Fray Angélico Chávez: Poet, Priest, and Artist

By Ellen McCracken

New Mexico's first Franciscan priest, Fray Angélico Cheavez (1910-1996) is known as a prolific historian, a literary and artistic figure, and an intellectual who played a vital role in Santa Fe's community of writers. The original essays collected here explore his wide-ranging cultural production: fiction, poetry, architectural restoration, journalism, genealogy, translation, and painting and drawing. Several essays discuss his approach to history, his archival research, and the way in which he re-centers ethnic identity in the prevalent Anglo-American master historical narrative. Others examine how he used fiction to bring history alive and combined visual and verbal elements to enhance his narratives. Two essays explore Chávez's profession as a friar. The collection ends with recollections by Thomas E. Chávez, historian and Fray Angélico's nephew.

Readers familiar with Chávez's work as well as those learning about it for the first time will find much that surprises and informs in these essays.

Part of the Pasó por Aquí Series on the Nuevomexicano Literary Heritage

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Release date: Jul 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780826328496

Book preview

PART 1

HISTORICAL RECOVERY

CHAPTER ONE

FRAY ANGÉLICO CHÁVEZ: THE MAKING OF A MAVERICK HISTORIAN

MARC SIMMONS

Cerrillos, New Mexico

Of his many contributions to diverse fields of human endeavor, Fray Angélico Chávez probably will be remembered longest for his achievements in the writing of regional history. Like his other creative pursuits, this one bore the stamp of his highly individualistic personality—an anomaly in itself, since he came from the conservative and traditional Hispanic culture of northern New Mexico and spent much of his life as a Franciscan friar, bound by the rules of the order.

From his initial experience as a historian Fray Angélico developed a personal sense of mission: he believed that the largely unknown Hispanic settlers of the upper Rio Grande Valley had engaged for centuries in an extraordinary enterprise and that the record of their activity was worth recovery and dissemination. In short, he aimed at telling the story of the early-day New Mexicans from his perspective as an insider.

In assessing Fray Angélico’s career as a historian, it is worth examining the circumstances that led to his intense interest in his homeland’s past. From that, a review can be made of some of his more important works and of the standing accorded to him by professional historians.

Growing up in the communities of Wagon Mound and Mora, New Mexico, where his first language was Spanish, Fray Angélico developed what would prove a lifelong devotion to his Hispanic heritage. Attracted by the intellectual and spiritual sides of life, he gravitated toward the Franciscan order, the one that had ministered to the people of New Mexico since 1598. Following a novitiate, he made his solemn vows in that religious body in 1933 and four years later was ordained a priest at Santa Fe’s Saint Francis Cathedral.¹

Shortly afterward he was assigned to the parish of Peña Blanca, south of Santa Fe, which included the Indian missions at Cochiti, Santo Domingo, and San Felipe. There he was pleased to minister to the rural folk, with whom he always felt a close affinity. But the isolated station also gave him the opportunity to pursue personal projects and interests, including creative writing and publishing poems and short stories, mostly of a religious nature, that were praised by critics.

During World War II, Fray Angélico volunteered for the U.S. Army Chaplains’ Corps and underwent basic training at the Chaplain School in Harvard University. He was sent to the Pacific theater and participated in the bloody assault landings on Guam and at Leyte, in the Philippines. Long afterward he would quip, I wanted a Purple Heart, but I was too skinny for the Japanese to hit.² Upon being demobilized in 1946 with the rank of major, he returned to Santa Fe and took up new duties at the cathedral.

During his years of service he had continued to write poems and, perhaps longing for his beloved New Mexico, had begun to think more seriously about its history. Once home, he conceived the idea of authoring a history of New Mexico’s Franciscan missions.³ In the mid-1930s, Archbishop Rudolph A. Gerken had called in the scattered records of the Catholic Church that still remained in the individual parishes and had founded an archdiocesan archives at the cathedral. Upon examining this material in 1947, Fray Angélico found it in great disorder, and he started loosely organizing the documents in topical bundles. He made slow progress owing to his lack of training in reading Spanish paleography and in formal archival methods.⁴

Before long, however, he was bitten by the documentary bug. As he delved deeper into the old brittle papers with their fading ink, he became fascinated with two new subjects: the genealogy and history of his own Chávez family and the other early families who had put down permanent roots along the Rio Grande, and the origins and history of the Marian image brought to New Mexico in colonial times and known as La Conquistadora. These interests soon absorbed him, and his original resolve to produce a general history of the local Franciscan missions faded, never to be revived. Chávez himself gave the reason for that abandonment: After several years of archival digging, he had discovered only scant information on the missionaries, while his notes on the lay pioneers drawn from baptismal, marriage, and death certificates, together with ancillary documents, had piled up considerably. In his words, It was like the case of a miner who sifted a hill of ore for gold, setting aside any silver he encountered; in the end the silver far outweighed the gold. The only thing to do was to render the silver useful.⁵

Already endowed with an abiding affection and respect for the native folk of his New Mexico, Fray Angélico now saw that he had an opportunity to illuminate their past in all its rich and dramatic dimensions. Like his missionary work as a Franciscan, his scholarly labors would be another form of public service, opening long-sealed chambers of history and revealing to New Mexicans knowledge of their forbears that they had assumed was lost. As a bonus, Fray Angélico had discovered that historical investigation was intellectually challenging, and also just plain fun. This pursuit would occupy him almost to the end of his life.

The culmination of his genealogical studies, begun in 1947, was the book Origins of New Mexico Families, published by the Historical Society of New Mexico in 1954. Fray Angélico described it as a comprehensive, if incomplete, record of the original Spanish families.⁶ The volume was instantly recognized as an indispensable research tool, and copies were eagerly snatched up by New Mexicans newly fired with zeal to trace their roots. Weighing the merits of Origins in a review, New Mexican author Erna Fergusson commented that it explodes a few myths and is replete with hints … of what life was really like in Spain’s New Mexico.⁷ Her observation points up one of the hallmarks of Fray Angélico’s historical work—his unflagging honesty. Even when questioning some of his more daring interpretations, readers can see that he strictly adhered to the rules of evidence and never shirked from drawing conclusions that might prove unpopular.

At the beginning of his historical career, Fray Angélico had published a brief article on Don Fernando Durán de Chávez, one of the earliest members of his family to settle in New Mexico.⁸ In Origins he presented a more extended treatment of the Chávezes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And finally in 1989 he returned to the subject again in one of his last books, titled Chávez, A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico.⁹ His aim was to highlight the significant role played by his ancestors in the planting and flowering of Hispanic civilization in this corner of the