January 2004 
Editor: Mimi Lozano ©2000-4

Dedicated to Hispanic Heritage and Diversity Issues
 Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research

A California Soldado de Cuera, (c) 2003
Watercolor painting by Tami Early 
Prominent California Artist in San Diego
was inspired to Honor the  
Hispanic American Heroes Series, Galvez Project

An opportunity to chat with the authors of articles submitted to Somos Primos has been facilitated by GenealogyForum.org.chat . Starting in January 2004, on Mondays and Fridays specific times have been established for the convenience of Hispanic esearchers from coast to coast.

Mondays:  9-10 p.m. Eastern Standard time EST.
Fridays:    8-9 p.m. Pacific Standard time PST

Co-hosts will be Chuck Bobo and Mimi Lozano, editor of Somos Primos.  On Fridays, authors of articles submitters to Somos Primos will be online to answer questions. During the month of January SHHAR Board member John P. Schmal will be answering questions. 

John Schmal is an historian, genealogist and lecturer. With his friend Donna Morales, he co-authored "Mexican-American Genealogical Research: Following the Paper Trail to Mexico" (Heritage Books, 2002). He has degrees in History (Loyola-Marymount University) and Geography (St. Cloud State University) and is a board member of the Society of Hispanic Historical Ancestral Research (SHHAR).  

John is an associate editor of SHHAR's online monthly newsletter, www.somosprimos.com. He is also a frequent contributor to Latinola.com, Hispanicvista.com and Mexico Connect.  

More Information:  http://members.aol.com/shhar   mimilozano@aol.com  714-894-8161

UNITED STATES

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

A New Generation Leading the Way 
by Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Orange County Register, July 6, 2003
Donna Jackson Nakazawa is the author of 
"Does Anybody else Look Like Me?  
A Parent's Guide to Raising Multiracial children"  

The number of multiracial children in the U.S. is increasing rapidly.  How will they affect the way we think about race?  According to the latest U.S. Census estimates, 4.5 million children now under 18 in this country are multiracial.  The rate of interracial marriages is skyrocketing.  In some areas, one in six babies born today is of two or more racial heritages - making multiracial youth one of the fastest-growing segments of our population.

Today, more than 25 colleges have multi-racial student organizations - including Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, Smith, Wellesley and the University of Texas.  These multi-racial college students are becoming bridges.  Bethany Bastinelli, 24, whose parents are Native American and Italian - works in the Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Office at Lehigh University.  "I want to help incoming freshmen to understand that in college they're surrounded with people from all different backgrounds, and they can choose to erase the stereotypical tapes we all have in our minds," she says. "When they do have a racist thought, they can say to themselves,` Hey, this is stupid. This isn't how I want to think.'" 

 "There's a trend toward rejecting whiteness as a way 
of expressing success." 

That's the big change over time. 
There's a Latino identity that's neither white nor black, 
and it's a positive identity." 

Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research
at the State University of New York at Albany. Go to extract of article.
Sent by John Inclan

 Circa 1949/50 Speech made by Mimi Lozano

In 1949 (or 1950), I won in an American Legion speech competition. My speech was entitled, I Speak for Democracy. Part of the award was to have your speech recorded onto a 78 in record. 

On December 15^th, 2003, the day that Saddam's capture filled every newspaper, I heard a radio exchange expressing the thought, that only when the world's nations' governments function under a democratic system would we all be safe.

What a surprise that same afternoon to hear my words, carefully recaptured, that expressed the same thought more than 53 years ago. I was either 15 or 16 years old, a sophomore or junior.

Recording done in Fidelity Sound Recording Studio,
 2001 Pacific Avenue, Stockton, California.

I SPEAK FOR DEMOCRACY

The world needs us and we must go to its aid , not by giving money and food, or by signing treaties, but by teaching, teaching democracy."

• Examines the evolving nature of multiculturalism and multicultural education as a dynamic and interactive process.
• Features the perspective of a historian who has participate din the multicultural education movement.
• Urges readers to reflect on their own lives, careers, and efforts to meet the challenges and opportunities of our increasingly diverse society.
• Helps educators examine their own reasons for participating in the struggle to build a better multicultural future for our children.

A CONVERSATION WITH ALANA

by Carlos E. Cortés

When I retired in 1994 after 26 years as a Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside, I set out on my new life as an independent writer, lecturer, and diversity consultant. However, nowhere in my wildest fantasies did I imagine that less than ten years later I would be presenting my own one-person autobiographical play. Yet here I was, on December 4, 2003, doing just that at Valencia Community College in Orlando, Florida.

How did this come about and what does this have to do with Hispanics? Well, as they say in the world of theatre, let's take it from the top.

In 1918, at the age of eleven, my father (also Carlos Cortés) immigrated from Mexico to rejoin his family in the United States. I say rejoin, because the rest of his family had fled in 1913.

During the Mexican Revolution, Grandfather Carlos Cortés (who died before I was born) had been jefe político of Guadalajara under President Francisco Madero. When Madero was overthrown and then assassinated in 1913 by the dictatorship of General Victoriano Huerta, my grandfather was told that he was about to be arrested and probably executed. He had to leave immediately.

With his wife and children (except my father), Grandfather Cortés fled, settling in the San Francisco Bay area. According to family oral tradition, he could not even pick up my father, then six, at school, because Huerta's men were waiting for him there. When Dad returned home after school that day, he found his entire family gone. For the next five years he lived in Guadalajara with his devoutly-Catholic aunt before reuniting with his family in California.

Like thousands of other Mexican Revolution refugees, the previously wealthy Corteses lost just about everything and had to start over again in the United States. But they did have one major advantage over most other refugees. They spoke English and my grandfather was an engineer, having graduated from Stanford. He joined Shell Oil in Martinez, California, and the family did well until his 1928 death from colon cancer.

My father went first to the the University of Nevada, Reno, where he boxed and played football, and later to the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated with a degree in History. He even began work on an M.A. However, after his father's death, he had oldest-son responsibilities to his mother and five younger siblings. When the Great Depression hit, he dropped out of graduate school to go to work.

However, during the Depression there was certainly no great demand for historians. So he became a service station auto mechanic, which he was when he met my mother.

Mom's family could hardly have come from a more different world than Dad's wealthy, aristocratic, Mexican Catholic family. Her parents were uneducated, working class, turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants, my grandmother Ada Weinsaft from Vienna, Austria, my grandfather Morris Hoffman from a village near Kiev, Ukraine. Their families settled in Kansas City, Missouri, where they met and courted in Yiddish, the common language of Eastern European Jews.

Slowly, resolutely, my grandparents pulled themselves up into the middle class. They began selling produce in the Kansas City Market, then my grandmother managing apartments so that my grandfather could go to night school, and finally establishing a small construction business.

As their only child, my mother, Florence Hoffman, became the focus of their hopes and dreams. They immersed her in Jewish life and sacrificed to give her opportunities they never had. This included going to college at the University of California, Berkeley. While a senior there, she met my father. It was from California that she wrote home that she had fallen in love with a Mexican Catholic immigrant auto mechanic.

This was not exactly the fulfillment of my Jewish immigrant grandparents' dreams. Yet, despite opposition from both of their families, my parents married in 1933. The following year I was born, in Oakland, California. Some six months later my folks moved to Kansas City so that my mother could be near her family to help take care of me. For Mom this was a return home. For Dad this was a radical dislocation from his immediate and extended family in California and Mexico. It turned out to be a permanent dislocation that would haunt him until the day he died.

I was raised in a Mexican-Catholic-Austro-Russian-Jewish home in mid-twentieth-century Kansas City. This was an era of rigid racial and religious boundaries...legal racial segregation combined with deeply-rooted religious separation dividing Catholics from Protestants from Jews. Because of my particular mixed background, I grew up marginal in just about every social situation.

A few years ago I began to write my family's story, beginning with the diverse backgrounds of my grandparents until the death of my father in 1985, leaving me the oldest member of my family at age 51. The result is a book manuscript, "Letters to Alana: An Autobiographical Portait of an American Family," which is in the final stages of revision before submission for publication. Neither a standard family history nor a straightforward autobiography, it is rather a combination of the two. It is my family's story told through my eyes as I lived it, felt it, pieced it together, and tried to make sense of it.

The story revolves around my family's ethnic and religious tensions, which were never fully resolved even though their marriage lasted for half a century. Written from an autobiographical perspective, it relates my coming-of-age experiences of trying to deal with family conflicts while, at the same time, learning to cope with Kansas City's racial, ethnic, and religious divisions despite my stigmatic mixed background, which made me a perennial outsider.

After 1952, when I went away to college, I never again lived in Kansas City, although I worked there during college summers and have visited at least once a year since. Therefore, my perspective in the book changes from continuous participant to intermittent observer of and occasional contributor to the often-dramatic changes occurring in Kansas City. Moreover, the book becomes a kind of mystery story, as I began to learn about more family secrets and discovered documents, such as my parents' love letters, that have continuously modified the story I thought I knew so well.

In the process of writing and revising the book manuscript, I have received lots of input from others. The entire manuscript was read and reacted to by my younger brother (and only sibling), Gary, in Kansas City, his wife, Debby, his oldest daughter, Rita, my wife, Laurel, and my daughter, Alana. (The book is titled "Letters to Alana" because it is written in the form of a series of letters to my daughter, in which I tell her my own and my family's story, as well as explain to her how I have tried to unravel the mystery of my family.)

Over the years I have read selected chapters to others in order to get their responses and feedback. This began with one-on-one readings, sometimes with people who appear in the book, such as old Kansas City friends. Later these readings grew into small-group sessions in Kansas City, in my memoir-writing class at my university, at conferences where I was speaking, and at colleges and universities where I had been invited to give lectures and do diversity workshops. I even spent a week as writer-in-residence at my former Kansas City high school, where I did a public reading from the chapters about my high school days.

Audience reactions have been fascinating, particularly from people of mixed backgrounds and those involved in mixed marriages. They want to talk, share their own stories and family histories, explain their dilemmas, and relate how they have overcome personal and family challenges. Sometimes these discussions have lasted longer than the readings themselves.

During this process I was approached on two occasions by stage directors, both of whom told me that the story was so intriguing and dramatic that it should also be turned into a play. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The result? "Letters to Alana" (the book) has been joined by "A Conversation with Alana: One Boy's Multicultural Rite of Passage" (the play).

In December, 2003, I presented my first public reading of the play in Orlando. I have also received a number of other invitations to present or read the play -- from universities, from small theatre groups, even at a national diversity conference in June, 2004.

Based on my experience with the readings of book chapters, the play should also prove to be a springboard for rich discussions of heritage and experience. After my Orlando reading, numerous people came up to me to tell me their own stories. One young man, a Muslim who is dating a Christian girl, told me that my tale of the challenges of growing up in a mixed family had revealed to him the importance of thoroughly discussing religious and ethnic issues if marriage should become a possibility.

One of the startling aspects of these private and public readings is how listener reactions constantly trigger my own thinking and give me more insights into my own family's story. As a result, I imagine that "A Conversation with Alana" will be a play in constant revision or as long as I continue presenting it publicly.

As the old miner's poem ends, "It isn't the gold that I'm wanting so much as finding the gold." The search to keep rediscovering my family history is truly an ongoing rediscovery of myself.

Celebrating Culture and Community, San Jose, California
Sent by Jaime Cader, Vice-President 
http://www.caccandc.com

CC&C's first board of directors (minus one) 1997

Celebrating Culture and Community is dedicated to promoting cross-cultural understanding.  Their activities include multi-cultural multi-day festivals, forums, classes, public art programs and exhibits. 

We believe public art best serves the community when the public can be involved in producing the art, and when the art serves as public testimony to the contributions made by diverse ethnic communities. We organize public forums on topics of interest to the general community, and to specific ethnic groups, to school groups and to commercial entities.

We also have items related to our diverse communities and their culture for sale at our center: CDs. framed color photographs of performers, note cards featuring public art, and more. 510- 236-3255

In Oakley, California, high school student Lisa McClelland attempted to organize a club which she said would be "a kind of comfortable place where students of all background could talk about - with an emphasis on European history - and how her "whiteness affects those who aren't white. Caucasian/White Club.  

There's a black Student Union, a Latinos Unidos for Latin-Americas and an ALOHA Club for Asian-Americans at the school.  So, McClelland wondered, why not a Caucasian Club?  Pedro Noguera, a sociologist at New York University, sympathizes with McClelland -"at least to an extent," he said.  

"On one level, it is understandable that when white students see other students celebrating their cultures and participating in activities that recognize their backgrounds - - those students might feel some degree of resentment.  They wonder if they, too, have an ethnicity," Noguera said. 

"But almost everything else, thought it's not named as a celebration of white people and white culture, is just that.  Most of U.S. history glorifies the experience of individuals and groups of people who are white."

Wal-Mart distributes this magazine at their stores, Qué Bebé! 
It is written in Spanish for parents of babies.  It is filled with suggestions written by medical professionals for child care.   Articles cover the physical, psychological, and social needs of the infant.  In addition, a column of suggestions by readers is included.

Hell's Angels completed 48 combat missions in World War II

BALDWIN CREW - 358th BS  B-17F Hell's Angels #41-24577 (VK-D)
In front of the 359th BS 8-Ball #41-24581  (original crew assigned 358BS: 15 Sep 1942 - photo: 13-10-1942

(Back L-R) Capt Irl E. Baldwin (P)(1), 1Lt Ripley W. Joy (CP)(2),
Capt Harold Fulghum (N)(POW)(3), 1Lt Donald R. Bone (B)(4)
(Front L-R) T/Sgt James R. Rodriguez, Jr. (E)(5),
T/Sgt Russell M. "Birddog" Warren (R)(6), S/Sgt Harry J. "Jim" Brody (BTG)(7),
S/Sgt Harold E. Godwin (TG)(9), S/Sgt Allerton F. "Fred" Meddaugh, Jr.(LWG)(8)

Thank you to Carlos Ray Gonzales for finding and pointing out James R. Rodriguez, Jr. in this Squadron. Gonzales can be reached at:  clearwaterr@earthlink.net

Skilled mechanics were an important part of the Army Air Force strength. 

Alicia Reynoso & Cpl. Oscar Chapa Marriage, March 5, 1942

Sgt. Oscar Chapa, Line Chief, 
June 20, 1943

As a 11-year old youth, Oscar first started working in a automotive garage, as a goofer and assistant. That experience served him well in the military.  With his natural mechanical ability and experience, he very quickly was made Line Chief over a 20-man mechanic crew at Esler Field, Louisiana.   His crew was responsible for maintaining the B-40s and B-41s.  He served in that capacity during World War II,  10th RCN SQ (F). Oscar was made Sergeant, then Staff Sergeant, then Master Sergeant.

When the war ended in 1945 is mechanical expertise had received sufficient recognition that the then governor of California, Earl F. Warren was aware of him. Oscar was offered the job of private mechanic to the governor; but, Oscar did not want to be separated from the family. Instead he decided to start a family restaurant in Stockton, California.  It was built, brick by brick by the family on South El Dorado Street, and called Mexico Cafe.  [For more history, go to 

Oscar entered the United States as a child with his family through Laredo in 1925. The Chapas first settled in San Antonio, but in the early 1930s  moved to Los Angeles, living first in the Bunker Hills area and then East L.A.   

When Oscar was inducted into the Army Air Force, he was told that because his father had become a citizen before Oscar was 21, Oscar was automatically a citizen.  His father, Alberto Chapa, had been Superintendent of Schools in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon, Mexico.  In the late 1930s his father become a citizen in United States; however, his mother did not. 

Living the life of a citizen, voting and actively involved in community activities, it was almost 15 years later that Oscar found out, he was not a citizen.  As an officer with the Lion's Club, a passport was needed to attend a conference in Taiwan.  Attempting to process his passport, he found out that even though his father was a naturalized citizen, his mother was not; and therefore he was not a United States citizen after all.  That was quickly rectified.

[[ I am proud to say that Oscar Chapa is my uncle, brother of my mom.]]

Hispanic American Heroes Series

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

LOCAL ARTIST HONORED  FOR GALVEZ PAINTING

SURNAME

El Apellido Guadarrama es poco frecuente en Venezuela y en el resto del Mundo. Los Países que tienen habitantes con este Apellido son: México, USA, Venezuela, España, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Filipina, Chile, Francia y Canadá. ( El orden en que estan colocados estos Países indica donde hay mayor números de Personas con Apellido Guadarrama " primer Apellido ", según las Guía Telefónica-Paginas Blancas de estos Países ).

En España de donde proviene el Apellido, los Guadarrama que encontré no son muy numerosos ( 253 Personas ), ni estan en todas las Ciudades o Pueblos de España. Según la Guía Telefónica-Paginas Blancas hay Guadarrama ( primer Apellido ), en las siguientes Ciudades: Tenerife ( 78 Personas ),  Madrid ( 71 Personas ), Valladolid ( 49 Personas ), Barcelona ( 15 Personas ), Pontevedra ( 5 Personas ), Ávila ( 5 Personas ), Zaragoza ( 3 Personas ), Ourense ( 3 Personas )  Alicante ( 2 Personas ), Granada ( 2 Personas), Málaga ( 2 Personas ), Segovia ( 2 Personas ), Sevilla ( 2 Personas ), Vizcaya ( 2 Personas ), Las Palmas ( 2 Personas ), Baleares ( 2 Personas ), Córdoba ( 1 Persona ), Guipúzcoa ( 1 Persona ),  León ( 1 Persona ), Murcia ( 1 Persona ), Salamanca ( 1 Persona ), Valencia ( 1 Persona ), Zamora ( 1 Persona ) y Girona ( 1 Persona ).

Acosta
Armendariz
Cisneros
Cortez
De la Libertad
Demara
Elizondo
Galvez
Garcia
Gutierrez
Hernandez
Lara
Nava
O’Donnell
Olmos
Origel
Ortiz and Ortega
Perez
Ramon
Treviño
Vergara

November 2003
September 2002
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May 2003
October 2003
December 2002
March 2003
November 2002
December 2003

ORANGE COUNTY, CA

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

If this is the year you have decided to start your personal family history, 
start the year out right by attending SHHAR's first meeting of the year.  

No cost to attend and no membership fees.

The Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research
 invites you to learn how to seek out your ancestors on the internet.
Get excited about your history.

January 31st, Saturday,9 am-12 noon
Quarterly Meeting of the 
Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research
Orange Family History Center
674 S. Yorba
Orange, California 

 9:00 - 10:00:  
              Beginners, Hands on Computer Family History Research
              Regional Small group sharing, come meet your cousins
              
10:00- 10:30:  
              Introductions, announcements, networking break

10:30- 11:15   Judge Fredrick Aguirre 
                       How Mendez vs Westminster School District (1947) influenced 
                       Chief Justice Earl Warren in the Brown vs Board of  
                       Education (1954) decision.  2004  will be the 50th anniversary 
                       Learn the origins, the history.  
                       
                       Learn why and how Chief Justice Earl Warren, California 
                       Governor was influenced by actor, Californio Leo Carrillo.

11:15- 12:00  Judge Fredrick Aguirre
                       World War II Mexican American Veterans 
                       Judge Aguirre has chaired the Celebration of Mexican American
                       Veterans for seven years.  He has gathered the histories and
                        photographs of  many Hispanic men and women who served in
                        the military.  You'll hear about individuals and also statistics.

                        Learn about the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.. It
                       will be dedicated May 29th of this year.

Free  CD
Latin American 
Family History Resources

The Family Enrichment Program, FREE 
8½ x11 books (Eng/Span)

Organizations can request sufficient numbers of the Family Enrichment Program book for distribution to their members. Please specify
English or Spanish.  

Fragment of Saint's Cloak in L.A.
Orange County Register, Wednesday Dec. 10, 2003 

     Los Angeles- A piece of a 500-year-old cloak that is said to be miraculously imprinted with an image of the Virgin Mary was enshrined at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.
     The ceremony marks the end of a national tour for the postage-stamp-size the relic, which was cut from a saint's cloak by the Archdiocese of Mexico and given to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles as  a gift in 1941. It has been held in archives.
     It is the only piece known to be in the United States. Only four snippets have been taken from the cloak, which hangs in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
     Officials expect thousands of people to pay homage to the relic in the coming days, she said.
     The Virgin of Guadalupe long has been venerated by Mexicans and in 1999 she was named the patron saint of all the Americans.
     According to tradition, the cactus-cloth cloak belonged to a poor Mexican Indian, Juan Diego, who was visited by Mary in 1531 on a hill outside Mexico City. 
     To convince a skeptical bishop, Mary told him to gather up roses in his cloak form a hill where they never had grown in midwinter. When he spilled out the flowers, the image of Mary was revealed inside his cloak.
     Last year, Pope John Paul II canonized Juan Diego, making him the church's first Indian saint.
     The relic was enshrined after a Mass in honor of the feats day of St. Juan Diego. It will be permanently displayed on a 17th-century statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

CALIFORNIA

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

In celebration of  the 225th Anniversary of the Founding of the City of San Jose
"In Search of San Jose's Hispanic Past"

Two articles from 7 articles written by 
By Elena Robles
Published in La Oferta Review
November 22, 2002

Sent by José Pantoja
Photo by Elena Robles 

Jose Pantoja (researcher) is joined by History San Jose Archivist, Paula Jobloner, to search original Pueblo Papers for a questions concerning the mayor's name in 1832.  the search proved that all lists needed to be correct to Ignacio Peralta.

An 1830 map of the Pueblo San Jose de Guadalupe displays buildings, a church and 36 homes.  The population was over 240 people.

And Don't Forge the Founding Mothers and Children

           1998 Stephen Darrel Machado – ancestor Manuel Machado/Orchaga, Santa Barbara Presidio, CA.

           1998 John William Heaney – ancestors Captain Jose Ortega, Corporal Manuel R. Arellano, Corporal Jose M Ortega, and Francisco S. Lugo, all of CA. Presidios.

           1998 Ted Felix Spriggs, ancestor Lt. Juan Pablo Grijalva, de Anza Expedition to CA and San Francisco Presidio.

           1999 Paul Edgar Trejo – ancestor Manuel Butron, Catalonian Bluecoat, Monterey Presidio, CA.

Photos:  Francisca Sanchez Arellanes and Juan Bautista Arellanes.  
The child is Nancy's grandmother, Artemisa Arellanes.

Eddie worked closely with writer/publisher Doug Westfall to produce several publications about Juan Pablo Grijalva.  Doug has also included segments of the Spanish presence in books that he has published, such as Prisoners of the Civil War by Doug Westfall, pg110
http://www.SpecialBooks.com

A land-bearing lawsuit evolved in 1868 in southwest Los Angeles County and the company of Chapman & Glassell took the case. This was the breakup of the great Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, some 78,000 acres of choice land. Founded in 1801 by Juan Pablo Grijalva, a retired Spanish soldier, the rancho had been left to his grandson and namesake, Juan Pablo Peralta.

The son of Grijalva’s daughter, Peralta, had partnered with Antonio Yorba, aged husband to the other daughter of Grijalva. This was three years after Grijalva had died, in 1806.

Sixty years later, this was the State of California within the United States of America, and the great rancho was being divided up. Chapman & Glassell provided legal counsel for the Yorbas and received 1,300 acres of land as payment; small compared to their previous awards.

Today, February 2. 1744 , I solemnly baptized Juan Pablo, son of Andres Grijalva and Luisa de Leiva. His godparents were Señor Don Bernardo de Urrea and Doña Mariana Gallardo. 

Item as above Joseph de Torres Perea (rubic), Minister for His Majesty.
Jose de Torres Perea, Priest

  Social Service in the Community by dedicated Stockton Volunteer

Stockton, California. Dedicated to the Practice of Medical Sciences 
and to the Service of Humanity.

Dena Chapa Rupert
Holds the plaque dedicated to her Uncle Albert Chapa, who although not an attorney, served as legal council to farm workers within this building., and never lost a case.

Migrant Farm Workers: Fact Sheet, October 2003
in the Diocese of Stockton, California
Sent by Dena Chapa Rupert

• There are 75,846 migrant and seasonal farm workers who live and work within the six counties making up the Diocese of Stockton—San Joaquin-46,913, Stanislaus-28,623, Calaveras-106, Tuolumne-183, Alpine-0 and Mono-21. (From a study by the U.S. Government in September 2000.)

• Official estimates indicate that more than 70% of these workers are Catholic. If that estimate is correct, then more than 54,000 of these workers are of the Catholic faith.

• According to the Rural Community Assistance Community, 50% of the nation’s fruits and vegetables are grown in California, and 85% of these are hand harvested or cultivated.

• According to the same organization, nationally more than 300,000 workers suffer from acute pesticide poisoning each year and agricultural workers are three times more likely to die of nonmalignant respiratory diseases.

• A May 7, 2003, article in the Stockton Record reports that last year $1.34 billion in farm products were produced in San Joaquin County alone. The article indicates clearly that billions of dollars worth of produce are grown each year in the Central Valley of California and every one of these crops is dependent upon migrant and season farm labor.

• In spite of the economic contribution these workers make, three earn less than $10,000 per year and only one out of seven workers earn an income of more than $12,500 per year. Fifty one percent of agricultural workers do not own a vehicle and only one sixth of the workers own a dwelling.

• Richard Smoley, a former managing editor of California Farmer magazine once wrote that each farmer in California feeds 82 people in the world. A stunning 25% of all table foods consumed in the U.S. are grown in the Great Valley of California.

• A fact sheet issued by The National Center for Farm Worker Health, Inc. indicates that over 85% of the fruits and vegetables produced in this country were hand harvested and/or cultivated. "Without the seasonal influx of migrant farm labor during peak periods, the production of many fruit and vegetable crops would not be possible".

Carlos Montalvo and Yvette Ramirez 
Photo by Luis Gris Elizarras/Herald photos

The 350-year old statue is a replica of the original image and has traveled around the United States and Mexico for almost three centuries.

More than 4,000 people participated in the two-mile procession with the image and prayed the rosary through downtown Sacramento. 

Source: The Catholic Herald, 96th Year, No. 7
Diocese of Sacramento, August 23, 2003
Sent by Cindy LoBuglio lobuglio@thegrid.net

The Newspaper in American Life
"The Earth Shook, The Sky Burned" by By Rachel Galvin
National Endowment to the Humanities 

Before dawn on April 19, 1906, the city of San Francisco woke to a series of explosions and a tremendous rumbling. In less than a minute, the earthquake set in motion the worst natural disaster the nation has ever experienced.

Fire sprang from gas mains, wood stoves, and toppled lanterns, and church bells were set clanging. Gold Rush-era cisterns were useless and all but one water main was ruptured. “Big buildings were crumbling as one might crush a biscuit in one’s hand,” said one eyewitness. “Ahead of me a great cornice crushed a man as if he were a maggot--a laborer in overalls on his way to the Union Iron Works with a dinner pail on his arm.”

Only one newspaper managed to publish that morning. The San Francisco Daily News moved to a small print shop on Mission Street and on a hand-cranked press, rushed out an edition--peppered with errors--until the building was evacuated and dynamited as a firebreak.

By noon, all of Newspaper Row was destroyed, including the city’s tallest structure, the twenty-two-story Call Building. All telegraph lines were down, and for the first time, San Francisco was cut off from the world. “People were hungry for news,” says Mark Sweeney, chief of the Library of Congress’s preservation reformatting division, and technical coordinator of the United States Newspaper Program. “The water lines had broken, so there was no steam to run the presses, and consequently, no newspapers.”

Newspapermen from the three major papers, the Call, the Chronicle, and the Examiner, made their way across the bay to the offices of the Oakland Tribune, where they worked together to produce a special combined edition on April 19 with the headline:

EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE:
SAN FRANCISCO IN RUINS

“The newspaper, above all, is the local history of this country,” says Henry Snyder, professor of history and director of the California Newspaper Project.

The California project is part of the United States Newspaper Program, which was launched in 1984 to locate, catalog, and preserve newspapers published in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present. The holdings of public libraries, county courthouses, newspaper offices, historical museums, college and university libraries, archives, and historical societies are being inventoried, and catalog records are entered into a national database maintained by the Online Computer Library Center. Microfilm copies of newspapers are available to researchers across the country through interlibrary loan.

“Newspapers recorded history in a way that no other documents did. They are a rich source of history on two levels: they tell about the lives of everyday people and about extraordinary events,” says Sweeney.

The day after the quake hit, as two dozen aftershocks shook San Francisco and the city continued to burn, the special edition Call=Chronicle=Examiner announced, “Death and destruction have been the fate of San Francisco. Shaken by a temblor at 5:13 o’clock yesterday morning, the shock lasting 48 seconds, and scourged by flames that raged diametrically in all directions, the city is a mass of smoldering ruins.”

“It was the great cataclysmic event in twentieth-century California history. As they say, on April 18, 1906, the earth shook, the sky burned,” says Gary Kurutz, curator of special collections at the California State Library.

The two halves of earth along the San Andreas fault had rebounded past one another like a released rubber band, producing seismic waves traveling at 7,000 miles per hour. Charles Richter had yet to devise his scale, but geologists estimate that the quake would have registered an 8.3.

Within two hours the wood-frame buildings south of Market Street, an overpopulated area built on reclaimed ground in the Mission Swamp, collapsed and caught flame like tinder. By midday, sparks from a quake damaged flue had lit the “Ham and Eggs Fire,” which engulfed the north side of Market Street. “The story goes that a woman was cooking breakfast after the great quake and apparently the sparks flying up her chimney caused a fire that spread throughout the city and devastated almost all of downtown,” says Kurutz.

It was five hours before a Western Union wire chief was able to restring a single wire and reconnect the city with the outside world. Perched on a thirty-foot pole, he spent the next eighteen hours sending out the word. The National Guard was dispatched that day.

The San Francisco Chronicle later reported some of the untold stories of that day under the headline PLUCKY NEWS GATHERER STICKS TO HIS WORK IN GRAVE PERIL: “No one has written of the work of the newspaper men on April 18 and 19 and the following days; they have not time to write it, and no one else can. Only the boys that were in the thick of it know what each other did and what they went through.”

The Chronicle quoted a member of the Associated Press, Jerry Carroll. “’The last office of the Associated Press on the night of the 18th was on a doorstep in Chinatown, and the copy was written in the glare of conflagration--a light that cost $1,000 per second.’

‘“I was told to write the lead for that night’s story,’ says Jerry, ‘but the Postal people told me I would have to hold it down to 500 words. I could just as well have condensed the Bible into a half column as I could have confined the news of that day in that space.’”

Before the earthquake, San Francisco had been the nation’s ninth largest city, and the largest in the West: an industrial port city with a booming artistic and literary community. When the fires finally ceased on April 21, nearly three thousand acres were destroyed, thousands of people had been killed, and a quarter of a million were homeless.

“An enumeration of the buildings destroyed would be a directory of San Francisco,” Jack London wrote in an eyewitness account for Collier’s. “Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories and a fringe of dwelling-houses on its outskirts.”

History would ultimately prove London wrong, and the city would rebuild in time to host the 1915 World’s Fair. The Fair would celebrate not only the opening of the Panama Canal, but also the renaissance of San Francisco, demonstrating to the world that the city was flourishing as ever before.

But many of the major runs of the city’s papers were entirely destroyed in the fire. “Reconstructing the history of San Francisco is more difficult, since many of the long runs don’t exist, and if they exist, they are in repositories outside San Francisco,” says Snyder. One of the advantages of a centralized database is that it tells a researcher based anywhere from California to Maine that the only known copy of the San Francisco Daily News from April 18, 1906, is held at the New York Public Library, while copies of the Call=Chronicle=Examiner are held by five museums and historical societies in California.

“The Huntington Library in San Marino has unique issues of New England papers,” Snyder says. “Conversely, some California newspapers survive only in New England libraries, like the New-York Historical Society, because the miners sent them back. Some of the gaps in one state title can only be filled in from runs in another state.”

The California State Library has been collecting newspapers for fifteen decades. One of its treasures is a copy of the state’s first newspaper, the Californian, dated August 15, 1846. It was published in Monterey by Philadelphian Walter Colton, who noted in his journal, “To-day the first newspaper ever published in California made its appearance. . . . My partner is an emigrant from Kentucky, who stands six feet eight in his stockings. He is in a buckskin dress, a foxskin cap; it is true with his rifle, ready with his pen, and quick at the type-case.”

Colton and Robert Semple used a wooden screw-type press that had belonged to the governor of California. “The story goes that they had to scrounge around and use paper associated with making cigarettes and cigars to print the first issue,” Kurutz says. The first edition was foolscap-size and printed in both Spanish and English. Colton wrote, “Though small in dimensions, our first number is as full of news as a black walnut is of meat.”

“Locally the paper was very important for giving news of the Mexican War, the conquest of California, and what was going at the time with Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor,” says Kurutz. “It also contains the earliest published account of the famous Donner party stranded in the Sierra in 1846.”

The next year, the same wooden press was employed to print San Francisco’s first newspaper, the California Star, and two years later, the pioneer publisher Edward Kemble used it to print Sacramento’s first newspaper, the Placer Times. When Kemble discovered he did not possess typeface large enough for his masthead, he carved out the words Placer Times with a jackknife.

By the time Kemble wrote a history of California newspapers in 1858, the number had leapt from two titles to three hundred and twenty-four, largely because of the flurry of newspapers generated by the Gold Rush. By the early 1850s, Kurutz says, “San Francisco, in fact, could boast that it not only consumed more champagne than Boston, but it also published more newspapers than London.”

But most papers were short-lived, and in 1858 Kemble characterized California as a “newspaper graveyard.” As for the editors and publishers, “Not one can be said to have become rich from the profits of their newspapers.” He noted that one suffered knife wounds, one was killed by an assassin, and four were injured in duels because of articles they had written.

Duels were not uncommon on the East Coast either, where newspaper publishing had been thriving for a century. The same year the first California paper was published, John Ritchie Jr., the Republican editor of the Virginia Enquirer, met the challenge of John Hampden Pleasants, the editor of the Whig. Pleasants did not survive the showdown.

“There were very politically charged newspapers, and they channeled the political passions of the people of the time in a way that they don’t now,” says Errol Somay, director of the Virginia Newspaper Project. He recounts that when the editor of the State challenged the editor of the Whig to a duel in 1883, the two took elaborate measures to evade the law, traveling two hundred miles to meet in West Virginia. Although dueling was illegal, the incident was covered on the front page of the victorious editor’s paper. “The final duel is described in great detail, like a sporting event.”

The Virginia project has been inventorying and cataloging its 6,250 titles for nearly ten years. “Every library in its particular region has its own treasures,” Somay says. “Here in Virginia it is our collection of the Virginia Gazette. Our newspaper publishing goes back to 1736 in this state, which is one of the earlier dates.”

Eighteenth-century papers such as the Gazette printed official proclamations and dispatches, and presented news differently than today. When Thomas Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase, the historic occurrence was buried in the back of the paper, in an item about presidential bills. “We expect major events always to be front-page news,” says Somay. “But with the early newspapers like the Virginia Gazette, most of the front page would be taken up with ads for rum or livestock.”

“Newspapers become a vital link to the time they were printed in,” he continues. “The title that is the most requested here at the Library of Virginia is the Recorder from 1802. In it is an editorial by John Callendar, tearing into Thomas Jefferson for his supposed liaisons with Sally Hemings.” Callendar writes in his editorial, “The name of Sally will walk down to posterity alongside of Mr. Jefferson’s own name.”

“He was a great scandal monger, but two hundred years later, people are dying to get at it, because it is one of the first official documents of this event,” says Somay.

Five years ago, the Library of Virginia received approximately ninety requests for microfilm per quarter, but since the newspaper program began, the number of requests has more than doubled to two hundred per quarter. One paper highly sought after by researchers, the Richmond Planet, is an African American newspaper founded during Reconstruction by a group of former slaves. Its most well-known editor, John Mitchell Junior, was appointed to the position at the age of twenty-one. In a time of segregation, lynch mobs, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, he dared to “hurl the thunderbolts of truth into the ranks of the wicked,” as one writer put it. On the back page of each issue, he printed a listing of all documented lynchings across the nation. “He was not only doing it because of its obvious racial atrocity--there were children, there were white people--it was a matter of taking a stand against uncontrolled vigilantism,” says Somay.

The library continues to acquire copies of papers that tell unexpected stories of the past, such as a copy of a Civil-War era Richmond Dispatch. The paper had been sent across the river from the southern side to the northern side during a Christmas truce in the Battle of Fredericksburg. “The northerners and southerners would exchange boats and sail things across the river--the southerners would send plugs of tobacco, and the northerners would send coffee and newspapers,” explains Somay. When the library received the Dispatch, it still had a note attached to it saying, “Friend Yanks, you seem disposed to communicate with us but the wind is against you, in the morning probably the wind will have shifted when you can send us over a paper. A fresh one if you please will be more acceptable than some old copies that you have been in a habit of cheating us with. Thomas Seaton, Co. H 17th Miss. P.S. Instruct your relief in the morning to send us over a paper that is if the wind does not shift to knight.”

“A lot of what we film is made up of titles that we become aware of from other librarians, archivists, researchers, newspaper offices themselves,” says Jeff Sohn, project coordinator of the New York Newspaper Project. “I receive requests regarding papers that have not been filmed, that are in jeopardy of extinction, because they are in a small historical society that can no longer house them--or they may be deteriorating, or in the basement of a newspaper office that no longer wants them.”

New York State’s first paper, also named the Gazette, was printed in 1725 by William Bradford, a publisher with royalist sympathies. It was just two pages in length, and contained lists of ships, outdated foreign news, and a few advertisements. Within a century, the number of New York State papers would reach one hundred and twenty, and by the time of the Civil War, the number had tripled.

The nation’s first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, was published in New York City in March 1827, the same year slavery was abolished in New York State. Twenty years later in Rochester, Frederick Douglass founded the abolitionist North Star, in which he combined the condemnation of slavery with a call for the emancipation of women. The paper had a circulation of four thousand subscribers in the U.S., Europe, and the West Indies, and carried the motto “Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color – God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren.”

One paper in the New York project’s collection, the Sandy Hill Herald from Hudson Falls, New York, had the foresight to admonish its readers on Jan. 28, 1886: “As a rule, the local paper is read and then cast aside as of little worth. This is a thoughtless disposal of what would, if carefully preserved for a few years, be of great value to its possessor. Every year would increase its value as an encyclopedia of former events. There are before us twenty five bound volumes of the HERALD dating as far back as 1841, and the fortunate possessor would not part with them for any consideration. He has at times been offered as high as ten dollars for the privilege of cutting a single article from their pages. . . . There are many reasons why every person should preserve at least their village paper.”

“There is a gap in the way we think about collecting our historic memory,” says Somay. “If you get a published book about the Battle of Gettysburg, you catalog it and put it in your collection. If it is starting to deteriorate, you preserve it. It’s sanctified, because it’s a book, but newspapers have been treated as ephemera. Yesterday’s paper may talk of important issues of the day, both locally and nationally--so they are primary source documents. They have incredible importance especially when you are at a hundred years remove from the time.”

Many papers have been saved but are in bad condition, even if they have been bound into volumes, says Andrea Vanek, assistant director of the California Newspaper Project. “The best way to preserve newspapers is to lay them flat in an acid-free box, but most of the papers that we find are not that way. We’ve found nails, or brads, or sometimes holes punched in the pages, and you lose text because of the holes--it is very destructive to the paper. We also find a lot of papers that have just been folded and put on the shelf, so they are brittle and brown along the fold.”

Newsprint deteriorates because of the high acid in the paper. Newspapers printed before 1875 were often printed on paper composed of old rags beaten into a liquid pulp, cast onto a screen, and made into individual sheets. “We have books that date back to the sixteenth century, the incunabula period, that look excellent and will last forever,” says Kurtuz.

With an increasingly literate population and the demand for papers in larger quantities, a faster means of papermaking was devised. “One of the ironies of newspaper preservation is that fact that you could take the Virginia Gazette home--it’s in great shape, very durable, because it is printed on rag paper,” says Somay. “Then around the 1860s the demand for newspaper printing became so great, they began breaking down wood pulp with alum, which converts to an acid over time, so that the paper becomes embrittled. Newspapers from the 1830s don’t have the same preservation demands that the 1930s have--in fact papers from the 1930s are often in dire condition.

“So we’re at risk of losing our more immediate past, which is an odd situation. The papers contain the seeds of their own destruction.”

“You walk up and down the aisle at the library and you see the ‘cornflakes,’ the chunks of newspaper that fall down to the floor,” says Kurutz. “That’s why microfilm, and later, digitization, is going to be such an advantage--because newspapers are a primary source and you will be able to read them without damaging the original.”

Microfilming is a painstaking and time-consuming process. “It’s very rare that you find a whole run of a paper in good condition,” says Vanek. “We have to disbind them to film them, because usually the binding is so tight that you cannot get a good image. Sometimes we have to put whole sheets into a Mylar sleeve or tape or iron them, or sometimes correct numbering or dates in pencil on the issues. It takes a very long time to get them camera-ready.”

“Papers are being ferreted out and made available not only bibliographically, but also preserved--it’s a real boon to researchers to finally know who has what,” says Kurutz. “This is a bibliographic Mount Everest for California, with its complex newspaper history. From San Diego up through Fort Bragg, tremendous resources are being made available.”

Snyder, the director of the California newspaper project, has been canvassing the Golden State for more than a decade, on the hunt for old and rare newspapers. “You never know when you’re going to turn up a lead one place that will take you some place else,” he says.

One regional publisher had saved local papers from Winton, California, for twenty-five years, and showed Snyder his attic stacked full of them. “They were in bundles and pigeons had roosted in there. It was dirty and dusty and it was a hot day. I went through and tried to make the best inventory I could of these bundles, and I took the earliest issue I found of each of these eight titles.” Snyder cataloged them, hoping to return and complete a thorough inventory. “I called him a few months later, and he said, ‘You’ll be very sad to hear that sixty days after you were here, the place burned down to the ground.’ So I had the earliest known copies, since I’d saved them. That was a tragedy: eight local communities, twenty-five years worth, lost, because the local libraries hadn’t saved them.”

Snyder is semi-retired, but he says that the work continues to be “intensely rewarding.” He himself has long ties to the state: his great-great-grandparents arrived by covered wagon in the 1850s, and there were newspaper publishers on both sides of his family.

Snyder says, “I’ve found towns that were six miles apart but each had their own newspaper.” In Downyville he met the publisher of the Sierra Booster, Hal Wright, a relative of the Wright Brothers. For forty years, Wright was California’s only flying newspaper deliveryman, tossing his paper onto the front porches of subscribers as he flew by in his 1949 Aeronica Sedan. He published and delivered the paper every three weeks until he died at the age of ninety-six, the oldest active pilot in the United States.

“That kind of local identity is not characteristic of most of today’s publications,” says Snyder. In the past twelve years, he and his team have identified more than half of the twenty thousand California newspapers that have been published since 1846. They are printed in thirty-nine languages and represent Oakland’s Portuguese community, San Francisco’s Greek and Chinese, Fresno’s Armenian, Cambodian, and Hmong, and California’s many Spanish-speaking communities.

Somay says the collection and microfilming of newspapers is urgent business. “We may never have this chance again to preserve newspapers that are on the verge of total extinction,” he says. “We may never pass this way again.”

Spanish Immigrants in Hawaii 
in the Early 1900s 
and their Descendants
by Jaime Cader 
© 2003

After four or five years, the great majority of these individuals left Hawaii to reside in California.

There were various reasons why they left Spain, however most emigrated because of the poor economic conditions in their homeland. A smaller percentage left in order to escape the fate of their sons’ eventual recruitment to fight in Spain’s war in Morocco.

Different reasons also existed for the later emigration to California. Many had Spanish friends and family members who had preceded them to the Golden State. Those in California encouraged their counterparts in Hawaii to leave the islands so that they could take part in the good living conditions of a state that resembled Spain.

Some Spaniards abandoned Hawaii after seeing or hearing about the brutal putting down of a Russian rebellion. There were different immigrant groups in Hawaii, and the Russians rose up against their poor treatment in their work camp. Upon learning about that incident, some Spaniards decided that it was best to stay quiet and to then just sneak off to California.

In order to write this article, I referred to two written works: 
1) the book Memories of Spain, first published in 1994 by Anne Santucci for the Club Espanol of Rocklin (California), and 
2) a written paper entitled " Vida y Desventura de Ocho Mil Españoles en Hawai Durante las Primeras Decadas del Siglo XX" by German Rueda Hernanz of the University of Valladolid’s Contemporary History Department.

I have also interviewed seven individuals who are children, grandchildren, or spouses of Spaniards that had a Hawaiian connection. The information from these interviews will be presented in this article. I hope that I have not gotten too sidetracked as I relate some of their experiences as I was also told about circumstances during the Spanish Civil War, etc.

The persons that I interviewed told me their stories as they knew or experienced the events. It is possible that other Spanish-Hawaiians and their descendants recall the events differently.

Finally I will include information about ‘Spanish-Hawaiian’ families taken from obituaries and other printed sources, such as programs from Spanish associations’ celebrations, etc.

Before presenting all of this, I want to mention that my first major encounter with this subject took place almost twenty years ago when I often had conversations with a Mrs. Pilar Lopez who worked in the same public school office building as I did. Lopez, whose parents were from the provinces of Salamanca and Soria, Spain respectively, said that in the mid 1920s many Andalusians lived around what was referred to as "la loma" in San Francisco, California. These Andalusians had lived in Hawaii.

"La loma" included all of the streets leading up to Koit Tower. It comprised of the hill area of Vallejo and Green Streets (and Kearny Street in the same area). The location started from Columbus and Grant Avenues, -and Stockton and Union Streets also had sections in this area.

Many Spaniard’s also lived in San Francisco’s Mission District during that same period. Lopez had some friendships among the residents of "la loma" and she has always been a good and generous source of information. Lopez was a child when she and her family attended the inauguration of the Club Iberico in San Leandro in the early 1930s.

In reference to the publications mentioned previously, note should be taken that while Santucci’s book lists seven trips on ships that brought Spaniards to Hawaii starting in 1907, it does not report a ship called the Victoria which left the port of Vigo (in Galicia), Spain in 1900 with 300 Spaniards which is listed in Rueda Hernanz’s write-up. Rueda Hernanz, for his part, does not list the ship Kumeric which is listed in the previously mentioned book and which arrived in Hawaii in in 1907 with a total of 1114 passengers.

The Interviews

The interview of Blanca Crovetto Avancena was conducted in her office in Walnut Creek, California on September 19, 2003. It was the second of two interviews that were done in Spanish. Crovetto Avancena is originally from Madrid, Spain. She works as a counselor for women who have cancer.

The connection that Crovetto Avancena has to the Hawaiian episode is that she is a descendant of Don Carlos Crovetto, who worked in immigration matters and assisted many Spaniards in doing the paper work for them to emigrate to Hawaii.

A flyer (which is printed in Santucci’s book) was put up in many places in Spain that advertises the need for workers in Hawaii. On the bottom of that flyer it says "For more information …: Don Carlos Crovetto, person in charge of revision … Malaga (Spain)."

According to Crovetto Avancena, Don Carlos Crovetto had an Italian origin, making her a descendant of a General Crovetto, whose statue is to be found in Genova, Italy.

Word for word interview of Antonia Sanchez. This was the first interview done in Spanish and it took place on February 13, 1998 in Sanchez’s home in Antioch, California. (Her words were translated into English by this author.)  Sanchez is the widow of Antonio Sanchez whose parents, grandparents and other family members had gone to live in Hawaii.  

Sanchez: I was born on April 3, 1922 in Estepona, on the Costa del Sol, in the province of Malaga.
We were nine brothers and sisters, that’s five men and four women. We lived well until Franco (the dictator) came to power. When Franco was taking control, everything became very different.

I was a teenager when Franco came, however I know a lot about the situation at that time because this has been talked about much in our home throughout our lives. We who did not win the war suffered a great deal. In my family we were not Franquistas. There were no jobs to be had. We had fields and these and everything else was taken away from us.

We had to leave to another province because of the danger of the war. We walked the entire distance from Malaga to Almeria, where we ended up staying for three years, most of the entire time in a tent.

Eventually we returned to Estepona and because of some connections we had, we were at least able have our house back. One brother returned from the war missing an arm. He had fought against Franco’s forces. (It was not on the recorded interview, but Sanchez also said that her mother was lucky to have all of her children alive after the war. Other families were not so fortunate.)

Three of my brothers were in concentration camps and then they were transferred to prisons. They were taken to the penal prison of Santa Maria in Cadiz where they were held for five years. Prisoners whose families did not send them food ended up dying.

After having suffered much, we encountered good people that helped us a great deal. Presently, of the nine brothers and sisters, there are only two left. Myself, and an older brother…

The parents of my late husband were Manuel Sanchez and Isabel Mena. They emigrated to Hawaii in 1911. My husband Antonio was born in San Francisco, California.

My in-laws lived in Hawaii for four years and then they came here (to California). They later returned to Spain after one of their sons was killed by a truck. A daughter of theirs had also previously died during the ship voyage from Spain to Hawaii. Her name was Francisquita. Her body was thrown into the ocean as a burial.

The other children that went to Hawaii with them were Isabel, Antonia, Maria and Juan, who was the one killed by a truck in California. They took their children Maria, Manuel, Juana, and Antonio -my husband back to Spain with them. In Spain another child was born to them.

The grandparents of my husband died in Oakley, California. These grandparents left Spain for Hawaii because their sons Francisco and Antonio (the uncles of the interviewee’s husband) were going to be taken to fight in a war against Morocco. Many people were also dying of a fever in Morocco. So that is why they left for Hawaii.

Thus it was my in-laws and my husband's grandparents that left for Hawaii. They all went on the same ship and years later arrived in California on a same vessel. They were all originally from Estepona, Malaga.

My husband was about seven years old when he was taken back to Spain. Years later we married and we lived together for 11 years before coming to live in California. Back then Spain was still not doing well economically and my husband’s sisters in California encouraged him to return to the land of his birth.

He preceded me to California and wrote to me saying that yes, the poor are better off in America than in Spain. So in nine months our two daughters and I joined him. One of my daughters was ten years old and the other one was eight months old. That was in May of 1953.

I now also have four grandchildren and two great grandchildren. They all live in Antioch. (They all speak Spanish because that is the only language Sanchez can really speak to them in.)

(Returning to the conversation about Hawaii):

My husband’s family worked on the sugar cane plantations in Hawaii. They were actually better off in Spain where they had a large farm with many animals.  They left to keep their sons out of the war around Melilla (Morocco). One of my own mother’s cousins was killed there.

Here in Antioch my husband worked in a cannery. He later went to work at the paper mill where he worked 16 to 17 hours a day. It was because of all of this work that we were able to buy a house.

After my first year here, I also started to work in a cannery. I missed my family in Spain. In California I only had my husband’s family. Besides my cannery job I had five houses where I worked washing and ironing clothes. During the summer months we would go to harvest nuts…

Note: Sanchez told me that the initial years following her arrival in Antioch were pleasant ones. Spanish families living on 9th, 10th, and 11th Streets would visit each other on their front porches. There was a Spanish association and there was much happiness. This is now all gone.

Interview of Father Fernando Cortez, on February 18, 2003 at his St. Albert’s parish residence in Alameda, California.

Cortez: I knew Spanish since childhood and I studied it in the university as well.  Both of my parents are of Spanish origins. My dad’s family is from Malaga. They emigrated to Hawaii and then they came to California. My mother came to the United States from Spain in 1948 and my parents met here and got married.

I was ordained a priest in October 1977. I have religious order people in the family, -in the family background there are people that are Dominicans and Salesians, but I wanted to be a diocesan priest principally because I wanted some sense of control over my life …and also to keep closer to home because I am from a small family.

It was only my brother and myself and my parents at the time, and belonging to a small diocese like Oakland, I knew that I wouldn’t be any where further than Contra Costa County… And I like the Bay Area a lot because I was born here.

My father was born in Hawaii. My grandfather had fought in the "Guerra de Cuba" in the Spanish-American War, and when he returned home he married. At that time I think he would have been around 25. And my grandmother was about a month shy of 13 (years old).

I guess the authorities are dead now I suppose. So it’s not going to matter… but very young, married way too young.  I think they did migratory work, because the only evidence for that is that one of my uncles was born in Cadiz, which is a neighboring province. And that wouldn’t happen except that they might have been traveling to do harvesting… harvesting grapes or olives or something.

So I don’t think that they were stationary. Most people didn’t own land, so they had to be on the move to try to find work… So my uncle Juan was born in Cadiz and the rest, the other three I guess were born in Malaga.

My dad’s parents and four of his other brothers and sisters came over in 1911 to Honolulu, Hawaii. And they were there till sometime in 1917 and then they came to California.

They stopped off briefly in San Francisco, and I guess through word of mouth or some sort of local help they found a place to purchase. That place (area) is called Ramos Camp.

And the time the family was built up, it was the parents, the grandparents, and ten kids… Four (born) in Spain, three in Hawaii including my father, and two more were born in Hayward (California). And a tenth child was adopted…

Yes, the home that they purchased… is at where today is basically Ramos Avenue (in Hayward). It was a very small house, so it was a bit crowded. But they did have a large enough piece of property to have a home garden. The places that I know of from my own experience (where Spaniards lived) were Hollister, Sunnyvale, Hayward, San Leandro, and a few people in Oakland, and a few people in the Antioch area.

I knew a few people from Antioch because I lived there as a child briefly for a about a year or two, and my parents had a mom and pop’s store. We came back to Hayward after that…

The other thing that affected the local Spanish communities… the (Spanish) Civil War in the thirties ended up being extremely divisive. The only comment I heard once was that there had been some rows and fights over where (to Nationalists or Republican areas) Red Cross materials were going to be sent… I think that profoundly affected the stability of the Spanish immigrants’ socializing. There wasn’t that kind of divisiveness for Portuguese or other groups because their countries didn’t go through that process, the way Spain did so drastically…

I think that locally, I don’t know how, but I suspect that that very much divided the community… I’ve never been able to understand why the Spanish situation here was so weak compared to other immigrant groups, as far as their cohesiveness, -and that’s (the divisions over the war) the only thing I can think of.

Note: Fr. Fernando Cortez expressed that most of the Spaniards that he knew about that had emigrated to Hawaii, were for the most part from Andalusia.

Interview of Frank Perez, conducted at his residence in Martinez, California on December 8, 2003.

Perez: I was born in Hayward, California in 1946. I learned a little (Spanish) at home, but actually to carry on a conversation I had to learn it in high school. My parents spoke English around the house. It was my grandpa and grandmother who were the only ones that actually spoke Spanish.

My paternal grandfather died in Spain before my father was born. So my paternal grandmother came (to Hawaii) with three children and another male, whom we’re not sure who he was.  And my maternal grandparents both came [to Hawaii]. (Perez knows more about his paternal side of the family).

On my mother’s side, I asked my grandmother - she said because your grandfather didn’t get along with the people in the village. And he wanted to leave because he didn’t like them.

That was the Sephardic side, on my mother’s side.

Interviewer’s question: How did you know that you have Sephardic ancestry on your mother’s side?

It was just kind of known. They didn’t practice it, but they really didn’t practice Catholicism either. It was just kind of there, you know… It just was kind of known in the family, but it was like something to hide, not discussed. It would come out once in a while.

One time I asked her [my grandmother] why she had all these crucifixes and things around the house. She said, " In case they came." I said, "who?" She said, " In case they come to look, to see if we have them…"  Wine would come out for Hannukah…

(In reference to Spanish communities in the San Francisco East Bay area…) These were small towns. Everyone was pretty hick. San Leandro was the closest town, real city. Everyone knew everybody in these towns because they would go from Oakland to San Leandro, Fremont, Newark. It was like a little community. So everyone knew everyone, everyone was Spanish, knew everybody in those communities.

I could go into Oakland and they’d take a look at me and they say, "Oh, you’re one the Mateo kids, aren’t you?" And I say, "Yeah, that’s my grandmother."

There were a lot less people in those days. A lot less. We had family in Oakland, San Leandro…It was a tight-knit community, because there was not that many people.

The Club Iberico in San Leandro, they’d have weddings and parties and birthdays. We were there a lot. I have a lot of memories there. Good memories.

My grandmother, my maternal grandmother knew all the other people that came from the old country. They all kind of hung together, all the old ladies and old men. And they would socialize in each other’s homes. There was a little community there.

My maternal grandmother could not read or write. I think they said my paternal grandfather could. That was pretty common in those days.

My father was, I think, five [years old] or something when he went over there [to Hawaii], and talks about the voyage and how bad it was.

The first place they got to after leaving Portugal was either Montevideo or Argentina. Some of the family left at that point because the voyage ended up almost two months. And they said enough of this. So a lot of them jumped ship there. We lost track of them [those relatives].

And then the next step was Punta Arenas, Chile. And some [relatives] left in Chile. And then, they left Chile and headed toward Hawaii.

And my father went to Lahaina [Maui] first and they worked on the sugar cane plantation. And he talks about what it was like. The surprising thing is though, that they were like slaves. They were treated like slaves.

And he talks about how the plantations are owned by the whites and usually the strong bosses were the Portuguese. And they treated them even worse than the whites did. They were really rotten to them.

As soon as he got there [to Hawaii, my father worked]. The whole family worked. Pulling cane. He [my father] had a third-grade education, if that.

So he was out there with his two brothers who were older than him. The thing that amazes me is how everyone got along… because they were there with the Chinese, the Japanese, the Filipinos…

He always talks about the flu, that when they had the big epidemic. And he was saying that, I think she was Portuguese, would make chicken soup. And she would go from shack to shack, or whatever they lived in, and people would pool whatever they had to make this food.

So they were just hauling bodies out of there. People were just dying. That was when they had a world epidemic of the flu.

But all these different people from all over the world were all pooling together to survive. They were all healing each other.

And then he talks about how the Puerto Ricans wouldn't take any [?] from the Portuguese bosses. And if you were sick, they’d come and they’d rouse you out of bed. [They say] "You’re not sick - work!" And they’d drag you out. That’s like slaves.

Well they got kind of pushy with a couple of the Puerto Ricans. They were out there, on the sugar cane fields and killed the bosses, the Portuguese bosses. They just got a knife and slit their throats.

He talks about how, on the one hand, they were treated so terribly, but then, on the other hand, he talks about how as a kid, not going to school, running around -- because they fooled around a lot too.

And I remember he was talking about how when they left there to go to Honolulu, the owner of the plantation, whatever, gave my grandmother a shawl and was crying because they didn’t want to see her leave. Because my grandmother worked in their house, and did their washing and ironing.

There was no dock there, in Lahaina. So they’d have to take it all out on this little boat, and load it onto this big ship. And they were there and all scared going to Honolulu. And they lived there for a while. They came to the states after that.

[In Hawaii] you had to pay off [by working], work off your indentured servitude. But they worked that off and got enough money together and they came to the states.

I said, "Why did you leave paradise to come here?" They said you couldn’t get ahead there unless you were Asian. By that point all the big plantations were owned by whites, but the regular businesses were all owned by Asians. And they wouldn’t hire you. They would hire Asians, it was very prejudiced that way. You couldn’t get a job. You couldn’t get ahead there.

The Portuguese stayed [in Hawaii], but the Spanish as far as I know all left.

Ouestion: Is your father still living?

Perez: Oh yeah.

Question: And your mother?

Perez: She died in the sixties…

The family pretty well married Spanish, until they came here [to California]. They went to San Francisco first. They hated it; it was so cold. They were there for a very short time, like months.

They went to a picnic in Niles Canyon. Someone invited them. Some David they knew. These people all networked. Everybody, it was unbelievable, in network.

And then they met somebody there, and then they said, " Oh, we live in Union City." - which was Alvarado then. And they liked it out here because it was warmer. So then, they moved out here and then they stayed.

These were all networked. You didn’t do anything without networking… There was this little community of Spanish people. And they, all the old timers, who were there from the old country. The mother, the grandmother-type, you know from the old country. Not necessarily all from Hawaii… These kids would marry or settle down. They'd build a house for them. So there was this whole little thing here.

One part of the town was Spanish and Mexicans; the other part was Portuguese.

Now it’s the Indians and the Afghanis, they’ve done the same thing, in the same town.

There are still some [Spaniards] there, believe it or not… It the Alvarado district, [of Union City] on the bay side of the freeway, of [Interstate] 880.

[Back then] I would say 600 to 700 Spanish people lived there. It was a small town…

It was always a big treat to go there [to the Club Iberico of San Leandro], because you’d see all the Spanish people. There was very much pride involved.

My family stopped going, my grandmother got older. And then I remember her children, my mother and aunt and uncle weren’t interested at all. That was like a relic of the past.

If she’d [my grandmother] wanted to go, they’d kind of like would begrudgingly take her. They were not into it at all.

Well they weren’t going, and I was a teenager doing my own things. So all of a sudden it wasn’t there any more.

(More thoughts on Perez’s childhood experiences):

My father was from Andalusia, my mother was from the province of Caceres. As a little kid they'd always point, my mother, I can still remember to this day, she'd point at my finger tips and say that they were dark. She’d say, "Cause you have Moorish blood." Which is not a good thing.

My mother married an "andaluz" and we’re mixed with the Moors, so you are less than them…

And I was the only kid [among my cousins] that didn’t have blond hair as a child. All the other kids had blond hair or light hair. I had jet-black hair because I had all the Moorish blood.

At the Club Iberico [in San Leandro] at social gatherings, there was a little hierarchy that went on. The Spanish that were from the East Coast [of the U.S.A.], that came from Spain to like, New York, or Connecticut or something - and ended up in the Bay Area, they carried themselves, acted a little better, a little higher caste… better dressed, a little more educated, than the Hawaii branch of Spaniards.

And they were always like the upper crust, and we were always like below them. It was never said. I don’t recall anyone ever saying this…

There were even class differences as to where you lived. If you lived in San Leandro or Oakland, you were higher caste than if you lived in Hayward or Union City. The houses were better, more expensive [in the former cities mentioned]…

(Perez said that most of the Spaniards around his generation married Anglos. He only has one cousin that married a Spaniard).

Author’s note: Of the Spanish- Hawaiian descendants that I met, many married Anglos, Mexicans, Portuguese, Spaniards, etc.

In summary, Perez's father was born in 1906. He arrived in Hawaii in 1911 and he was 16 years old when came to California.

Interview of Rose Pearce, on done December 15, 2003 at her residence in Brentwood, California.

Question: When were you born?

Pearce: 1922 in Oakley, California.

Question: Do you speak Spanish?

Pearce:  Yes sir… As a child I spoke both languages [Italian and Spanish]. I didn’t speak English when I went to [started] school.

My mother’s family came from Ubeda, Spain, -which is Southern Spain. My father and his three brothers came from Italy. And then they came through… well, they came through New York and they went to Bradford Island because they had two uncles living there.

My mother’s family came on the Willesden [ship]. My mother and her family lived in Hawaii for five years, that was the contract that they had with England.

Well, of course, you know the paper [a flyer distributed] was in Spain, telling all about Hawaii, and they gave them a house to live in, and school was free and the house was free if they stayed five years, which my grandparents did stay five years [they would’ve been given land], but they never knew about it.

And after five years, the house and the lot around it would be yours. But he didn’t know, so he didn’t claim it. And I think that happened to a lot of them.

My mother’s family was on the big island of Hawaii and they were in the town called Pahala. My mother went to school there.

My grandfather and his family left Spain because they were starving. They were very poor and they had no future. And so he saw this paper [flyer] in town and somebody read it for him (he couldn’t read) and so he got the inspiration to come to Hawaii, because he wanted to better his family life. Because they had nothing to eat in Spain.

My grandfather fought in the Spanish-American War against the Americans… in the Philippine Islands. His name was Jose Sanchez.

My mother was born in Spain. Her name was Ana Maria Sanchez and she was five years old when she left Spain. She left with her parents, an older brother and two younger brothers. One more sister was born in Hawaii.

I went to Hawaii and I went to see where they lived, and I saw the house. It was fine. They had this house and they had the kitchen outside because that was the custom back in those days. It was a two-bedroom house. Yes, it was on stilts, it had to be on stilts.

They worked in the sugar cane [plantations], they cut the cane with the machetes. They worked in the fields, the kids and all. Of course, they had to go to school, that was the law.

They left [eventually] and went to San Francisco [in 1918] and they went to high school in San Francisco… My mother worked at Ghiradelli Chocolate factory.

They lived in San Francisco for a while, but my grandfather liked the country. Some of them came out this way and they’d write to each other and we came out this way.

[In San Francisco] they lived on Pacific Avenue. "La loma" they called it, the Koit Tower area.

My grandfather was very much involved with the Spanish community of the Antioch-Oakley area. Not my mother so much because my father was Italian and he had a lot of Italian friends…

My grandfather bought a house there [in Oakley] and he worked out in the fields. And then he bought, can you imagine, he bought 29 acres of land and he paid cash. Can you imagine that?

Yes, I knew a lot of Spanish families through my grandfather because he would visit a lot. Many of us joined the one [the Spanish club] in Rocklin.

I have a book that has photographs. This is the company that they worked for (showing the book). 
This is the Spanish camp, see… this is the book of Hawaii where they worked. That’s the name of the company [and the book] -Kau Sugar Company, Incorporated. That’s all about the place where they worked. And the history is there, everything is there.

I went to the company and got the book, when I went to Hawaii. And they gave it to me. [The book is dated December 29, 1972.]

[In California] my father was a farmer... My mother when she's living at home with her parents, that's how she met my father, she worked out in the fields.

In those days there used to be seven packing houses in this area. And she worked in the packing houses... I cut fruit and everything and worked out in the fields. Yeah, at home.

There were a lot of Spanish people in Oakley. We used to call it Spanish town at one time. They had streets and streets of Spanish people... because they worked in the fields, and of course the farms are out in this community. The ones in Antioch worked more in the mills.

The ones my age, some of them are still around. But a lot of them, you know, they married other nationalities and moved.

We had the theatre in Brentwood, we showed Spanish-speaking movies. We showed movies from Mexico and from Spain. Then Oakley had Spanish-speaking films and we use to go a lot there. But that closed up and then we showed them. In the theatre we showed Spanish-speaking movies Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Question: Who did that? Who initiated and organized that?

Pearce:  My husband and my brother in law.

Question: So all this in the 50s was, your family did that?

Pearce: Yes, my brother in law and my husband both.

I'll tell you a cute story from Hawaii. A Japanese man came to the house and he said, "arigato." That's Japanese for thank you, right?... He [my grandfather] use to kill hogs in the winter time. You know, all the Spanish people use to do that. So he [the Japanese man] came over to buy some meat. And he said, "arigato." But this sounded like "cara de gato" (catface) in Spanish.

(Pearce's grandmother understood that he had called her 'catface', and her grandfather went after the Japanese man.)

My grandfather, he did quite well for a man that couldn't speak English. He couldn't read and write his own language. He had 13 children. He raised eight. Some went to college.  Five children passed away when they were small. There's one buried in Hawaii, another one buried in San Francisco...

A lot of them (the Spaniards from Hawaii) had to come to Angel Island (in the San Francisco Bay). Because I went to Angel Island to see where they passed... I heard it from the Spanish people that some of them had to come through Angel Island. I think there was a flu epidemic here at that time or something. And they had to go there before they could come in. I heard it. I didn't read it, and it's a true story.

(In reference again to the family emigration to Hawaii):

My grandfather and his family and two sisters were going (to go) to Hawaii. Somewhere or another things got mixed up in Gibraltar and they (the sisters) ended up in Brazil. They got mixed up somehow and got on the wrong ship. They (the sisters) wrote back to Spain and my grandfather sent a letter to Spain, and that's how they found out what happened.

Note: Pearce said that England had placed the flyers around Spain to encourage people to sign up to work in Hawaii. Pearce's maiden name is Giannini.

Interview of Dave San Martin, done on December 16, 2003 in the home of this author (Jaime Cader).

Martin: I was born in 1967, in Antioch (California). My father was born in Antioch in 1923. He was the last one to be born in his family. He was the tenth one. He had a brother Adam, that was born, that died as a child in Hawaii. My uncle Joe, Joe San Martin, I believe was born in Hawaii, if not Antioch. Then I had an uncle Frank San Martin, -those are the three brothers all together.

Then there was four sisters. One died as a child, Rose San Martin. Then there was my aunt Dorothy who I believe was the one that was born in Spain, -as a little child came over on the ship to Hawaii...and then to San Francisco and migrated to Antioch.

Then there was my other aunt, aunt Asumption. And there was also my aunt Margaret...

Adam was buried in either Maui or Hawaii, but my aunt Rose was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Antioch. Also my grandfather Simon and Francis San Martin (the grandmother) were buried in Holy Cross Cemetery (the Catholic cemetery in Antioch).

My grandmother Francis passed away when my dad was two years old. Sad to say, from a poisoned pickle or bad pickle...It was very traumatizing to the family.

1962 [It's when my grandfather died]. I believed it was Palencia, Spain, but It could have been Valencia, Spain, - but I believed it was Palencia [where my grandparents were from].

Question: Why do you think your family might have left Spain?

Martin: Possibly for a better life in America, - a more prosperous life or a new start.   When I went to go visit Hawaii (1977) to go look for my uncle's grave, Adam, - I was at a church playing with my sister and looking around I noticed that there was a carving in the tree, and it happened to be my aunt Dorothy's carving of her name in the tree and the date on the tree, when she was there...

(In reference to why his grandparents came to Antoich)

I believe it was possible that Father Perdigon (a Spanish priest in Antioch) came over in the boat, the same time, my grandparents did, he helped to found Holy Rosary Church.

He [my grandfather] purchased some land on 4th Street and K [Street], or 5th and K. And they had a home with a cellar. And then they built a small apartment and another home. They made wine in the cellar. My grandfather was a contractor with the farms in the surrounding areas, and his children where part of his crew.

That was part of the survival as a fruit picker, was they got to have some of the food [i.e. grapes for wine making] themselves. Also he used some of the wine as a barter system. He traded wine for certain possible other things, other foods or what have you - "You help me do this and I'll give you some wine"...

Yes, the whole family spoke Spanish. In 1988 he [ my father ] passed away...He owned a bar in Antioch, on 4th and K Street, called Hank's Forum Club. He was in the bar business from age 18 till he sold it at age 65...He started out as a bouncer in the bar that he did own eventually...

In fact there was a Spanish lodge in Antioch. My father told me about it. [It was] from the age when my father was a young man...I believe so [that there was a building]. They did have "fiestas" in Antioch in the streets. They'd kill a pig.  They would dance to Spanish music and drink wine [in] old downtown Antioch.

My father had an affiliation with the police department since he was in his teens. and that was one of the reasons why he was well known in Antioch. So that's one of the reasons why he was able to be a bouncer when he was 18.

And he rode with the police at a very young age until he was diagnosed with cancer. His bar was a cop bar.  One of the first things they did when an Antioch police officer became a cop, was to bring him to my dad's bar and introduce him to my dad.

She [my mother] came from Alabama. [When] she was sixteen years old she ended up in California. They (her family) are very deep-rooted in Alabama.

I loved him (my father) very dearly, but he had to work long hours, six days a week. That made it rough on the family. My father went to Spain when I was a young child. I believe he saw some relatives. But he was very home sick for me and his family, and he came back home early. He brought me back a few things.

Note: San Martin's Aunt Margaret, who married into the Spanish Del Pozo family, has kept in touch with relatives in Spain. They have come for visits.

TO BE CONTINUED

Jaime Cader, a second generation Salvadoran-American resides in Antioch, California and is presently the only Hispanic commissioner with the Contra Costa Human Relations Commission. He is also a board member of Celebrating Culture and Community, a non-profit multicultural arts organization.

Interview of Elvera Rios, done by telephone on December 17, 2003. Rios is the widower of Martin Rios, whose parents emigrated from Spain to Hawaii. The following is not the word for word transcript of the interview, but rather the information that was jotted down while taking notes.

Martin Rios' parents were Martin Rios and Angelina Marquez. They were originally from La Zarsa, Granadilla, Spain and they worked the sugar cane plantations for several years in Hawaii.

Martin Rios Sr. limped because he had an accident in Hawaii. He was walking a team of horses when he suddenly fell into a ditch. He was eventually found some time later. His nickname was "Martin el cojo." Years before arriving to Hawaii, Rios Sr. had fought for Spain in the Spanish-American War. He had a brother that had emigrated to Argentina.

Martin Rios Jr. was born in Oakley, California in 1925. He passed away on December 25, 2001 in neighboring Antioch, California. (His obituary will be presented later on in this article.) His sister Angelina Rios was born in Chico, California around 1924 and his brother Joseph Rios was also born in Oakley around 1927.

Elvera Rios's maiden name is Furtado. She was born in Sacramento, California in 1927. Her father was born in Brazil to Azorian parents. Her mother, who was of Portuguese descent, was born in Niles, California, which is presently the city of Fremont.

In 1979 and in 1982, Martin Rios Jr. and his wife Elvera traveled to Spain and visited family members.

Elvera's older sister Evelyn also married a Spaniard whose family had emigrated to Hawaii. Evelyn's birthplace is San Francisco, California. Her late husband, Manuel Perez, was born in Brentwood, California. His sister Mary was born in Hawaii. Perez passed away five years ago in Antioch, California.

Elvera and her sister Evelyn each had three children. Martin and Elvera Rios were active in the Circulo Espanol de Stockton. It was because of their encouragement that this author and his mother became members of that club.

A Book emigrated: In 1926 a book entitled History of Contra Costa County (California) with Biographical Sketches was published by the Historic Record Company of Los Angeles, California.

On page 939 there is an entry detailing historical and family information concerning two brothers, Joseph and Peter Lopez. Of some of the family members mentioned, some include the family of Antonio Sanchez, the late husband of Antonia Sanchez whose interview is included previously in this article.

Four Obituaries:
Isabel Sanchez Lopez
Martin Rios, Jr.
Antonia Sanchez Lopez
Antonio Pretel 

[Sisters, Isabel Sanchez Lopez and Antonia Sanchez Lopez are sister in-laws of Antonia Sanchez.]

Printed in the Ledger Dispatch (of Antioch, California) on June 1, 2000:
Isabel Sanchez Lopez, April 20, 1900-May 24, 2000
Age 100. Died at Kaiser Hospital, Walnut Creek, CA due to a short illness. She resided in Concord, CA at the time of her death and lived in Contra Costa County for 85 years. Native of Estepona, Spain.

Isabel was a loving mother, grandparent and packer at Western Cannery in Antioch, Ca.  She attended Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Brentwood, CA.  Preceded in death by her husband Pedro Lopez in 1974 and her daughter Marina Lopez in 1998.

She is survived by: Daughters; Mary L. Martinez of Concord, CA; Isabel Arnold of Richland, Washington; Son, Michael Lopez of Brentwood, CA; Sister, Antonia Lopez of Pittsburg, CA; Brother, Francisco Sanchez Mena of Estepona, Spain and 10 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren, 6 great-great grandchildren.

Services were held on Wednesday, May 31 at the Brentwood Funeral Home. Burial was at Holy Cross Cemetary, Antioch, Ca.

Memorial gifts be given to your favorite charity. See http://www.legacy.com
(Note: Isabel Sanchez Lopez was the sister of Antonia Sanchez's late husband, Antonio Sanchez. Sanchez Lopez emigrated to Hawaii in 1911. Her sister Antonia Lopez, was the mother of Pete Lopez, a former mayor of Antioch, California. Pete Lopez was elected to the Antioch City Council on April 12, 1966. He was elected mayor by the Council on April 10, 1967. He completed his term as mayor in April of 1968 and was an outgoing Council member on April 21, 1970.)

Printed in The Sunday Times (Contra Costa Times), December 30, 2001.
Martin Rios Jr.  Feb. 8, 1925 - Dec 25, 2001

Martin Rios, Jr. a long time resident of Antioch died on December 25th, at the age of 76. Martin served in the Army 10th Mountain Division during World War II. He was a long time member of the Y.M.I # 26 & El Circulo Espanol of Stockton. He retired from Dupont after 20 years and previously worked for Fibreboard. Martin is survived by his loving wife of 54 years, Elvera and three children and their spouses, Martin & Maria Rios, Bernadette & Kraig Hansen and Edward & Denise Rios all of Antioch. He is survived by seven grandchildren which he enjoyed babysitting, Frank, Jacob, Josh, Sarah, Christine, Curtis & Ryan. Martin is also survived by a brother Joseph of Katy, Tx & sister Angelina Miolono of Albuquerque, NM. He is preceded in death by brothers Isaac, John, Paul & Donald, sisters Flora, Victoria, Bernice &

Mary & grandson Eddie.

Friends and relatives are invited to attend a visitation at Higgins Chapel Wednesday, January 2, 2002 from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. with the Vigil Service at 7:00 p.m. Funeral mass will be held Thursday, January 3, 2002 at 10:00 a.m. at St. Ignatius Church, Contra Loma Blvd. He will be laid to rest at Holy Cross Cemetary, Antioch.Memorial donations may be made to St. Ignatius Church Building Fund.

Printed in the Contra Costa Times on April 22, 2003.
Antonia Sanchez Lopez
January 3, 1903 -April, 19, 2003

She was born, as was her deceased husband of 65 years (1986) Mike Lopez Sr., in Estepona, Spain. She lived in the cities of Pittsburg, Winters, and of late, Antioch, CA. She was well known in the "Cannery Workers circle" in Pittsburg and Antioch.

She is survived by her daughter, Isabel Lopez Wallace of Antioch; sons, Pete Lopez of Antioch and Anthony M. Lopez of Las Vegas; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. She was also preceded in death by sons, Mike Lopez, Jr., Manuel S. Lopez; grandson, Mark A. Lopez.

She was proud to be a 3-star mother, having three sons who served during World War II.  Visitation will be held Wednesday, April 23, 2003, 3-8 p.m. Rosary at 7:30 p.m. at the Higgins Chapel. Graveside Services will be held Thursday, April 24th at 10:00 a.m. at Holy Cross Cemetery. Family requests donations be made to Holy Rosary Church.  (Note: Sanchez Lopez emigrated to Hawaii with her parents when was about eight years old.)

Printed in the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday, October 31, 2003.

Antonio Pretel   - In San Francisco, October 28, 2003 at the age of 100. Father of Mary & Dick; father-in-law of John & Susan; grandfather of Deborah, Michelle and the late Brian; great-grandfather of Crystal, Elisabeth, and Brian; great-great grandfather to Juliet.

Antonio was a native of Spain and raised in Hawaii. He came to San Francisco in 1921 and became a United States citizen in 1938. He was a member of the Moose Lodge in Colma. Antonio was a proud candy maker for over 50 years. He will be remembered as a very special and caring father, grandfather, and friend.

Family and friends are invited to visit Thursday, Oct. 30 2003 after 1 p.m. and attend the Vigil Service at 7:30 p.m. at HOGAN, SULLIVAN & BIANCO, 1226 - 9th Ave. (Irving & Lincoln). Funeral Mass Friday, Oct. 31, 2003 at 9:30 a.m. at Holy Name of Jesus Church (39th Ave. & Lawton). Internment Holy Cross Cemetary, Colma. Flowers welcome.   (415) 664-2413

(Note, the following information was told to me by Pilar Lopez, whom I referred to at the beginning of this article: Pretel's real last name was Pretez, however upon arriving in the United States, he was most likely misunderstood and his last name was written down as Pretel. He was an Andalusian and had lived on "la loma" in San Francisco, California.

Manuel Carillo: The following was obtained from speaking to Inez Dominguez, the president of the Sociedad Isabel la Catolica, her father Manuel Carillo, and from a program for the 68th anniversary celebration of the previously mentioned "Sociedad" and the same program to celebrate the 71st anniversary of the Sociedad Cervantes Espanola on February 27, 1999:

Manuel Carillo was born in Hawaii to Andalusian parents. His late wife Dolores (Dottie) Carillo was also born in Hawaii to Andalusian parents. Dolores became the first woman president of the Sociedad Cervantes Espanola in 1986. Both of these Spanish associations are located in the Sunnyvale, Calif. 

Dolores Jimenez: From the program celebrating the 25th anniversary of El Circulo Espanol de Stockton on October 19, 2003:  Dolores Jimenez was the first president from 1978 to 1979. She was elected president for later years also. Currently, her daughter Eleanor Vetter is the president. 

(Note: Dolores Jimenez was born in Maui, Hawaii to parents from Extremadura, Spain. Her story was reprinted in the book Memories of Spain by Anne Santucci.)

It is hoped that with this article the story of Spanish emigration to Hawaii will become better known. Also, I hope that the story about Spaniards in recent California history will be known. I have not seen any articles about this community in the Antioch area newspapers.

I want to thank the staff of Somos Primos for allowing me to present these stories and information.  Sincerely, Jaime Cader, jmcader@yahoo.com

NORTHWESTERN UNITED STATES

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

Hispanics in the Northwest 

Many want to be bilingual and bicultural, but they perceive than a push for acculturation and the identity struggles of immigrant children embedded in American society have threatened their connection to their Spanish-speaking homelands. 

"We want to conserve our culture.. . We don't want our children to forget their roots,"  said Edwin Enrique Ergon.  Orlando Cardoza and other Spanish-speaking parents realize the best way to hold on to their language is to insist it be spoken in the home.  "All my children know how to read and write good Spanish."  That ability now means more job opportunity as more companies target Hispanics.  

"They can learn the American culture without having to forget their Mexican culture," said Gloria Garcia who left Puebla, Mexico for the United States in 1986.  "It's very important, but it's the responsibility of the parents."

Abstract of article by Geralda Miller, Reno-Gazette Journal, 9-22-03 

LDS Business College Philanthropic Giving Site

Family History Unifies Diverse Ward

On the subject of divorce, 40 percent of Latino respondents said it's unacceptable while only 24 percent of white said so.  Gay Sexual relationships were thought to be unacceptable by 72 percent of the Hispanics in the survey, compared with only 59 percent of whites.  

Then comes a response that, at first, doesn't seem to fit with the other traditionalist attitudes.  Having a child out of wedlock was acceptable to 57 percent of Hispanics and 55 percent of whites.  When asked to explain, Centro de la Familia de Utah director Graciela Italiano-Thomas replied, "The answer is that children are sacred. . . People may feel that the young woman and man may have made a mistake.  But that's not the unborn child's fault."

Sent by Carlos Ray Gonzales clearwaterr@earthlink.net

Prior to the 1950s, and as early as the 1850s, immigrants from Mexico worked as mule drivers, sheepherders, vaqueros, or cowboys, and as migrant laborers in rural Oregon. By the 1900s, and particularly during the labor-strapped war years from 1941-1946, Mexican laborers filled positions as field hands under the bracero program, working the hop, bean, and sugar beet fields of rural Oregon. When the bracero program was terminated in 1964, members of Oregon's Mexican community had already teamed up with social organizations to demand improvement of the substandard living and working conditions that were part and parcel of the bracero program and migrant work in general. The Valley Migrant League, founded in 1965,and the Oregon State Chicano Concilio,founded in 1974,sought to improve educational and bi-lingual programs for Mexican children and adults alike, and recommended that more local, state, and federal government jobs be opened to Chicanos. By the 1980s, the affect of these earlier movements showed some success and more persons of Latin American descent were moving from rural regions to the Portland metro area. By 2002, the Chicano population in Portland numbered more than 100,000. Spanish-language newspapers, radio stations, and annual celebrations attest to the growing and continued development of the Chicano population in Portland and a new generation of professionals, entrepreneurs, and city officials marks clearly the continued change in the role that Chicanos play in the shaping of Portland and Oregon.

SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

The congregation hopes to make this festival an annual event in Southern Colorado.
"We have a wealth of individuals to draw from" said Paul M. Aviles-Silva, president of the congregation.. "Many Hispanics living in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado have traced their ancestry back to the 17th century immigrants who came through Mexico to our continent."

The activities will include Cantor Robert Esformes performing Ladino music throughout the activities. A mini Sephardic conference from 1-5 pm on Saturday will focus on Jewish genealogy. The conference will be held at the Southeastern Colorado Heritage Center, 201 West B Street.

Robert is descended on his maternal side from the Sephardic Jews of Istanbul and Salonika.  He grew up hearing his mother and grandmother conversing in Ladino, the language of the love songs and ballads. Robert's worship services are a mosaic of chant, sacred poetry, kavvanot, meditation and Torah, grounded in the palpable presence of

peace and loving kindness. He also mixes in Mizrachi modes, improvisations on prayer texts, and modern cantorial selections.  His style is warm and unique. He accompanies himself on guitar.

A testimonials from Rabbi M. Mitchell Serels Director, Semana Sepharad Festival of Sephardic Culture: Robert Esformes brings to his performance the genuine renditions of the traditional ladino music of his ancestors.  The audience is treated to a remembrance of Spain as it was carried to the far reaches of the Ottoman Empire.  The music carries a contemporary twist which makes the tunes all the more meaningful to audiences today.  In this syncretic approach, Esformes has maintained the tradition of Sephardim of combining tradition with modernity.

There is a charge for the Saturday evening concert, $15 adults, $7.50 youth and children, free under 4 years old.. All other activities are by donation. Tickets for the concert will be available at the door. For more information, please contact:

Paul M. Aviles-Silva pavisilva@earthlink.net
President of the B'Nai Or Congregation
A Jewish Renewal Community will hold its
354 W. Winterhaven Drive
Pueblo West, CO 81007-2644
(719) 547-1249-H
(719) 547-1254-Home Fax
(719) 671-7209-Personal Cell

Sent by Carlos ( Ray ) Gonzalez.  clearwater@earthlink.net     

BLACK

     Michael A. Gomez addressed the issue of Muslims in America in an article in the Journal of Southern History, LX (November, 1994) 4, 671- 710. Gomez analyzes the regions of the African coast from where Muslims could have been exported and concludes that Muslim slaves could have accounted for "thousands, if not tens of thousands," but does not offer a more precise estimate. It is likely that historians have underestimated the numbers of Muslims actually brought to North America. There is evidence of Muslims in North America in colonial records, but their numbers are limited and they probably came from the Senegambia.
     A number of Muslims are known to have lived in New Netherlands and New York in the seventeenth century, among them Anthony Jansen van Salee, whose Koran still exists. It is unclear what percentage of them arrived as slaves, but they appeared to have congregated in the vicinity of Gravesend in present day Brooklyn, which was known to have liberal religious attitudes.
     Despite the known existence of Muslims in early New York there are no known studies of them or their community. It is possible that the Muslim religion had some influence in laws prohibiting Africans from gathering together in Kings County, Long Island, after 1684. It appears that most Muslims eventually converted to Reformed Christianity in the New York City, region, though the community may have merely gone underground.
     Anthony and Abraham van Salee were among the earliest arrivals to 17th century New Amsterdam. In a number of documents dating back to this period, they are both described as "mulatto". From what scholars have been able to piece together about their background, they appear to have been the sons of a Dutch seafarer by the name of Jan Jansen who had "turned Turk" and become an admiral in the Moroccan navy.  With the Port of Salee as the base from which it harried European shipping, references to the fleet he commanded are salted away in the old English sea shanties that are still sung about the Salee Rovers. The mother of his two sons was probably a concubine he had while trading in this part of the world before his conversion to Islam.
     As a result of the anti-social behavior of his white wife, Anthony van Salee was induced to leave the city precincts of lower Manhattan and move across the river, thus becoming the first settler of Brooklyn. Since Coney Island abutted his property, it was, until sometime in the last century, also referred to as "Turk's Island"; the word, "Turk", being a designation of his which the records used interchangeably with, "mulatto". According to the documentation that people like Professor Leo Hershkowitz of Queens University have sifted through, it would seem that Anthony van Salee never converted to Christianity. His Koran, in fact, was in a descendant's possession until about fifty years ago when, ignorant of its relevance to his family's history, he offered it for sale at auction.
     The Van Salee history also includes a more contemporary black collateral branch in the U.S. Anthony's brother Abraham fathered an illegitimate son with an unknown black woman. The son became the progenitor of this side of the family. Although having to face constraints that their "white" cousins could at best only imagine, two of these van Salees nevertheless left their mark in the annals of African American history.
     Dr. John van Salee De Grasse, born in 1825, was the first of his race to be formally educated as a doctor. A member of the Medical Society of Massachusetts, he also served as surgeon to the celebrated 54th Regiment during the Civil War. His sister, Serena, married George Downing who was not only an enormously successful black restaurateur both in New York City and in Newport, RI, but a man who used his wealth and connections with the East Coast's most powerful white families to effect social change for his people. Because of his organization and his own contribution to the purchase of Truro Park in Newport, one of the streets bordering it still bears his name. Interestingly enough, this genealogy was done as part of an ongoing study of the Ramopo in Tappan, NY, one of those red, white and black groups sociologists and ethnographers are now working on and which in academies are referred to as "tri racial isolates". It is because of what advantages their Indian heritage (no matter how discernibly negroid they were) legally and officially provided them that the opportunity for "passing" in these groups was not only a more ambiguous political or moral decision but, comparatively, a more easily documentable one as well.

Genealogical note:  Family lines of American historical importance that can trace lines of descent from this ancestry
John Hammond of Columbia Records
Vanderbilts
Jackie Kennedy Onassis
Whitneys
Humphry Bogart

A more complete article on Anthony and Abraham van Salee can be viewed on the internet as part of a PBS Documentary - The Blurred Racial Lines of Famous Families

Additional sources of information:
Hoff, Henry B. "Frans Abramse Van Salee and His Descendants: A Colonial Black Family in New York and New Jersey," The New York Genealogical and
Biographical Record. Vol. 121, No.2 (April-October 1990): 65-71, 157-161,   205-211.
 
New York Genealogical & Biographical Record, vol. 103, p. 16. The Washington-McClain Ancestry, by Charles A. Hoppin, vol. 3

Sidney Bedoni, Navajo Code Talker
Artist, Dezie Lerner

At nearly 80 years of age, Sidney Bedoni is one of a dwindling few still left of a unique group of U.S. Marines that played a crucial role in World War II - the Navajo code Talkers.

He along with other young men from the Navajo reservations in Arizona, helped to outwit one of the most sophisticated war machines in the world and may have communicated in the only truly unbreakable code in the history of warfare.

He explained that a code was devised using the Navajo language.  The idea originated with a civilian named Philip Johnston, a son of 

Two years ago the Navajos were awarded Congressional Medals of Honor by President George W. Bush.  Members in the original group of 400 code talkers were awarded the gold Medal of Honor.  Sidney Bedoni (a member of the LDS Church) was in the group that followed.  They received the Silver Medal of Honor.

 Photo by Jeffry Scott

Tribal officials want the U.S. government to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to make all enrolled tribal members U.S. citizens. Under the amended act, the tribal membership card would serve as proof of citizenship or a birth certificate. 

American Indians who live along the U.S.-Canadian border were given dual citizenship through treaties hundreds of years ago and have not faced separation from their people. They travel freely between both countries. This was not done for the Tohono O'odham who border Mexico.  

For decades, with the blessing of the U.S. government, Tohono O'odham members in both countries were allowed to cross the border freely to work, participate in religious ceremonies, keep medical appointments in Sells and visit relatives.  In 1999, a pilot program between Mexico and U.S. immigration officials led to Mexican passports and U.S. border-crossing cards for 100 enrolled tribal members in Mexico. 

However, the tribe has 24,000 enrolled members and 8,400 on both sides of the border - most of them with no birth certificates to prove citizenship. Immigration officials on both sides of the border worked together to make this happen -waiving certain documents, and using tribal rolls to meet requirements. 

But this did not solve the problems in three situations: O'odham living in the United States who are Mexican-born; O'odham born in the United States who cannot prove it; and O'odham children who qualify for dual citizenship but don't have it. 

Affected tribal members: 
The four groups of Tohono O'odham affected by the U.S.-Mexico border and laws that define nationality are: 
* About 7,000 members who were born in the United States, but who do not have documents to obtain birth certificates. 
Some of these people cannot get Social Security numbers, retirement benefits, veterans' benefits, widows' benefits, a driver's license or a passport. 
* About 1,400 members who were born in Mexico and still live there. 
* Members born in Mexico who now live illegally in the United States. Several hundred of this group are included in the tally of 7,000 affected members. 
* Members born in Mexico of parents who are U.S. citizens, but whose parents cannot prove it. These members live illegally in the United States but qualify for dual citizenship. This number also is included in the 7,000 affected members. 

[[ Editor's note: If you missed this, I strongly suggest that you look for the re-run.  It is excellent.  The visual effects, the social and character values being shared, the dramatization, all are top quality. Following is the TV magazine's highlights.]]

Legends come to life as men of two generations travel together. The 16-year-old member of the Dog Soldiers street gang owes his crew money and is anxious to get away, so he agrees to escort his grandfather from the Pine Ridge Reservation to an All-Nations ceremony in New Mexico.  Grandpa tell his stories along the way, and it's his grandson's duty to learn them and pass the stories along to future generations. 

SEPHARDIC

Resources Inquisition and other early Hispanic Archives

 Sephardic conference to be held by B'Nai Or Congregation in Pueblo, CO  
For more information, click

TEXAS 

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

Luciano Guajardo:
1924-1994 

Laredo Public Library
1120 E. Calton Rd.
Laredo, TX 78041
956-795-2400
refdsk2@laredolibrary.org

Aurelio Ayala and Sara Lopez Ayala

Great-grandmother, Josefa Tejada, 

His mother was named Josefa Tejada and was from Leon, Guanajuato.    She was from a wealthy family and taught music at the University of Mexico City, with an emphasis on harp.   She later became despondent when her husband, Aurelio, left for another woman with all their wealth. 
     
This husband, Aurelio Ayala, was a lawyer in Mexico City who was a large property owner.   

#680.  18 February 1764
Juan Sebastian Alvarez, native of the Valle de Santa Isabel del Armadillo ad resident of Monclova, widower of Maria de lost Reyes, and legitimate son of Diego Alvarez, deceased, and Matiana de la Cruz Tristana, married Maria Leonar de Ayala, native of the Rancho del Topo, jurisdiction of " Reino" [Monterrey?], and resident of Monclova, legitimate daughter of Pedro de Ayala, deceased, and Maria Guadalupe de la Garza.  Witnesses were Pablo Munguia, Juan Antonio Olivares, and Juan Felipe, who was also sponsor with Maria de la Cruz.

# 1036.  22 September 1772
Don Joaquin Flores, Cabo de Escuadra of the garrison in Monclova widower of Maria Antonia Maldonado, married doña Apolinaria de Ayala, native of the city of Monterrey, legitimate daughter of don Carlos de Ayala and doña Gregoria de Villarreal.  Witnesses were Pedro de Abrego, Juan Antonio de Olivares, and don Miguel de Estrada, who was also sponsor with doña Candelaria Maldonado.

For more information on purchasing the book, contact the author at: MMG8938@aol.com

If you are a descendent of any of these cattlemen, Somos Primos would like to publish your pedigree.  Descendants of these ranchers can apply for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution.  California soldados are being recognized for their protection of the California coast line against the British.  Texas ranchers can be recognized for their support by supplying cattle.  

The cattlemen exporters are listed by the number of cattle that were exported.

1875 Census of the Municipalidad de Nava
Located at present day Nava, Coahuila
By Donald May.

Paper cover, 8.5X11 inches, Tape binding, 41 pages including index
1217 names:  name, age, marital status, and profession of each enumerated person

This book is $11.00 plus $1.35 postage
Los Bexarenos Genealogical Society, P.O. Box 1935, San Antonio, TX 78297
Sent by elindio2@hotmail.com

EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

Initially established and manned by peninsular Spanish regulars in 1765 as an infantry battalion to occupy Luisiana, acquired from France three years earlier, what would ultimately become the veteran and professional  Regimiento de Infantería de Luisiana formed the core of Spain's military establishment in Louisiana and, later, in the Spanish Floridas until it faded into oblivion during the terminal period of Spain's colonial tenure in North America.

Reorganized after its arrival in North America in 1769, the battalion's detachments performed garrison duties at outposts in Spanish Louisiana as far north as Illinois.  In 1779, when Spain joined France in an alliance against England during the American War for Colonial Independence, the unit was enlarged to regimental strength through the addition of a second battalion and participated with distinction in the 1779-1781 conquest of then-British West Florida under the leadership of Louisiana Governor Bernardo de Gálvez.  Spain's official repossession of Florida by the terms of the 1783 Treaty of Paris resulted in a third battalion being added to the regiment for service in the Floridas in 1786.  This seemingly impressive force was, however, a "paper tiger." It never achieved its newly authorized strength in manpower, nor did it enjoy adequate supplies of material provisions to properly maintain itself. 

EAST COAST

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

MEXICO

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

Salvatierra, Guanajuato, Mexico 1938

Una página con la firma del Virrey don García Sarmiento de Sotomayor, 
Conde de Salvatierra ( el se firmaba Salbatierra). 
Nota: La firma del virrey es la que esta abajo de donde dice " 
"Hecho en México a ocho de Henero de mil seiscientos y quarenta y seis años"
Mide el original, 12.6 pulgadas de largo por 8 de ancho. 
El original se encuentra en el Archivo General de la Nación, en el Ramo de Tierras, Volumen 185, del expediente, sobre la "Fundación de Salvatierra", es de los años 1644-46.

Sent by Armando M. Escobar Olmedo armandoescol@hotmail.com
An example of the clarity of documents available in the archives of Mexico.
The computer copy of the original is twice the size.

Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia

El Jardin Principal de la Ciudad de Salvatierra y al fondo la
la Parroquia de la Ciudad de Salvatierra, Guanajuato
muestra al centro el escudo de armas de la ciudad,

Los Fundadores y Pobladores 
de la Ciudad de Salvatierra, Guanajuato, año de 1644.

Armando M Escobar Olmedo, Presidente, 
de la Academia Michoacana de Historia
de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística  Capítulo Morelia
armandomescobar@yahoo.com.mx

Después de varios intentos por fundar una ciudad en la antigua Congregación de San Andrés de los Chochones, en la Jurisdicción civil de la Villa de Celaya y la eclesiástica del Obispado de Michoacán, a orillas del Río Grande, de Toluca o Madonté en el año de 1643, varios vecinos de los Valles de Huantzindeo y Tarimoro dieron nuevamente su poder al escribano Agustín de Carranza Salcedo. para que aprovechando la donación de unas tierras propiedad de Gabriel López de Peralta se terminaran las gestiones correspondientes ante el virrey García Sarmiento de Sotomayor, Conde de Salvatierra y se materializara el viejo anhelo de los lugareños de fundar, no una villa, sino una ciudad de españoles en una región muy rica en la producción agrícola y ganadera y que había sido asiento de antiguas culturas en un amplio y feraz Valle señoreado por la imponente mole natural del Cerro del Culiacán, cuya figura piramidal debió impresionar a los naturales, de tal manera, que le pusieron el emblemático y sagrado nombre de la partida de la peregrinación de las siete tribus nahuas. Ya en la anterior década de los años treintas, se intentó fundar en dicho lugar, una Villa, con un nombre no menos significativa para los hispanos que el de Villa de Madrid. El proyecto fracasó por la oposición de la Orden de San Agustín que al ser propietarios de cercanas tierras se verían afectados en sus intereses. La cercana Villa de Celaya tampoco estuvo conforme con esa pretensión, máxime que la naciente población sería Ciudad, rango mayor al que ellos tenían y vieron con alarma y menosprecio que cerca de su Villa naciera sin más, una población a la que se verían sujetos por tener mayor categoría.

Años mas tarde con la llegada del nuevo gobernante se hizo un nuevo intento y con las mismas oposiciones. Sin embargo, ahora los deseos del virrey García Sarmiento de ver perpetuado su nombre y gestión pudieron más que aquellos y dio permiso para que se creara, en la ya citada Congregación, una ciudad con el nombre del lugar donde había nacido don García (Salvatierra, a orillas del Río Miño en Galicia) y del cual llevaba el título de Conde.

La región que para entonces estaba ya muy poblada, quedaba en medio de un triángulo en cuyos vértices se encontraban: los pueblos de Acámbaro, Yuririapúndaro y la ya citada Villa de Zalaya o Celaya.

Entre las personas que dieron su poder al promotor de la fundación, el escribano don Agustín de Carranza Salcedo para materializar sus gestiones y obtener el título de fundadores, distinción que llevaba unida a la posesión de mercedes de solares en la ciudad y tierras en su fundo, así como varios privilegios fueron las siguientes:

Nuestra Señora de La Luz 
o las Luces

La puerta de la parroquia, La iglesia de finales del siglo XVIII y contruida en diferentes épocas, tiene como advocación a Nuestra Señora de La Luz o las Luces, 

Armando M Escobar Olmedo, Presidente, 
de la Academia Michoacana de Historia
de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística  Capítulo Morelia
armandomescobar@yahoo.com.mx

Libro de Bautismos
Valladolid de Michoacán, 1631

Armando M Escobar Olmedo
Morelia, Michoacán, México

Los registros parroquiales tanto de bautismos como de matrimonios y defunciones ofrecen para el investigador un material muy rico en información sobre la microhistoria de las familias en una determinada región. Lamentablemente la consulta de los libros que la contienen no es siempre fácil y accesible por diversos motivos a los interesados en su consulta, es por ello que se ha pensado en facilitar algunos extractos de los registros de bautismos, que se encuentran en el libro segundo de ellos en el Archivo Histórico de la Sacristía del Sagrario Metropolitano de Morelia, con el único objeto de que se conozca una pequeña parte de la enorme riqueza de un importante material poco estudiado.

La información que a continuación se da a conocer se encuentra en el Libro 2 de Bautismos de la ciudad de Valladolid. Si bien en la carátula dice "Libro 2 del mes de julio del año de 1636" en realidad los registros comienza en el año de 1631 y varias hojas más delante se encuentran algunos de 1623.

Las primeras hojas se encuentran muy deterioradas y solo son legibles los nombres de los bautizados o la parte final del registro, (10 de ellos). Los al menos 45 bautismos restantes, sí se encuentran completos en las partes esenciales de la información.

A continuación damos a conocer los registros del citado año de 1631, esperando pueda ser de utilidad a los investigadores o interesados en el tema y a quienes les sea difícil la consulta de este importante material.

He incluido los registros de indios, mulatos y negros que son frecuentemente omitidos por los genealogistas o buscadores de antepasados únicamente hispanos.

Año de 1631

La ciudad de Valladolid de Michoacán, denominada así por el Virrey don Martín Enríquez de Almanza hacia 1575, era para los inicios de la tercera década del siglo XVII de muy corta extensión, unas siete largas calles cuyo eje principal era la Calle Real, de oriente a poniente y de las calles transversales la de la Plaza de la Iglesia al Convento del Carmen.

Gobernaba la Diócesis de Michoacán el Obispo fray Francisco de Rivera, de la Orden de la Merced quien había puesto mucho empeño en consolidar la casi arruinada y vieja iglesia Catedral "de Prestado" que se encontraba a un lado de la actual Catedral. Entre las iglesias y conventos sobresalientes tenemos al de: San Francisco, San Agustín, El Carmen, Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes (en construcción) y el de las monjas de Santa Catarina de Sena (dominicas).

La población de la pequeña ciudad fluctuaría entre unos tres mil o tres mil quinientos habitantes, de los que un 30% serían españoles. Rodeaban a la ciudad más de 13 populosos barrios. Dos ríos: el Grande y el de Guayangareo bordeaban a una Valladolid con fuertes problemas de crecimiento. Con todo era la flamante capital religiosa del vasto Obispado de Michoacán, no así la de la Provincia que de antaño le correspondía a la Ciudad de Pátzcuaro. El Alcalde Mayor lo era don Francisco de Solís Barraza, cuya vivienda se encontraba en las Casas Reales frente a la Plaza Principal.

Las noticias contenidas en los registros son en su gran mayoría de indios, mulatos y negros, a los que se les agrega su condición y barrio al que pertenecen, pocos son este caso los bautismos de españoles.

Creo que es de interés conocer los apellidos de los indios naturales, muy tarascos por cierto y a pesar de ser muy repetitivos nos da una idea mas precisa de este destacado núcleo de trabajadoras y trabajadores vallisoletanos, muy poco estudiados como ya hemos anotado antes.

Los primeros registros que se tienen en el libro empiezan hasta mediados del año ya que el primero que encontramos es del 2 de julio y se trata de una niña de nombre Antonia, no se encuentra, ni el nombre del padre ni la condición de ambos, el de la madre dice solamente María Martínez y no trae el de la madrina que al parecer fue mulata. En el segundo registro únicamente se aprecia el nombre del infante: Antón; el tercero corresponde a una niña de nombre Catalina, el bautizo parece haber sido el 13 de julio; el cuarto es del niño Juan.

Los registros siguientes solo contienen trozos de la información como el de Joan hijo de Juan de….y Luisa de Torres. Es muy difícil apreciar los cuatro siguientes. La gran mayoría de los bautismos fueron realizados por el padre Francisco Pacho, cura beneficiado de la Santa Iglesia Catedral. La hoja siguiente ya más legible, corresponde a los registros que ha continuación se detallan:

El 27 de julio fue bautizado Pedro, hijo de Pedro Tzintzuni y de Catalina María, indios, fueron sus padrinos Francisco Tzitzuqui e Isabel (?) Tzipaqua. Lo bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 27 de julio fue bautizada, Isabel, (solo se encuentra parte del apellido de la madre:) Ábrego, mestiza, soltera, fueron sus padrinos Miguel Jerónimo Hidalgo y María de Monjaraz. Bautizó el padre Pacho.

El 27 de julio fue bautizada Esperanza. (No aparece el nombre del padre y el de la madre es) Esperanza, morena, esclava de don…. (García de) Cisneros, fueron sus padrinos… e Isabel de Morón, morenos. La bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 28 de julio fue bautizado Nicolás, (está roto donde aparecen los nombres de sus padres) fue su padrino el capitán Manuel López. Lo bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 3 de agosto fue bautizada Ygnacia (Ycnacia), hija de María, india del Barrio de Chicáquaro, fue su madrina Magdalena del Barrio de San Diego, mestiza. La bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 3 de agosto fueron bautizados Antonio y Lucrecia, negros esclavos de don García de Cisneros. Fueron sus padrinos Juan García y María de la Cruz, morenos. Los bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 10 de agosto fueron bautizados Manuel y Baltasar, morenos, esclavos de don García de Cisneros. Fueron sus padrinos: Francisco Lorenzo y Ana María, morenos. Bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 17 de agosto se bautizó a Domingo, hijo de Catalina Gómez, mulata libre, soltera, fueron sus padrinos Miguel García y Juana Sotelo. Lo bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 18 de agosto se bautizó a Diego y Lorenzo, mestizos, hijos de Francisco Gabriel y de Catalina Tsipaqua, fueron sus padrinos Pedro Ramírez y su mujer María (A)polonia, ambos indios del Barrio de San Pedro. Los bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 22 de agosto se bautizó a Pedro, hijo de Pedro y Ana, naturales, del Barrio del Carmen, fueron sus padrinos…e Inés, naturales, de Tarímbaro. Lo bautizó el padre Antonio de Alcalá.

El 24 de agosto se bautizó a Jerónima, hija de la iglesia, fue si madrina Jusepa de Loaysa. La bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 1 de septiembre se bautizó a María hija d…(¿Joan?)de Cendexas y de Ana de Vargas, fueron sus padrinos Francisco de Rueda y su mujer Jerónima de… La bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 1 de septiembre, se bautizaron a tres morenos: Francisco, Francisca y Juan, esclavos de don García de Cisneros, fueron sus padrinos Sebastián. García e Isabel de la Cruz, morenos. Los bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 7 de septiembre, se bautizó a María, hija de Isabel, morena, esclava de Juan González de Guerrea, fueron sus padrinos, Juan García e Isabel de la Cruz, morenos. La bautizó el padre F Pacho.

El 7 de septiembre, el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Bartolomé, hijo de Juana Velásquez, soltera, fue su padrino don Pedro Moreno.

El 7 de septiembre, el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a María, hija de Hernando Sanabria y de Isabel Teresa, mestizos, fue su madrina doña Estefanía de Caravajal.

El 8 de septiembre, el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Agustina, hija de Felipe Xanaq ua y de Catalina Tzipaqua, fueron sus padrinos, Juan Bautista y Juana María, todos indios de la Huerta del Alférez.

El 10 de septiembre, el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Ana, hija de Francisco Gabriel y de María Beatriz, fue su madrina Petrona Hernández, todos indios del Barrio de Santa Ana.

El 11 de septiembre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a María, hija de don Joseph (González) de Figueroa, Alférez Real y doña Beatriz de Sámano, fueron sus padrinos don Francisco de Solis Barraza, Alcalde Mayor y su mujer.

El 15 de septiembre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a Antonia, hija de Juan y de María Huche, indios del Barrio del Carmen, fueron sus padrinos, Juan García, moreno y Juana, mestiza.

El 22 de septiembre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a Magdalena, hija de Pedro y de Agustina, indios naturales, de la Hacienda de don Joseph de Figueroa, su madrina lo fue Luisa, india del Barrio de Santa Ana.

El 28 de septiembre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a Nicolás, hijo de Miguel Xuares y de Magdalena, indios de Cuparataro, fueron sus padrinos Jerónimo de Covarrubias, mestizo y Juana Hernández.

El 2 de octubre, el padre Pedro Agundez, bautizó a Theresa, hija de la iglesia, fueron sus padrinos el Capitán don Manuel López Zerpa y doña Andrea de Ugarte, su mujer.

El 5 de octubre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a Mariana, hija de don Juan de Quijada y de María Sotelo, fueron sus padrinos don Diego Sorge y su madrina doña Ana de Mendoza.

El 5 de octubre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a Diego, hijo de Matías y de Lucía, fueron sus padrinos Andres Xanaqua y Beatriz Putzuto, todos indios de la labor del Alférez don Joseph de Figueroa.

El 6 de octubre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a Miguel hijo de Blas de Rivadeneira y de María Hidalgo, fueron sus padrinos el licenciado Miguel Robello e Isabel de los Olivos.

En 8 de octubre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a Jerónimo, hijo de Gregorio Moreno y de Francisca de la Cruz, criados del reverendo Diego de Novella, fueron sus padrinos Francisco e Isabel López.

En 8 de octubre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a Mateo, hijo de don Salvador Duarte y de doña Catalina de Vascones, fueron sus padrinos, el Capitán Manuel López Zerpa y su mujer doña Andrea de Ugarte.

En 15 de octubre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a Francisco, hijo de Agustín y de Antonia, indios de "La Huerta" de don Joseph de Figueroa, fue su madrina Juana María, mulata.

En 20 de octubre, el padre Francisco Pacho, bautizó a Ana, hija de Juan Bautista Paua y de María Tzipaqua indios del Barrio de Urdiales, fue su padrino Juan de Betancor, moreno.

En 28 de octubre, el padre Antonio de Alcalá, bautizó a Teresa, hija de Francisco Turequi y de Catalina María, del Barrio del Carmen, fueron sus padrinos, Juan Trujillo Gallardo y María Tzipaqua.

En 2 de noviembre, el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Marta, hija de Francisco Lemos y Clara, indios del Alférez Joseph de Figueroa, fueron sus padrinos Juan Rincón y Marta María, mulata.

En 9 de noviembre, el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Andrea, hija de Isabel de los Olivos, mulata libre, soltera, criada de Melchor Gutiérrez. Fueron sus padrinos Melchor de la Cruz y Luisa González, mulatos.

En 16 de noviembre, el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Catalina, hija de Andres y de María, indios, criados de las monjas, fueron sus padrinos, Miguel Tía y su mujer Lucía Nuca, indios.

En 21 de noviembre, el padre Antonio de Alcalá bautizó a Juana, hija de María, esclava de Gonzalo Díaz de Betancor, fue su madrina Magdalena María.

En 21 de noviembre, el padre fray Martín Delgado bautizó a Diego, hijo de Francisco Gudino y de Ana Núñez Vala, fueron sus padrinos don Andrés de Betancor y doña María de Cárdenas, su mujer, todos vecinos de esta ciudad de Valladolid, "hice este bautismo con licencia de su Ilustrísima".

En 23 de noviembre, el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Diego, hijo de Juana, morena, esclava del capitán Manuel López de Zerpa, fue su madrina Inés de la Cruz, mulata.

En 30 de noviembre, el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Martín, hijo de María Ortiz, mulata soltera y no se le conoció padre, fueron sus padrinos, Nicolás de Morales y Leonor de Arlanzón, mulatos.

En 2 de diciembre, el padre Antonio de Alcalá bautizó a Melchora, hija de la iglesia, fue su padrinos Pablo de Arroyo.

En 7 de diciembre el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a María Catalina, hija de Juan Cruz y de Catalina su mujer, morenos, mis esclavos. Fue su madrina Esperanza, morena, de Marcos Estévez.

En 14 de diciembre el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Andrés hijo de Beatriz Pérez, mulata, esclava de María de Rivera, fueron sus padrinos Agustín Redondo de Rivera y doña María de Loaisa.

En 24 de diciembre el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Catalina hija de Miguel Cuini y de Ana Tzipaqua, fueron sus padrinos Pedro de la Cruz y su mujer María Tzipaqua, todos del Barrio de Santa Ana.

En 27 de diciembre el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Juan, hijo de la iglesia, fue su padrino el canónigo don Pedro Agúndez de Ledesma.

En 27 de diciembre el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Lucía, hija de Felipa Hurtado, mulata, soltera, esclava de don Juan Sotelo, fue su madrina Manuela de Prado, mulata.

En 29 de diciembre el padre Francisco Pacho bautizó a Francisco, hijo de Mónica, soltera, criada de Luis de Quiroz, fueron sus padrinos Agustín de Salceda y Sebastiana de Ávila.

Con el anterior bautizo terminan los registros de bautismos del año de 1631.

PORFIRIO DÍAZ, EL DICTADOR DE ENTRESIGLOS, A JAMES CREELMAN

AGN, Colección Fotográfica de Propiedad Artística y Literaria, F. L. Clarke, Personajes, foto 6.

He esperado con paciencia el día en que la República de México esté preparada para escoger y cambiar a sus gobernantes en cada período sin peligro de guerras, ni daño al crédito y al progreso nacionales. Creo que ese día ha llegado...

http://www.biblioweb.dgsca.unam.mx/libros/
mexico/decadas/00-10/fotos/xx_002.html

Sent by Carlos Martín Herrera de la Garza
cherrera@uat.edu.mx

Presidentes de Mexico, 1824-2000
http://www.mexicoexporta.com.mx/esp/infor/presi/todos.htm
Sent by Joan De Soto

General GUADALUPE VICTORIA nacido en Tamazula, Durango, a fines de 1786, distinguiéndose en la Guerra de Independencia al lado del gran Morelos. Tomó posesión el 10 de Octubre de 1824 y entregó la presidencia a las once de la mañana del 31 de Marzo de 1829. Durante su gobierno capituló la guarnición española que aún conservaba en su poder el castillo de San Juan de Ulúa, frente a Veracruz, el 18 de Noviembre de 1825. Murió en el fuerte de Perote, Ver., víctima de ataques epilépticos, el 21 de marzo de 1843. 

Gen. Scott leaves Puebla for Mexico City

CARIBBEAN/CUBA

Country Resources for Caribbean Genealogy

http://www.candoo.com/genresources/domrep.htm
The specific film numbers are identified.
Sent by Joan De Soto

MILITARY RECORDS (- SPAIN)
Note: Spaniards in the Province of Venezuela, (Viceroyalty of New Granada); Military service records; (for an index of these records, refer to Catalog XXXII del achivo de Simancas, Secretaria de Guerra (Siglo XVHII, Hojas de Servicios de America).
Spain; Venezuela Trinidad and Tobago military records- IN SPANISH

PARISH RECORDS NOTE: Parish register of baptisms, marriage and deaths from San Carlos, Santo Domingo (Distrito Nacional), Church records;

CIVIL REGISTRY CIVIL REGISTER, 1828 - 1944
NOTE: Civil registry containing birth, marriage, divorce and death records.
NOTE: * These two sets of film #’s seem to be inconsistent, they might be transposed

BRITISH NATIONALS Consulate registers, 1811 -1813; 1849 -1932
Births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and other records of British Nationals in the Dominican Republic

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTS Public Records, 1733 - 1775
NOTE: Financial accounts during the Spanish Colonial era.

INTERNATIONAL 

Celebrating the New Year in the
      Philippines 
Instituto Cervantes
Library of Congress
Latin American Links

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

by Rina D. Dungao, Ph.D

In the Philippines, Filipinos have many superstitious beliefs they practice to ward off any unlucky or unfortunate events as well as to bring in good fortune with the coming of the New Year. Most of them have eventually become a part of our culture.

So, how is a typical Filipino New Year’s Eve celebration?

Similar to Christmas Eve, most Filipino families hear New Year’s Eve (Vigil) holy mass scheduled between 9:00-10:00 p.m. or 10:00-11:00 p.m. Rarely is a mass scheduled at midnight because most families want to be home to make sure that they practice their beliefs in preparing for the coming of the new year.

However, sometimes, because a lot of fireworks (called "paputok" in Tagalog) start going off in many areas as early as 5:00 p.m. in the afternoon (the government has attempted to take stricter measures to ban some fireworks for safety reasons but somehow, most people find out where to go to buy more fireworks especially children who enjoy playing with the different kinds of "paputok". For most of them, New Year’s Eve celebration is something they really look forward to primarily because it gives them a chance to make all the noise that they want to from lighting fireworks to tooting their horns!) The belief in making so much noise is that the "old" evil spirits will be forced to "get out" of their hiding places and the "new" good spirits have a chance to come in and replace the bad ones. Because of all the noise and because some families fear that a carelessly thrown "paputok" might find its way to the gasoline tank of their cars, some of them opt to hear holy mass the next day between the hours of 9:00 a.m.– 12:00 noon when most of the past night’s revelry has died down and most of the children are still asleep in their warm beds. Others who find it difficult to wake up in the morning attend the late afternoon masses usually scheduled between 5:00-7:00 p.m.

Also, just like Christmas, many Filipinos make sure that there are a lot of dishes on the table especially when the clock strikes twelve at midnight. Not only because there are going to be a lot of relatives around to celebrate and feast on the food but more so, because they believe that when the first hour of 2004 strikes and there is a lot of food on the table, it only means that there will be abundant food throughout the year.

Fruits, most especially grapes are usually found on the table along with other "round" fruits like apples and oranges because any fruit closely resembling a "round" figure means money coming in during that year. Families make sure that there are twelve "round fruits" (most of the time, 6 apples and 6 oranges) on their table before the first hour of the new year begins. Each member of the family is told to "leave room in their stomachs" to eat no less than twelve (12) pieces of grapes—with each single grape signifying each month of the year. Since wine is derived from grapes and wine symbolizes the blood of Jesus Christ, most Filipinos believe that by eating one grape which represents each month of the year, they are assured of continued blessings from the Almighty and good luck for the whole year.

Still another popular practice by Filipinos is making sure that there are coins on every windowsill in the house. Again, the belief here is that, when the New Year comes in and there is money on every window, money or finances will not be tight and will smoothly flow for that year. It does not matter what currency is placed on every windowsill just as long as there are coins on the windows.

Even the manner of dressing is addressed in a Filipino’s New Year’s Eve custom. I vividly remember my whole family making sure that we all wear polka-dotted shirts (the bigger the polka dots, the better!) or dresses before the New Year starts because that would only mean a more stable financial future for each family member.

Being assured of abundant food for 2004 means stocking up and making doubly sure that the canisters or containers for rice, salt, vinegar and sugar are full to the brim. Better to have more than less for the New Year! Everyone does not like to be caught empty-handed!

Lastly, from what I can recall, all cabinets and drawers are also partly opened before the first hour of the New Year strikes, again, because of the belief that the old or evil spirits that shall be warded off by all the noise made from fireworks, toot horns, loud stereo music, honking of many cars, clanging of pots and pans and loud merry singing from some folks, shall be replaced by the new and good spirits—ones to bring them good fortune and luck so they better get in those drawers and cabinets!

Do I practice those beliefs or customs now that I am residing in the United States of America?

You bet I do! Come and see me in my big blue polka dotted blouse this New Year’s Eve!

A PROSPEROUS AND HAPPY NEW 2004 TO ALL OF YOU!!!

Instituto Cervantes
http://www.cervantes.es/portada_b.htm
Sent by Paul Newfield pcn01@webdsi.com

El Instituto Cervantes es una institución pública creada, por creada, por España, para la promoción y la ensenañza de la lengua español.

El municipio de Zuera consta en la actualidad de varios núcleos urbanos:
 Zuera, la Entidad Local de Ontinar del Salz, el Barrio del Portazgo 
(también conocido como Barrio de la Estación) 
y las urbanizaciones de Las Lomas del Gállego y Las Galias.

Muy a su disgusto, la Villa de Zuera y sus aldeas pertenecieron a Zaragoza hasta 1617 e incluso con posterioridad mantienen algún tipo de relación.

Durante los siglos XV, XVI y XVII, la población del municipio estaba totalmente asentada. En el censo de población de 1459, Zuera cuenta con 152 fuegos. Durante el siglo XVI la población de Zuera continua creciendo. En el censo demográfico de 1610 cuenta con 250 fuegos.

Jordán de Asso señala que a finales del siglo XVIII, Zuera contaba a las márgenes del Gállego con una "dilatada vega de 3.000 cahizadas regables, y otras 1.000 en el monte. Este es mui dilatado, y vestido de romerales, de que se alimentan muchos abejares, que producen la miel más estimada de Aragón. La cosecha de cera se regula en 125 arrobas, a que corresponden en año bueno 500 de miel". Estas actividades económicas agrícolas y las comerciales, motivadas por el tránsito constante de mercancías en la dirección Norte-Sur y procedentes de Cinco Villas, permitían un asentamiento fácil en la zona.

Jordán de Asso cuantifica la producción agraria zufariense, poco antes de 1800, de esta manera: 3.250 cahíces de trigo, 2.000 de cebada, 500 de maíz, 200 de alubia y 95 alqueces de vino (un cahíz estaba en torno a los 180 litros. El alquez, sobre los 190).

Pascual Madoz, entre 1846 y 1850, recoge de Zuera que "tiene 280 casas distribuidas en 5 calles anchas y rectas; casa de ayuntamiento, en la que también está la cárcel; escuela de primeras letras, dotada con 2.800 reales, a la que concurren 40 discípulos". "Dentro de la Villa y en calle llamada de Navas hubo un hospicio de religiosos franciscanos." "En su término hay un edificio que fue convento, llamado de los Santos, donde antes de la exclaustración de los religiosos en 1835 existía una comunidad de la orden de Agustinos Descalzos". "En la partida denominada Bacarizal hay una ermita o santuario llamado del Salz, de la propiedad de la misma Villa y sostenido por sus vecinos". " En su extenso radio comprende varias torres o granjas, denominadas de Morterón, de Vallés, de la Camarera y de Rabal y un magnífico y antiquísimo edificio llamado la Cruz Cubierta, por hallarse sobre un pilón o columna de arena sólida de 16 palmos de alto, cubierta con una bóveda que forman 6 columnas y otros tantos arcos con buenas labores". "Población: 284 vecinos, 1.350 almas".

La ubicación geográfica de Zuera, su proximidad a la ciudad de Zaragoza y lo dilatado del término municipal han condicionado el desarrollo histórico de la Villa desde sus inicios hasta hoy. Los asentamientos urbanos del municipio de Zuera están ubicados justo en la ribera del Gállego, siguiendo un eje longitudinal por el que circulan (continuando los esquemas de transporte y comunicación establecidos por los romanos) la nacional 123, el ferrocarril Madrid - Barcelona y Zaragoza - Francia, y las líneas eléctricas de alta tensión.

El tránsito ha sido la constante histórica del municipio. En 1900 contaba con 2.597 habitantes. En la actualidad la población asciende a 5.560 personas.

Linaje Aragonés

GUILLERMO PADILLA ORIGEL
padillaoguillermo@prodigy.net.mx

José Luis Ezquerra Aguilar

La Obra de Roberto José Pérez Guadarrama 
del apellido 
Guadarrama
perezfru@telcel.net.ve
     

El Matrimonio de Francisco Goitia ( Nació: Aproximadamente en 1820 en Jadacaquiva, se Caso aproximadamente en 1844 en Jadacaquiva y Falleció en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela ) (1) y Saturnina Guadarrama ( Nació: Aproximadamente 1823 en Jadacaquiva, se Caso aproximadamente en 1844 en Jadacaquiva y Falleció en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(2) tienen a los siguientes Goitia Guadarrama: ( El Apellido: Goribargoitia se transformo en el Apellido: Goitia )(3) 

1. José Saturnino del Rosario ( Nació: el 02 de Octubre de 1836 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela ).(4)
2. Maria de la Paz ( Nació: el 24 de Enero de 1839 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(5)
3. Magdalena del Carmen ( Nació: el 22 de Julio de 1840 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela ) (6)
4. José Ramón de la Merce ( Nació: el 26 de Febrero de 1843 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(7)
5. Benigna Antonia Sebastiana ( Nació: el 20 de Enero de 1845 en Jadacaquiva y Falleció en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(8) 
6. Cecilio Antonio ( Nació: el 20 de Noviembre de 1846 en Jadacaquiva y Falleció en: Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(9)
7. Felix Maria Antonio ( Nació: el 20 de Noviembre de 1848 en Jadacaquiva y Falleció en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(10)
8. Maria Eulogia Antonia ( Nació: el 12 de Marzo de 1853 en Jadacaquiva y Falleció en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(11)
9. Maria Petronila ( Nació: el 16 de Febrero de 1856 en Jadacaquiva y Falleció en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(12) 
10. Eusebia Antonia ( Nació: el 14 de Agosto de 1857 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(13)

El Matrimonio de  Benigna Antonia Goitia Guadarrama ( Nació el 20 de Enero de 1845 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela y Fallecida en Jadacaquiva, Falcón , Venezuela )(14) casada con Benjamín Hill ( Nació aproximadamente en 1843 en Guacuira, Falcón, Venezuela y se Casaron aproximadamente en 1863 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela y Falleció en Guacuira, Falcón, Venezuela )(15). 

El Matrimonio de José Quintín de Lugo y Josefa Maria Guadarrama tuvieron a los siguientes: de Lugo Guadarrama

1. Quintín ( Nació: el 31 de Octubre de 1836 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela(16) y fue sepultado el 14 de Enero de 1871 en el Cementerio General de Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela. Adulto, Soltero. )(17) 
2. Manuel Maria del Carmen ( Nació: el 16 de Julio de 1839 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela ) (18) y se Caso con Teotiste Irausquin Enrich ( Hija de: Jesús Maria Irausquin y Clara Josefa Enrich) el 07 de Enero de 1871 en Jadacaquiva. (19) 
3. Buenaventura ( Nació: el 04 de Septiembre de 1841 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(176) 
4. Bacilio Antonio ( Nació: el 14 de Abril de 1843 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(20) y se Caso con Rosa Josefa Irausquin Enrich ( Hija de: Jesús Maria Irausquin y Clara Josefa Enrich ) el 07 de Enero de 1871 en Jadacaquiva . (21)
5. Faustina Ramona ( Nació: el 28 de Febrero de 1845 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(22)
6. Jesús Maria Agapito ( Nació: el 18 de Agosto de 1846 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(23) y se Caso con Natalia Irausquin Henrriches ( Hija de: Jesús Maria Irausquin y Clara Henrriches) el 28 de Enero de 1881 en Jadacaquiva .(24)
7. Maria Guadalupe de La Concepción ( Nació: el 12 de Diciembre de 1849 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(25)

Josefa Maria Guadarrama quedo Viuda (26) y tuvo un Hijo natural de Nombre: Custodio Guadarrama ( Nació: el 02 de Enero de 1854 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(27)

El Matrimonio de Custodio Guadarrama y Vicenta del Carmen Valdez ( Hija de: Justo Valdez y Felipa Goitia ) el 14 de Junio de 1874 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela.(28) Tuvieron a los: Guadarrama Valdez

1. Maria Encarnación del Carmen ( Nació: el 25 de Marzo de 1880 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(29)
2. Domingo Esteban ( Nació: el 03 de Agosto de 1882 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(30)
3. Valentín del Carmen ( Nació: el 17 de Diciembre de 1884 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(31)
4. Ángel Isaías del Carmen ( Nació: el 06 de Julio de 1887 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(32)
5. Calistro de Jesús ( Nació: el 14 de Octubre de 1890 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(33)
6. Ramón ( Nació: el 31 de Agosto de 1892 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(34)
7. Juana del Carmen ( Nació: el 24 de Noviembre de 1894 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(35) 
8. Fidelia Guadalupe ( Nació: el 24 de Abril de 1897 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(36)
9. Petra Lourdes del Carmen ( Nació: el 23 de Octubre de 1899 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(37) 

Saturnina Guadarrama era contemporánea y Comadre de: Josefa Maria Guadarrama(206), Andrés Guadarrama(207), Tomas Guadarrama(208), Maria Lorenza Guadarrama(209), Ramón Guadarrama(210) y Manuela Guadarrama(211).  

Josefa Guadarrama era contemporánea y Comadre de: Maria Rita Guadarrama.(221)

El Matrimonio de: Magdaleno Guadarrama y Josefa García (38), tuvieron a los siguientes: Guadarrama García.

1. Camilo ( Nació: el 15 de Mayo de 1846 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(39)
2. Magdaleno ( Se Caso con Maria del Rosario ( Hija de: Lucas Dbret y Josefa Maria García, Difuntos Ambos ) el 13 de Abril de 1872 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela. Para el momento de la Boda, Magdaleno Guadarrama ( Padre ) estaba Difunto. )(40) 

Con respecto al Matrimonio de Magdaleno Guadarrama García con Maria del Rosario Dbret García el 13 de Abril de 1872, se escribió en el acta de Matrimonio: "Se digno dispersarles el impedimento de cuarto grado igual de consaguinidad en línea oblicua con que estaban ligados"(220)

Josefa García es registrada el 08 de Diciembre de 1855, en un Bautismo como: Viuda de Guadarrama.(212)    

El Matrimonio de Magdaleno Guadarrama García y Maria del Rosario Dbret García (41). Tuvieron a Guadarrama Dbret:

1. Maria Josefa del Rosario ( Nació: el 13 de Mayo de 1873 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(42)

El Matrimonio de Pablos Guadarrama y Quintina Lugo (43), tuvieron a los: Guadarrama Lugo

1. Andrés Fabián ( Nació: el 20 de Enero de 1857 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela ) (44) y se Caso con Florentina García ( Hija de: Rosa García , el 28 de Febrero de 1881 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(45) 
2. Ramona del Carmen ( Nació: el 29 de Octubre de 1859 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(46)
3. Juan Bautista del Carmen ( Nació: el 24 de Junio de 1863 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(47)
4. Nicolás de Jesús ( Nació: el 20 de Noviembre de 1866 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(48)
5. Merced Gerónima ( Nació: el 30 de Septiembre de 1973 en Jadacaquiva, Flacón, Venezuela ) (49)
6. Edelmira Pastora ( Nació: el 04 de Mayo de 1877 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(50) 

Pablos Guadarrama era contemporáneo y Compadre de: Ramón Guadarrama(213) y Maria Lorenza Guadarrama(214).     

El Matrimonio de Juan Guadarrama y Bartola Ávila (51), tuvieron a los: Guadarrama Avila

1. Gabriela del Carmen ( Nació: el 28 de Abril de 1870 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(52)
2. Hipólito de Jesús ( Nació: el 22 de Agosto de 1874 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(53) 
3. Leoncio Ramón ( Nació: el 12 de Septiembre de ---- en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(54)
4. Francisco de Jesús ( Nació: el 18 de Enero de 1880 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(55)
5. Maria Estanilada ( Nació: el 14 de Noviembre de 1881 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(56)
6. Bartolomé ( Nació: el 24 de Agosto de 1883 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(57)
7. Juana Francisca ( Nació: el 28 de Agosto de 1885 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(177)

El Matrimonio de Juan Guadarrama y Josefina Lores (58), tuvieron a los: Guadarrama Lores

1. Edelmira del Carmen ( Nació: el 06 de Mayo de 1893 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(59)
2. Medardo de Jesús ( Nació: el 15 de Octubre de 1897 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(60)

El Matrimonio de Nicolás Guadarrama y Agueda del Carmen Lores (61), tuvieron a los: Guadarrama Lores      

1. Delia Antonia ( Nació: el 29 de Diciembre de 1893 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(62)
2. Pablo Teodocio ( Nació: el 11 de Enero de 1896 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(63)
3. Maria Elena ( Nació: el 2 de Noviembre de 1897 en el Municipio Miranda, Falcón, Venezuela )(64)
4. Luisa Mercedes ( Nació: el 24 de Septiembre de 1908 en Los Taques, Falcón, Venezuela )(65) 

Juan Guadarrama era contemporáneo y Compadre Triple de: Nicolás Guadarrama.(215)(216)(217)
  

El Matrimonio de Andrés Guadarrama y Flora García(66), tuvieron los: Guadarrama García

1. Arcelia ( Nació: el 09 de Noviembre de 1882 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela )(67)

El Matrimonio de Julián Latre y Mercedes Guadarrama(68), tuvieron a los: Latre Guadarrama

1. Petronila Emerita ( Nació: el 03 de Marzo de 1895, en Los Taques, Falcón, Venezuela )(69)

El Matrimonio de Julián Wesfer y Mercedes Guadarrama(70), tuvieron a los: Wesfer Guadarrama

1. Andrés Fabián ( Nació: el 01 de Octubre de 1897 en Los Taques, Falcón, Venezuela )(71)

Mercedes Guadarrama era contemporánea y Comadre de: Andrés Guadarrama.(218)

Nicolaza Guadarrama ( Manumisa, Nació: el 06 de Diciembre de 1844 en Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela ), Hija de: Maria de Jesús Guadarrama ( Esclava de Magdaleno Guadarrama ).(73) 

Maria Inocencia Goitia Guadarrama ( Adulta, Soltera, Hija Legitima de: Ramón Goitia y Maria Potenciana Guadarrama ), fue sepultada el 27 de Junio de 1869 en el Cementerio General de Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela.(72)

Quintín Lugo Guadarrama ( Adulto, Soltero, Hijo Legitimo de: Quintín Lugo y Josefa Guadarrama ), fue sepultado el 14 de Enero de 1871 en el Cementerio General de Jadacaquiva, Falcón, Venezuela.(188)      

Otras Familias Guadarrama en Venezuela y México. 

El Matrimonio de José Maria Guadarrama ( Nació: en Ejido, Edo. Mérida, Venezuela ) y se Caso con Maria Francisca Hernández el 26 de Noviembre de 1866 en ST, TDA, G, México. Hijo natural de: Juan Pablo  y Maria Francisca Guadarrama. Maria Francisca Hernández, nació en Tasco .(74)  

El Matrimonio de José Maria Guadarrama ( Nació: en Ejido, Edo. Mérida, Venezuela ) y Simona Días ( Nació: en Egido, México )  se casaron el 26 de Marzo de 1879 en SP, TDA, G, México.(75)

El Matrimonio de Fructuoso Pedroza ( Fallecido: en el Estado de México, México ) y Maria Guadarrama ( Fallecida: en el Estado de México, México ). Tuvieron a: Petra Pedroza Guadarrama ( Nació: el 29 de Junio de 1911 y Falleció: el 01 de Enero del 2000 )(178)
  
El Matrimonio de Najera y Guadarrama. Tuvieron a: Najera Guadarrama.(179)

El Matrimonio de Isidoro García ( Nació: el 04 de Abril de 1886 en México y Falleció: el 22 de Septiembre de 1976 en Los Ángeles, California, USA.)(180) con Juana Guadarrama. (181)

El Matrimonio de Irene ( Chata ) Guadarrama y Martín Hernández.(182)

El Matrimonio de Enriqueta Guadarrama ( Nació: en 1893 en Churuguara, Edo. Falcón, Venezuela ) y se Caso en 1914 en Churuguara, Edo. Falcón, Venezuela. Casada con Seferino Castillo ( Nació: en 1889 en Churuguara, Edo. Falcón . Tuvieron un Hijo llamado: Enrique Guadarrama ( Nacido en 1915 en Churuguara, Edo. Falcón, Venezuela y Falleció: en Enero de 1974 )(76)

El Matrimonio de Sr. Guadarrama con una Sra. Bolaños. Tuvieron a 2 Hijos: Celestino y Bruno Guadarrama Bolaños. Celestino Guadarrama Bolaños ( Nació: en Villa Guerrero, Estado de México, México ) se caso con Juana Pérez Rodríguez.

Celestino Guadarrama Bolaños y Juana Pérez Rodríguez tuvieron a: Ignacio, Mario, Aurelio, Rita, Tomasa, Irene y Alberto Guadarrama Pérez .

Ignacio Guadarrama Pérez tuvo un Hijo con Maria de La Luz Zepeda Vale, de Nombre: Víctor Guadarrama Zepeda. 

Información del Libro: 
Tierras de Falcón, Paraguaná de Carlos González Batista

"La acción del Pbro. D. Pedro Silvestre de Quevedo, se redujo a partir de la ultima fecha citada a 60 pesos, pero en 1752 adquiere la posesión de la sabana y tanque que había sido de Da. Sebastiana Laguna, puesta en publica almoneda por el juez eclesiásticos de Coro con el objeto de satisfacer un censo de 500 pesos. Sabemos por un documento bastante posterior (1760), que este derecho era de 33 pesos, 2 ½ reales. En enero de 1753 el referido sacerdote extendió escritura extrajudicial a favor de su sobrino político D. Marcos Pérez Guadarrama, en la venta de una acción ( de 25 pesos, seguramente ) "que hube y compre de (Da.) Rosa Maria de Quevedo, mi hermana",y del tanque y la acción ya mencionada "de Treinta y tantos pesos" que había sido de Da. Sebastiana Laguna. Nos resulta desconocido el origen de la acción comprada a Da. Rosa de Quevedo, aunque pudiera aventurase que se trataba de aquella perteneciente a Juana Alvirana Laguna, a la cual nos hemos referido anteriormente. En la testamentaria de D. Marcos Pérez Guadarrama se comprueba la venta de ambas acciones (1760). D. Marcos había casado con una sobrina del vendedor, Da. Francisca Tadea Valdez y su hato se denominaba El Calvario; tambien posela un tanque, "algo siego [ ... ] que a mi costa tengo escarbado y cercado", originalmente de Da. Sebastiana Laguna; ( Testamentarias, Guadarrama, 1760, f.4. Hermano de Guadarrama fue según parece, D. Juan Miguel Rodríguez Guadarrama, natural como el anterior de las Islas Canarias, y tronco de los Guadarrama paraquaneros; era, este ultimo, dueño del hato del Román, originalmente de D. Andrés Goribargoitia, su suegro, puesto que desposo a su hija Da. Rosalía Goribargoitia Borges de la Raga. Fue teniente de gobernador de la península en 1797 ). Al fallecer sin descendencia, los bienes pasaron a su viuda y heredera. De los 35 pesos que restaban en poder de D. Pedro Silvestre, nada se sabe, aunque resulta plausible que hayan quedado en poder de la familia, quizá en alguna de sus sobrinas a quienes había favorecido largamente en vida".(183)

"Da. Beatriz de Quevedo, mujer de, D. José Valdez procreo entre otros hijos a Da. Beatriz Díaz Valdez, casada con D. Diego García de Quevedo( Español de Extremadura ) y a Da. Francisca Tadea, mujer de Guadarrama. Su acción de 25 pesos, cuyo origen ya hemos establecido, debió de haber pasado a su hija del mismo nombre, sin olvidar lo que tal vez heredo del Pbro. Quevedo, todo lo cual justifica la presencia de la familia García de Quevedo en el lugar desde mediados del siglo XVIII. La otra hermana. Da. Francisca Tadea, viuda de Guadarrama paso a segundas nupcias con otro caballero de origen canario D. Francisco Miguel de Cubas, y a este consorcio llevo sus 58 pesos. Las Cubas o Cuba no tuvieron descendencia, pero su apellido, transferido a sus esclavos se extendió por la península."(184)
 
"En el aparte sobre los Laguna nos hemos referido a la descendencia de Da. Paula de Rojas, pero de sus hijos estimamos que fue Da. Sebastiana Laguna Rojas, la que heredo los 33 pesos de acción materna. Caso esta señora con D. Juan Bautista de Olazábal y aunque tuvo descendencia, su acción no le fue transmitida sino que a fin de satisfacer una hipoteca de 500 pesos, fue pregonada en publica almoneda, y aunque el avaluó de la acción y de un estanque [algo siego], en el valor fue por 600 pesos pero no hubo quien los diese, rematándose por el valor de la deuda en el Lic. D. Pedro Damián Sánchez, quien a su vez la vendió tambien al tambien Lic. Pedro Silvestre de Quevedo. La acción y el tanque fueron vendidos por Quevedo a su sobrino político D. Marcos Pérez Guadarrama, y lo manifiesta como sabemos, en su testamento que es de 1760, señalando que su valor era exactamente, de 33 pesos, 2 reales y ½".(187)  

"Benedicto Ocando señalaba en 1839 que su Tío José Tomas Ocando había vendido en 1833 al Sr. Andrés Guadarrama un hatillo que había fundado Bartolomé Nava, [a distancia de un cuarto de legua, poco mas o menos del hato del Román], hato este ultimo, que como ya sabemos y declara el presentante, fue de D. Juan Miguel Rodríguez Guadarrama ( La viuda de este vendió al Pbro. Manuel E. García de Quevedo [una cuarta parte de sabana], es decir, 6 pesos, 2 reales ). La fundación vendida en 1833 había pertenecido a Lutgarda Guadarrama, esposa de José T Ocando. El Román que a fines del XVIII era de los Guadarrama se mantuvo en su poder, pero el hatillo de Ocando lo vendió Andrés Guadarrama en 1844 a Quintina de Lugo. Tambien otros Guadarrama, Magdaleno y Josefa Guadarrama habían vendido a Manuel Montero un estanque y una huerta en el sitio del Mulato ( Magdaleno Guadarrama era en 1845 dueño de Amaraya, la vieja fundación de los González de Rivera, y de [la posesión en que estaba fundado], esto es de su derecho, cuya cuantía para aquel entonces se desconoce".(185)

"Sea como fuere, la acción real, es decir, de suerte principal en esta ultima posesión correspondiente a cada heredero, era bastante reducida, e insuficiente para establecimientos de hato de alguna importancia por lo cual debemos dar por descontado la adquisición adicional de derechos por aquellos integrantes de la familia allí establecidas durante la 1ra. Mitad del siglo XIX. Una prueba de ello seria, por ejemplo, lo que el presbítero Manuel Estaban García de Quevedo manifiesta en su testamento de 1836: la compra de una cuarta parte de posesión a la viuda de D. Juan Miguel Rodríguez Guadarrama, que lega a cuatro de sus esclavos de apellido Caldera".(186)

Información del Libro: 
Los Taques, Geografía Humana de: Ramiro Jesús Díaz.

Al escribir sobre la Familia Quevedo, menciona:

" Juan Macario Quevedo Lores, se caso dos veces, primero con Carmen Delia Ruiz Guadarrama y tuvieron a Ele y Gladis Quevedo Ruiz. En segundas nupcias con Carmen Gotopo, de donde descienden Argenis, Irma, Ramiro, Haydee, Auxiliadora, Juan Antonio, Rafael, Oscar, Alida y Antonio Quevedo Gotopo . "(189)     

Al escribir sobre la Familia Lores, menciona:

" Agueda Lores Irausquin y su esposo Nicolás Guadarrama, tuvieron a Luisa Gabriela, Carmen Delia y Maria Guadarrama Lores. "(190)

Al escribir sobre las Otras Familias, menciona:

" Entre las familias que llegaron a esta tierra y se quedaron para siempre tenemos las siguientes:

- Guadarrama, López, Bello, Martínez, Olazábal, Zavala, Guardia, Sierralta, Marín y Villa de Jadacaquiva, Villanueva de Guaibacoa-La Vela de Coro, Eljuri de Churuguara, entre otras."(191)

Al escribir sobre la Familia Escobar – Guadarrama, menciona:

"-De Ifigenia Riera de Escobar e Ignacio Maria Escobar Diez, para unos Escobalito y para otros Dr. Escobar, pues ejerció empíricamente la medicina, nació Joaquín Escobar Riera, quien con Maria Guadarrama Lores de cuya unión descienden Ignacio Maria, Antonia, Vicenta, Sol, Joaquín José y Argenis Escobar Guadarrama.

Ignacio Maria Escobar Guadarrama fue el Primer Profesional Universitario de Los Taques, "Nacho", como cariñosamente se le conocía en el Pueblo, se graduó de Doctor en Farmacia en la Universidad de Los Andes (U.L.A.)."(192)

Al escribir sobre la Familia Laclé, menciona:

"-Del matrimonio de Julián Laclé, hijo de Jacobo Laclé y Andrieta Weffer, naturales de Aruba, con Mercedes Gerónima Guadarrama, hija de Pablo Guadarrama y Quintina Lugo, nacen Andrés, Petronila, Maria y Arcelia Laclé Guadarrama.

-Del vinculo de Arcelia Laclé Guadarrama, con Antonio Sánchez, nace Antonio Jesús Sánchez Laclé."(193)

Al escribir sobre la Familia Ruiz, menciona:

"-Genaro Ruiz, se caso dos veces, la primera con Carmen Delia Guadarrama Lores, de cuya unión nacen Pedro José, Genaro Segundo, Carmen Julia, Carmen Ramona, Pastora y Antonia Ruiz Guadarrama, en segundas nupcias con Carmen Rita Primera Primera, de donde descienden Ali, Hilda, Ramiro, Genaro Antonio, Rafael, Daysi, Alida y Jesús Armando Ruiz Primera."(194)

En donde escribe de las Parrandas Navideñas, señala:

"Parranderos que se destacaron fueron Pedro Arias, Gerónimo Ñoño Arias, Sebastián Tatan Enrich, Pedro Morocho Gómez, Gregorio Compa Goyo Irausquín, Virgilio Arias, Esteban Arias, Juan Arias, Pedro José Arias, José Isabel Chabelo Gómez, Julián Blanchard, Pedro José Díaz, Rafael Díaz, Conrado Díaz, Héctor Guadarrama, Tomás Ortuñez y Esteban Ortuñez, entre otros.

Durante mucho tiempo el conjunto musical estuvo integrado por: Pedro Arias y José Isabel Chabelo Gómez , (Cuatristas), Pedro José Arias, Pedro José Díaz, Rafael Díaz y Asdrúbal Yuba Álvarez, (Guitarristas), Pedro Morocho Gómez y Juan Arias (Tamboreros), Héctor Guadarrama y Conrado Díaz (Maraqueros).

En las voces sobresalía Pedro José Arias conocido como El Ruiseñor y el coro lo hacían Rafael Díaz, Héctor Guadarrama, Gregorio Compa Goyo Irausquin, Juan Arias, Virgilio Arias, Esteban Arias y Tomas Ortuñez." (195)

En la sección de Los Carnavales, señala:

" De Acuerdo a mi vivencia el primer carnaval organizado que se realizó en la comunidad, fue en el año 1953. El comité organizador estuvo integrado por Francisco Panchito Primera, Elíceles Aldama, Omar Irausquín, Hipólito Cheché Valles, Nelson Díaz, Saturna de Primera, Serafina Fina de León de Hernández, Clarucha Brett, entre otros.

Como reina fue elegida por votación popular la señorita Vicenta Escobar Guadarrama y como príncipe el señor Reinaldo González, las damas Eltha Cristian y Ligia Ruiz Guadarrama con sus caballeros Hipólito Cheché Valles y Arnold Díaz respectivamente, la coronación se efectuó en el cine Santa Cruz, propiedad de Pablo Saher y el grupo musical que amenizo la fiesta carnestolenda fue el Grupo de José María Hill. Fueron unas fiestas vistosas, donde las comparsas fueron las principales atracciones por su originalidad y por las demostraciones realizadas.

El martes de carnaval, se jugó Los Negritos se integraron a la organización, las señoritas Lilia de Salima y María Concepción Sierralta de Ruíz, mejor conocida como ChoChon, quien fue elegida reina. Los músicos que le dieron sabor y colorido a esta fiesta fueron Antonio Herman Medina ( Violinista), Luis Rafael Reyes (Cuatrista), Asdrúbal Yuba Álvarez (Guitarrista) y Antonio Gómez (tamborero), es de observar que estas personas trabajan en la prefectura. Esto fue el inicio de los carnavales, continuaron con los reinados de Ligia Irausquín Ocando, Beatriz Aldama Brett, Antonia Ruíz Guadarrama, Isbelia Valdez Falcón, Noris Suárez Falcón, Antonina Rodríguez y Mirian Sánchez Sánchez,..."(196)

En la sección de las Hijas de María, menciona:

" De mis vivencias, tengo fresca las imágenes de las "Hijas de María, grupo religioso integrado por las jóvenes de la época Clarucha Brett García, Agueda Lores Guardia, Maruja Marín, Graciela Brett García, Auristela Valles Brett, Rosa, Layla y Pancha Salima Smith, Toña, Chenta y Sol Escobar Guadarrama, Lina y Margot Primera Primera, Elba Díaz García, Teresa Primera Chirinos, Carmen Marín y Rita Chiche Gregoria Irausquín Irausquín, quienes usaban un traje blanco con una cinta azul bordeado la cintura, una medalla colgada del cuello y un fino velo de color blanco sobre sus cabezas." (197)

En la sección de Las Autoridades, menciona:

" Para una mejor ilustración se presenta un cuadro informativo de las autoridades representativas del municipio Los Taques en el transcurso de los años.

Jefe Civil Secretario Años

Juan Guadarrama J. O. Irausquin 1.895-1.896

Asiclo Guadarrama Millano Francisco R. Falcón Irausquin 1.945 ".(198)

En la sección de Telégrafos y Correos, menciona:

" Por el año 1.928 el Administrador de Correo era Marcelino Díaz Guanipa y el cartero era Juan Bautista Díaz, quien trabajó en el Correo desde 1.926 hasta 1.931, trasladaban las valijas desde Pueblo Nuevo-Jadacaquiva-Los Taques-Amuay-Carirubana, este recorrido lo hacian a pie y en bestias; después continuaron como Administradores de Correo, Carmen Elena García de Guadarrama y funcionaba en la casa de Sabas Zea, hoy propiedad de Francisco Primera Chirinos, de lo vivido, recuerdo a Antonia Escobar Guadarrama, Luisa de Díaz, Layla Salima entre otros, de los repartidores de telegramas Tomas Ortuñez, Benigno Sánchez y Custodio Ventura y de los carteros a Francisco Chiquilan González, Arol González y Jesús Alvarez." (199)

En la sección de Los Maestros, se menciona:

" En el transcurso del tiempo surgieron valores en tan digna profesión como Petra Ramona "Nona" Irausquín de Falcón, Celestina Brett de Aldama, Vicenta Escobar Guadarrama, María Concepción Chochón Sierralta de Ruíz, Margot Primera y Adolfo González; quienes con sus escuelas gratuitas y privadas ejercían dichas actividades, eran los tiempos en que se estudiaba a la luz de una vela."(200)    

En la sección El Cine, menciona:

" A los amantes del cine, que habitaban en Amuay, los trasladaba Pedro José Ruiz Guadarrama en "El Madrigal", un autobús de su propiedad. El Horario de la sección se iniciaba a las ocho de la noche, tocaban un pasodoble, que por costumbre le decían "La Marcha", al finalizar ésta, se iniciaba la película."(201)

En la sección Sectores y Casas, Sector Sur, menciona:

"En la calle Sur "A", Rosa Bello, Jesús Bello y Brígida Bello de Bello, Flor Bello, (hoy de Juanita Gómez, Damas Salesianas, José de las Nieves Ruiz, Familia Reyes-Díaz), Emilio Aldama Quevedo y Celestina Brett de Aldama, Pedro Dámaso Irausquín Arias y Blanca Morón de Irausquín, (en la actualidad Dalia Ramírez de Quero), Manuel Arias y María Josefa Ocando de Arias, Hilario Arias, (hoy casa de Acción Democrática), Francisco Salima y Delfina Smith de Salima, (hoy habitada por la familia Eljuri-Salima), Don Jesús García Fleming y Doña Laura Laroche de García, (fue sede de un partido político), Gregorio Valles y Rosa Arias de Valles, Ernesto Irausquín de León y María Arias de Irausquín, Gregorio Irausquín y Eugenia García de Irausquín, Erasmo Salima y Lilia Irigoyen de Salima, (hoy casa de Rita Primera Aldama), Joaquín Escobar y María Guadarrama de Escobar.(202)

En la sección Pioneros Petroleros, menciona:      

"El primer trabajador paraguanero que inició sus labores en la Creole Petroleum Corporation, fue Carlos Ocando Lugo, nativo del caserío La Vela. De mis vivencias tengo presente a los siguientes:

Los Taques: Alfredo Sánchez, Augusto Díaz, Antonio Sánchez, Ramón Monchú Millano, Gregorio Aldama, Julián Aldama, Ulises Aldama, Camilo Aldama, Cristóbal Aldama, Ramón Jesús Aldama, Ramón Monche Díaz, Juan Ramón Sánchez, Eduardo Gómez, Héctor Guadarrama, Roseliano Olazábal, Héctor Quevedo Hermoso, Melquíades Bello, Segundo Primera Primera, Encarnación Canacho Marín, Esteban Cossi, Eulogio Gómez Lugo, Juan de Dios Falcón, Avelino Comenencia, Manuel Villanueva, Eleuterio Ruiz, Jesús Eljuri, Dámaso Gomez, Jesús Lugo Lugo, Antonio Lugo, Pedro José Irausquín, Raúl Jiménez, Ventura Jiménez, Raúl González, Hipólito José Valles, Omar Irausquín Aldama, Juan Ramón Primera, Julio Falcón Guanipa, Gregorio Irausquín Quevedo, Clara Celinda Brett García, Teresa Primera, Antonia Escobar Guadarrama, Cristina Margarita Primera, Carmen Ramona Ruiz Guadarrama, Francisco Primera Primera, Cristóbal Díaz e Ignacia Maria Escobar Guadarrama, entre otros.

Después continuaron Pedro José Díaz Weffer, Luis Reyes, Francisco Primera Chirinos, Pedro José Ruiz Guadarrama, Temístocles Zea Aldama, Armando Pereira, René Irausquín, Darío Valles, Darío Irausquín Quevedo, Samuel Querales, Orlando Totuma Sánchez y Ligia Ruiz Sierralta."(203)

en la sección de Club Los Animales, Los Miembros y sus Apodos, menciona:

"Entre los socios se recuerdan a los siguientes: " Héctor Guadarrama, El Chévere;..."(204)

Y finalmente en la sección de la Familia Millano-Ocando, menciona:

"De la unión de Josefa Milano Ocando, con Valentín Guadarrama, nace Asisclo José Guadarrama Millano, quien se caso con Carmen Elena García, cuyos descendientes son Gladis, Alfredo, Iván y Betty Guadarrama García." (205)

A continuación transcribo el acta de Matrimonio de: Custodio Guadarrama y Vicenta del Carmen Valdez Goitia, con comentarios sobre su contenido hecho por expertos Genealogistas.

" En la Iglesia Parroquial de la Purísima Concepción del Cantón Paraguaná a catorce de Junio de mil ochocientos setenta y nueve Yo el Infraescrito (!) Cura Rector de Santa Ana y encargado de ésta, presencié el Matrimonio que por palabra de presente contrajeron enfaciae ecclesiae (2) Custodio hijo natural de Josefa Guadarrama con Vicenta del Carmen hija legitima de Justo Valdés y Felipa Goitia (3) ambos contrayentes naturales i vecinos de esta Parroquia el Reverendísimo Señor (4) Dr. Víctor José Díaz dignísimo Obispo de esta Diócesis quien se digno dispensarles del impedimento de tercer grado igual dobles y el de cuarto también igual ambos de consaguinidad en línea transversal con que estaban ligados(5). Se precedió a la exploración de sus voluntades, el examen y aprobación de la doctrina cristiana y no resultó ningún otro impedimento. De las tres proclamas que con arreglo al Santo Concilio de Trento se leyeron en Misa conventual de tres días efectivos que lo fueron el once, el diez y ocho y el veinticinco del mes próximo pasado. Se confesaron y comulgaron y seguidamente (6) recibieron las bendiciones nupciales Siendo Testigos de todo Rafael Colina y Florentina Navega de que certifico .

Miguel Antonio Vera." 

(1)  La palabra Infraescrito es una forma de deir el susudidcho

(2)  Efaciae Ecclesiae es un termino en latín que se utiliza en estas partidas por la Iglesia para expresar que se sigue lo estipulado por ella al celebrarse un sacramento, matrimonio en este caso. Es raro que después no diga ´"según el Ritual Romano" o "según el RR".

(3) Es un apellido de orígen Vasco. Por lo general se cambiaba el original por una falla del escribano. De todas formas, al degenerarse un apellido, queda de la forma como se transformó. Cambiarlo al origína genera gastos y problemas de sucesión.

(4) El Reverendísimo Señor Dr. Víctor José Díaz Madroñero, Obispo de Venezuela para ese entonces, de muy grata memoria. En ese entonces se esra demasiado protocolar, por eso tanto tútilo al referirse al Sr. Obispo,

(5) Si efectivamente existe un parentezco consanguíneo, eran primos segundos y primos terceros, de madres primas hermanas y a la vez primas segundas.

(6) Sólo dice que una vez que se confesaron y comulgaron se le fueron dadas las bendiciones nupciales-    Ing. Emma Rosa O. de Herrera.

1- "El infrascrito": Se refiere al escrito abajo, al padre Miguel Antonio Vera
2- "In facie eclesiae" Ante la iglesia
5- Tercer grado iguales y dobles: Comparten el mismo bisabuelo y bisabuela (un padre o madre de uno era primo hermano del padre o madre del otro) y el par de padres restantes eran primos segundos, a esto se refiere el "cuarto grado igual". (Los contrayentes por este otro lado compartían tatarabuelos).
Lateral -o colateral-, porque en línea recta está expresamente prohibido el matrimonio.
En formato de sólo texto es difícil de explicar lo que se podría demostrar con un diagrama sencillo. (por eso me he demorado en contestarle el anterior)
6-"Seguidamente" No siempre las bendiciones se recibían en el mismo acto

 Saludos a todos, Salvador Romero Arreaza.   

HISTORY

FAMILY HISTORY

Free CD on Latin American Family History Resources,  click 

ARCHAEOLOGY

Extract: 
Experts Recover Stolen Maya Altar
 by Randolph E. Schmid, 
Associated Press via 
Orange County Register, 10-30-03

Lost and found: the elaborately carved Maya altar, which is more than 1,200 years old, shows king Taj Chan Ahk ah kalomte playing ball with another king, a ritual used to finalize treaties.

Extract:  Rediscovering El Dorado
By Gareth Cook,  Cook@globe.com  Globe Staff, 11/16/2003
Boston.com News
Source: The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com:80/news/globe/magazine/articles/2003/11/16/rediscovering_el_dorado
Sent by John Inclan   fromGalveston@yahoo.com
 
Notions of ancient kingdoms in the Amazon jungle have long been discounted, but new evidence of cities and roads may rewrite history.

In 1542, Orellana led the first expedition by Europeans down the world's mightiest river, the Amazon. Along the way, he said, his flotilla passed by massive cities rising high into the trees and extending miles in length.  In modern times, this possibility has been largely discounted. Every expedition since Orellana has seen no cities on the river and found only small tribes in the jungle.

And there is another problem: The soil is so bad for agriculture that it is hard to imagine it sustaining a dense population. Indeed, in the 1950s, a pair of researchers concluded that all of the Amazon is a "counterfeit paradise," a place that teems with life but is profoundly unsuited for the dense populations that are the hallmark of great civilizations.

Now, though, a small group of modern explorers is finding evidence that the Amazon may have once been home to a sprawling world of forgotten roads and cities.

For the last decade, University of Vermont associate professor James B. Petersen has been investigating areas of the Amazon with a mysterious, incredibly rich soil, called terra preta. He and others believe that the charcoal-black soil, several feet deep, is left over from human settlements. Examining the area, they have found massive mounds, strewn with ceramic shards. These mounds mark cities, they believe, and these cities were connected by roads to more cities. " Everywhere we go," Petersen says, "we find more."

If their theories are correct, the implications could be vast and surprising. The Amazon may have been home to sophisticated kingdoms that rivaled the Incan or Mayan civilizations. And the people in these kingdoms may have created the richly organic terra preta, which made widespread agriculture possible and which may even hold secrets for transforming bad soil in Africa or other areas.

The new work is part of a heated debate about the number of people who lived in the Americas before 1492, documented in a story in The Atlantic Monthly last year. Historians have long assumed that the Americas were sparsely populated, because this is what the settlers of both major continents saw when they arrived.

The 19 settlements, which date to between AD 1250 and 1400, are said to have included cities with populations as large as 5,000. Some of the roads connecting the cities were 150 feet wide, straight as an arrow shot, with large curbs along the edge.

Such settlement was probably made possible by farming on the terra preta soil, which scientists believe was created by the people living there. But researchers don't know whether the soil was a natural byproduct of human waste or if it was part of an intentional fertilizing program for agriculture.

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