a dimension of freedom in the present moment which proves history to be a realm of freedom as well as destiny.

—Rheinhold Niebuhr in Faith & History, 1949

1

San Pablo Day

June 29, 1948

We will be watching you and your ancestors will be watching you, more carefully than me.

—Señor Valencia

Actually it was not San Pablo Day but the day before as I remember. Tito and I had our tires approaching the dip in the paved road just before the slight turn that takes you to Kramer’s, the huge general store that sits right on the main plaza of the Pueblo of San Pablo. The dip is really an arroyo that carries water to the river in heavy rains. The road was simply paved over the arroyo so it always had sand on its surface left over from the last big rain. Most of the sand would be swept away by the road traffic but what remained was a reminder of the desert land and the memory of lost dreams. It didn’t rain much in the Pueblo so there was plenty of sand and sun to whiten the day and darken our skin. There were a few trees, especially near the acequia or irrigation ditch, where you could see the brownish water carrying the silt from the mountains, its wetness cooling the air, the floating strands of alfalfa and mint creating a sweet smell, and the cottonwoods lending you shade as a breeze rippled the oversized leaves. Tito and I would sit on the acequia bank, each of us peeling a willowy reed and then pretending to fish with the greenish bark skin. We’d giggle and fish, giggle and fish, stretching out the time of another fantasy, another world of discovery and delight, blown in from the thin desert air.

The sun seared the village with no mercy despite its holy place in history as the ancient Tewa grounds remained intact and the ways of ancestors remained true. The ragweed plants would blossom after a rain and then wilt, their heads turned down, away from the offending sun. Only the scattered Siberian Elms stood tall where their roots had pierced the earth, digging deep into the bowels of the village where some moisture still remained. Otherwise, the parched winds would come and deposit plenty of gritty dirt and dust in your eyes and hair. You could collect stuff in your mouth when you talked outside during storms but the wise men said it was all right to eat dirt once in a while. After all, the dirt was holy in San Pablo, the mother pueblo of the Pueblo Indian tribes of the north and site of the first Spanish settlers; and there were minerals you needed in your body that the dirt would give you. Babies ate dirt. It was a natural thing.

It was early summer now and Tito, my best friend, and I were in command of two used tires, abandoned by a neighbor and rescued by us to be our sporty wheels of transportation around town. We would propel them with a slap of either hand once they were upright. Of course, if you didn’t want to get your fingers blackened from the rubber surface, you could use a stick but you had to be good at it. You couldn’t make the tire go by simply hitting it with the stick. You had to let the stick rest on the tire and then push the stick in the direction you wanted the tire to go. You had to run alongside the tire as you pushed and guided it with the stick. Tito and I had become experts in moving our tires, keeping them upright even at slow speeds, spinning them and crashing them headlong against each other but catching them before they fell over.

Today we were on our way to Kramer’s with an errand to run, feeling the freedom of a summer day, testing our limits of tire control, off to buy cigarettes for my mother who really didn’t smoke a lot, just with friends. She had given me a half dollar coin for a pack of Kools, the mentholated brand she liked best. Tito and I were driving our tires alongside the road making sounds with our vibrating tongues that imitated a car’s engine until we’d stop at the top of the arroyo bank and let our tires go down the slope by themselves. We ran as fast as we could to keep up with them while trying to steer them with our sticks, all the time feeling the wind in our faces as we tried to keep up without running into them. With the momentum the downward slope generated, our tires could go part way up the opposite slope but never quite make it to the top. We would catch them before they started rolling downhill again and use both our hands to make them go the rest of the way until we reached the main plaza that housed the largest buildings in the Pueblo.

The tallest structure on the plaza was the Catholic Church of San Pablo, built from red fired bricks in 1889 after the last church burned down. Several others built before it on the same site had also been destroyed by fire, the first one built in 1599 which was burned to the ground in the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680. The current one had a tall bell tower and it looked out of place in the village comprised of mostly adobe dwellings in rows facing a plaza, their parapets uneven, all built without nails, concrete or sawn wood. The church looked sturdy and permanent, even fireproof, while other buildings made from the mud and straw adobe bricks with few windows and doors appeared tired and worn as if melting in the fiery sun. Directly across the road from the church was the Chapel built from huge blocks of sandstone; its steeple tall and imposing, challenging the church in permanence but not in size.

Kramer’s was a large mercantile store built on a rise adjacent to the Chapel. Tito and I parked our wheels in front and went in the main entrance which had a screechy screen door that announced every customer. A gentle breeze created by huge ceiling fans would hit you as you entered, carrying with it a smelly inventory of all the items it had for sale—grain and feed for horses, cows and chickens and oil stained tools like axes, hoes and rakes. With no windows the store resembled a barn—dark, cavernous and mysterious.

The store had a counter near the front door that contained the cigarettes and candy, probably the most popular items. There were shelves behind the counter that had common food staples like canned meats, vegetables and fruit. Kramer’s was the only general store in San Pablo and if you didn’t find it there, you either did without it or you would have to go to San Isidro or Santa Fe.

There were quite a few people in the store, probably picking up a few items before the holiday tomorrow. Besides individual shoppers there were groups of men or women, two or three lost in conversation or occasionally laughing at someone’s joke, their banter being part of the excitement in the air on the eve of the village’s most festive day of the summer. Today many women in the village were probably preparing some of the food for the guests they would entertain tomorrow during the lunch and supper meals, the part of San Pablo Day resembling the American Thanksgiving Day.

The clerk behind the counter was Señor Valencia who knew my family. In fact we were related in a distant way. He was a small man with a slight limp, balding with friendly eyes and a thin moustache, and his engaging smile and almost imperceptible laugh made you feel at ease as if he were greeting an old friend from out of town.

"Reyes, como estas, güerito?" asked Señor Valencia as we got to the head of the line. He was always calling me güerito because my hair was so light colored. Are you ready for San Pablo Day tomorrow?

I know I’m going to have a good time. Tito here will dance for the first time. He’s taken his lessons, I answered. Tito nodded and laughed, half embarrassed.

Well, I’m glad. We need more young dancers. They don’t get tired so easily in the sun and they have spritely moves. We will be watching you and your ancestors will be watching you, more carefully than me as he directed his comment to Tito.

I know the drumbeats. My uncle taught me the steps, said Tito. I have my outfit ready because my mother made me wear it yesterday to see if it was just right.

Your family will be proud of you tomorrow. Your dance steps are important to the pueblo and the spirits, said Señor Valencia.

Are you going to the dances, Señor Valencia, I asked.

I have never missed them except when I was in the Army. It is out of respect for our Indian neighbors, the church that celebrates the birthday of our patron saint, San Pablo, and for the land that we love, said Señor Valencia, his face turning a bit serious.

"Kool cigarettes for my mother."

"Of course, mi güerito. Say hello to your mama. I will probably see her at the festival tomorrow," as he handed me the small pack.

She usually gave me money for one pack and the change I was allowed to use for myself. It didn’t amount to much but it did cover the cost of hard candy for Tito and me. I was able to stuff the cigarettes into my front pants pocket and slip the hard candy into my mouth but keep the wax paper wrapper in my pocket in case I couldn’t finish the candy. This left my hands free to drive my tire back to the house.

"Adiós, Señor Valencia."

"Adiós, con cuidado," as he waved and went to serve the next customer.

Tito and I ran out of the store and unparked our tires for the ride home. We did the same down-the-hill trick with them again, this time in the opposite direction so the slope wasn’t as steep and we didn’t have to work too hard to get them to level ground again. We were joined by a pack of stray dogs of different sizes. The pack started with five mutts but on the way home two of them peeled off and went their separate ways. They were attracted by our tires as we rolled them, running all the while. The dogs would circle us and bark from time to time, wagging their tails, perhaps thinking that Tito and I were playing with them. A couple of them usually stayed with us for part of the day. They were fed table scraps by different families and really didn’t have a home but they survived as communal pets because they weren’t pests and didn’t seem to go after chickens that a few families kept in their backyards. They were not friendly with strangers though. People believed they were like guardian angels, protecting the community, and controlled by spirits so they left them alone.

We stopped briefly at Tito’s house because we saw his mother working outside near the horno just like a lot of the Pueblo Indian women who were baking bread for the feast day tomorrow. She had taken out a batch of Indian bread out of the earthen oven and placed about six loaves into a large basket that was lined with a trapo or kitchen towel. She saw us approach her and knew what would please us. She took one of the smaller loaves and broke off part of it, splitting it again and gave Tito and me each a piece.

"Dios los bendiga," [May God bless you] she said as she handed us the bread that had a light brown crispy crust and a white interior that still had a little bit of steam coming out of it. My mouth started watering when I saw what she was doing for us. We parked our tires near the horno. Holding the piece of bread she had given us with our fingers blackened from the tire rolling, we looked at each other and laughed with glee at our good luck that we had caught his mother at the time she was taking the bread out. We bit off tiny pieces of the still warm bread and savored each one, hopping up and down, and made faces of ecstasy as we chewed and swallowed the glorious food. Friendship and a fresh piece of Pueblo Indian bread had to be something you found in paradise.

We sat with our backs to the warm horno looking westward at the setting sun amidst gathering clouds on the horizon so we knew the imminent sunset would have a spectacular reddish glow against them. A couple of dogs sat down next to us, their heads looking at the horizon and then turning to us with droopy eyes, obviously an invitation for us to pet them and approve the companionship. We waited a few minutes and admired the color-lit show. I got up finally and Tito decided to join me in delivering the nearly forgotten cigarettes to my mother.

Tito and I arrived at my house and we parked our tires on the north wall. We delivered the cigarettes to my mother who was preparing dinner and who warned me not to stray too far from the house. Tito and I sat against the wall near our tires and finished sucking our hard candy that we had saved in our pockets.

I’m afraid of tomorrow, he said in Tewa.

Why? Tomorrow is the happiest day of the Pueblo, I answered in Tewa. He looked sad. His father was Hispanic but his mother was a Pueblo Indian so he knew the Tewa dialect very well. I knew a lot of words and could understand what someone said to me in that tongue. He was a little darker than me and he had high cheekbones like his mother.

I don’t know if I will remember the dance steps my uncle taught me. He said it was important for me to learn the Pueblo Indian ways.

You will be fine, I said, trying to cheer him up. We were about the same age with his birthday being in October and mine in early December. We would be going to school in the fall because we would both be six by the end of the year. We had been great friends since my mother had moved to the Pueblo de San Pablo about two years ago to work as an adobe plasterer.

Tell me about your training for the dance, I said. Tito went on about his outfit and the lessons he had taken with his uncle who was one of the tribal leaders. He had gone into the pueblo prayer room and been given a blessing and instructions for respecting the spirits of nature, the ways of the community and the memory of his ancestors. We continued in Tewa and laughed when he tried to teach me new words. He didn’t know any English words and neither did I and we were both concerned about starting school where Tewa or Spanish speaking was not allowed. He said his older brother had been worried as well when he went to school but he told Tito that the teachers were patient with the kids that didn’t know any English. My mother yelled my name for dinner and we both got up. Tito got his tire going and went home.

The house had the aroma of pinto beans and chicos and freshly made tortillas. My mother had made a little bit of red chili sauce to use as a condiment for the cooked bean and corn mixture. I washed my hands in a small basin that my mother had filled with warm water. After washing my blackened and grimy hands she asked me to dry them with a hand towel and then throw the water out in the front yard. The occasional water from the basin discarded this way kept the front yard moist and minimized the dust that one brought in the house. The floor in the house was always gritty, despite my mother’s daily sweeping. The floor was made out of clay but had been plastered smooth and a piece of linoleum covered it up to the base of the wall where dirt always seemed to creep in from underneath.

The adobe walls inside had been plastered smooth and then had been coated several times with tinted calcimine. The ceiling had the traditional vigas or de-barked pine logs that had been shellacked and acted as the joists for the roof. The vigas were then held in place by a lattice of cedar poles that were strung together to form the actual roof of the house. The cedar lattice was laid in a chevron fashion to give some design to the ceiling. Either straw or more recently, tar paper, was laid on top of the cedar lattice to hold the four or five inches of clay that was spread atop to form the roof. The clay roof was virtually flat but was shaped so that water would flow down and out the canales (or spouts) that were built into the parapets of the house. If a roof leak developed it was because the clay had eroded or the rain water had become trapped on top of the earthen roof.

Adobe homes were cool in the summer and kept the warmth inside during the winter months. Heat was generated with cast iron stoves, one that doubled up as a cooking top in the kitchen and another that was usually placed in the sleeping area. Firewood consisted of piñon logs that emitted a pleasant scent when burned and whose smoke was tolerable as it wafted through the neighborhood. Cedar logs were also used but they splintered easily when tree trunks were split and made crackling sounds as they burned. White pine logs did not make good fire logs, burning too fast and creating a lot of creosote that clogged up the chimneys. Cottonwood logs were also avoided. They were pulpy and spewed out too much smoke and creosote as well. Kindling was brought into the house in a bucket and generally was nothing more than the chips created when logs were split into pieces that would fit into the fire chambers of the stoves.

My sister liked to listen to the news on the radio when she got up to go to work. The two room house we lived in had electric wiring for lighting and nothing more. There was an overhead light bulb hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen and one in the bedroom. We pulled a chain to turn the bulb on or off. When she bought a radio, we had to buy an adapter that could accommodate the bulb but also provide a receptacle for an extension cord that we strung along the ceiling and down a wall to plug the radio in. We had to have the light bulb on in order to listen to the radio. The news was given in English so I didn’t understand much of the broadcast. Music in Spanish was available later in the day and sometimes my mother would turn the radio on during weekends when she wasn’t working. That’s when I learned that my mother knew a lot of Spanish songs and why she would take me to movie musicals in Spanish when we later moved to San Isidro. The radio connected us to an outside world that was hard to understand. English was an impediment, certainly, but what was talked about did not seem to be important in the Pueblo of San Pablo.

I went outside after dinner and noticed there was no moonlight at all but there was a mysterious glow so that nearby objects were still visible. The only lights piercing the darkness were from the houses that were close to ours. The lights were dim because many of the houses only had a hanging light bulb in each room and heavy curtains were used to cover the windows for privacy. It was quiet except for the far-off drone of cicadas from the acequia until I thought I heard drums off in the distance. I listened for the rhythm but the sound faded into the emptiness of the night.

It was the eve of the fiesta, San Pablo Day, and the last one I would celebrate before I went to school and learned English, the language of the new order. It would be a new world for me, one that my mother could not explain to me. I did not know whether I would fit in. Other kids that could speak English would be ahead of me in learning to read in the new language. My stomach tightened as this fear came over me.

As I looked up I felt a chill when I saw a distant shadow move quickly. My mother had warned me about spirits that become partly visible through a moving darkness. Seconds later, I sensed someone had touched me and I was scared. My feet began to tingle and my heart was now racing. I looked around but I could not see anyone. After regaining a semblance of calm I went inside, put on my nightclothes and jumped into bed.

The radio station news program woke me up in the morning as my sister was getting ready for work. My mother was up already and she had lit the kitchen stove and from my bed I could feel its heat on my face. Even though it was early summer, the nights were still cool and the heat from the kitchen stove was just right to make the house comfortable. The hot water from the whistling pot on top of the stove moistened the air and made our house seem warmer. My sister would have hot oatmeal for breakfast before she went to work. I got up and washed my face in the basin that my mother had prepared for me. She had laid out my Sunday clothes that were a little less worn and more color coordinated than my everyday stuff. After a light breakfast, she combed my hair after putting a little bit of pomade on it. The clock in the kitchen showed that it was 7:30 already.

My sister had just left and my mother looked in the mirror one last time. She locked the door with a passkey and then put it in her pocketbook. We walked northward toward the church after she took my hand. The morning chill was still in the air but the sun warmed our backs as we walked. I was excited. San Pablo Day had arrived.

Deep blue skies framed the background for the Black Mesa off in the distance, due north and west from the Pueblo. As part of the foothills for the Jemez range on the west, the Black Mesa was a sacred place for the Pueblo Indians and you could find many volcanic rocks painted there by their ancestors. The towering San Felipe Mountains were on the eastern side of the San Isidro Valley which contained many of the eight Northern Pueblos including San Pablo. The famous Rio del Norte flowed along the Black Mesa’s eastern border while the Chama River flowed along its western flank before it joined the legendary river. Because of the waters that surrounded it, a bluish-white mist could be seen around its base in the morning giving it a mystical image.

We met neighbors along the way, my mother engaging them in trivial conversation as I trailed along behind them. We parted ways with the neighbors as we approached the churchyard, my mother excusing herself by saying that she was going to briefly visit a house behind the church. She took me by the hand again and said she was going to show me where I was born. I said that I had been there before but she insisted that it was important that I visit it again.

There were about three houses behind the church. A dirt road separated the church from the fenced yard that enclosed the adobe dwellings. The smallest of the three was toward the back of the yard. It was a one room house and it looked like it was about to fall down. There was someone living in it because you could see smoke coming out of the chimney.

"Allí nacistes, [You were born there.] my mother said. She had let my hand go and she stood there with her hands on her hips, staring at the sad looking house, not unlike many others in the village. Hace casi seis años," [It’s almost six years ago] she continued. I didn’t interrupt her because she was so serious when she talked about my birth. She looked straight ahead at the house and I knew better than to speak when she was in such a trance. The house must have had more significance than just being my birthplace. She took my hand again as if to bring herself back to reality. She tightened her grip on my hand and then said something softly. Her eyes had narrowed but I didn’t see any tears.

"El nacimiento era duro. No sé cómo sobreviví. El Doctor Espinoza vino y te examinó. El firmó tu declaración de nacimiento. Él sabía de tu padre y su muerte. Él había firmado la declaración de muerte en Abril y tu nacistes en Diciembre." [The birth was difficult. I don’t know how I survived it. Doctor Espinoza came and examined you. He signed your birth certificate. He knew about your father and his death. He had signed the death certificate in April and you were born in December.]

I had heard the story before. My father killed himself after murdering his estranged wife, chasing her down among the chicos [sagebrush] and shooting her in the back. My mother had had an affair with him. The murder/suicide had occurred in April and I was born posthumously in December. Before the affair, she had separated from her husband and her family had all but disowned her. A friend living in that house had given her shelter and assisted during the birth. I had never met the friend who had assisted my Tia Gregoria in the childbirth. All I knew was that she had moved away.

The story was important to my mother and it was many years before I could understand why. She later told me that he was not buried in the Catholic cemetery, the pastor at that time adhering to the church policy of not having murderers buried alongside pious churchgoers. There were few people at his funeral. She didn’t know for sure she was pregnant at the time.

We were one of a few Hispanic families still living in the Pueblo, many leaving the Pueblo for other villages like Nambroca, my mother’s birthplace which was situated across the Rio del Norte on the delta formed with the Chama. The Hispanic emigration occurred once the Pueblo was declared reservation land for Native Americans after New Mexico’s annexation by the United States in 1848. There had been marriages between the cultures like my Tia Gregoria’s but they were not common. Like other Hispanic families still living here my mother rented from the Pueblo the modest house we lived in. All homes in the Pueblo were community property of the reservation. My mother lived here because the rent was cheap and she had found work in plastering village houses.

We went to church a little late and many of pews were full. There were more people at this mass than the eight o’clock Sunday mass we usually attended. The air inside was stuffy and a smell of incense hung over the congregation like a cloud before a rainstorm, dark and foreboding. We found seats near the side altar. It was already warm inside with so many people present and there were signs that it was going to be a hot day. There had been no morning breeze so the open windows provided little ventilation. People were already fanning themselves. The priest gave a short sermon on the blessed life of San Pablo, raising his voice or using his hands to punctuate his remarks.

Just before the consecration, a young girl about my age, kneeling a couple of