Aquellos que hayan leído la novela hallarán que estas crónicas están escritas en el modo de los cronistas de las Indias, los cuales — Bernal Díaz, Cabeza de Vaca, el padre Sahagún, el padre Curbelo de Yaiza con su pluma sobre el papel cuando el cielo estaba abriéndose — sabían que la única manera de ser fiel a la historia es contarla del modo en que alguien pudo haberla vivido. Diez Crónicas, en tributo al castellano escrito de cada época. La novela tiene cinco actos; la crónica documental tiene diez Partes. Dos testimonios paralelos, el literario y el documental, que avanzan hacia el sur como avanza el Río Grande hacia el sur en el desierto: sin llegar nunca, llegando siempre.

In the year that has been given to me to write what follows, in a house in the Texas hill country one hundred and eighty-three leagues distant from the porch in El Paso where my grandfather told me the beginning of this story, I undertook the work of setting down the documentary record beneath the novel I have called PASADOR. The novel is a work of imagination; these are the chronicles of the papers upon which the imagination rests. The ten Parts of the Chronicle run parallel to the five plays of the novel as two parallel scriptures running south through time, the one made of what someone might have said in a room where no one was writing things down, the other made of what was written down in rooms where no one was speaking. Both are true. Neither is the whole truth. Together they are what the family has to give.

What follows is the First Part of the Chronicle.

Es la primera crónica. La isla que la familia llevó consigo, y la isla que dejó de existir.

THE CHRONICLES · PART I

Las Crónicas · Parte Primera

Before the Voyage · Antes del Viaje

Lanzarote · Tenerife · Madrid · ~1700 to March 1730

I · El Escenario

Setting

En aquel tiempo las islas estaban gobernadas desde Madrid y desde Sevilla y desde Cádiz, pero el verdadero gobierno era el del viento que soplaba del África y del agua que no caía del cielo y de la piedra que ardía debajo de los pies de las gentes sin que las gentes lo supiesen todavía.

In the time of which I write the islands of the Atlantic edge had been Spanish for two hundred and thirty years and had been before that Guanche — the kingdoms of cattle-herders and shoreline gatherers whom the Castilian arquebuses and crossbows had subdued between the year fourteen hundred and two and the year fourteen hundred and ninety-six in a war that lasted almost a century and left the surviving population partly absorbed, partly killed, partly hidden into the volcanic uplands where the conquerors did not go and could not have followed had they wished. By the time of which I write the conquest had become memory and the memory had become weather, and the Guanche words for the things of the kitchen and the field had outlasted the swords that had been raised against the men who first spoke them. Gofio, baifo, tagoror, mencey. In the kitchens of Lanzarote in seventeen hundred and thirty the women still used these words to name the things they used every day, and they did not know that the words were older than Spain. They thought the words were Spanish. The words were not Spanish.

The Church had said for two hundred years that the volcano at Timanfaya was sealed by the will of God and would not open. The grandmothers of Lanzarote, who knew the names of the streets the Castilian had given them but also remembered the names the streets had been called before, said that the volcano was the prison of Guayota the evil one and would one day open whether God willed it or not, because Guayota was as old as the island and the island was older than the Church. Both could be true at once, and were, in the way that all things in the islands of the Atlantic edge could be two things at once and neither of them a lie. When Vicente’s grandmother pressed her thumb across the back of his hand that morning in the kitchen — the morning of which I will speak when I come to it — she was making a gesture that the Castilians had not given her and that her own grandmother had given her in turn, and the gesture was older than the language she used to name it.

The family that would board La Santísima Trinidad y Nuestra Señora del Rosario in the harbor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife on a morning of the month of March in the year of seventeen hundred and thirty was the working bone of an island economy that had been thinning for a generation. The sugar that had been the first wealth of the islands had moved to Brazil and the Caribbean a century before, and the wine of Tenerife — malvasía, the sweet amber wine that Shakespeare called the cup of Canary — was not enough to feed all who needed feeding. Hambre y promesa: these are the two words that name the inheritance the family carried out of the islands. Hunger and a promise. The first was old and the second was new and the family was being offered the second as a remedy for the first by a king they would never see who lay in his bedroom in Madrid refusing to be dressed.

The proclamation that the king had posted in the harbors of the four major islands in the year seventeen hundred and twenty-three had offered title and land in the manner of an old debt being paid before it was incurred. It had asked for harness-makers, carpenters, cultivators, small merchants — the middle grade of working people who can read a land grant and argue for it before a tribunal — and not for gentlemen in the manner of court nor for common laborers in the manner of the field. The Travieso of Tenerife were harness-makers. The Curbelo of Lanzarote were cultivators and held a kinsman in the priesthood. The Leal Goraz were carpenters. The Padrón and the Cabrera and the Granadillo were the other things the proclamation asked for. The Crown of Spain in the early eighteenth century was a Crown whose hands were full of paper and whose pockets were empty of silver, and the Crown was paying its debts in promises which the Crown believed it could keep.

The family did not know, on the morning of the dock at four in the morning, that the country of their birth was about to leave them. Six months after the sail filled — no más que seis meses, ni un día más ni un día menos — the ground beneath the southern villages of Lanzarote opened, and the volcano that the grandmothers had been describing for centuries finally answered. By the time the news reached the new continent the family was learning to call home, eleven villages had been swallowed and the island the family had been homesick for was an island that no longer existed in the shape they remembered.

Este periodo es el tiempo antes de aquello. El mundo que la familia llevó a bordo.

II · Dónde Aparece en PASADOR

Where in PASADOR

Y dijo el cronista: “Aquellos que vienen después de nosotros sabrán por estas páginas dónde estuvimos nosotros, y aquellos que escribieron las páginas sabrán por nuestras vidas dónde estuvieron sus papeles.”

The novel returns to this period in three places.

The first is the preface, Una nota sobre lo que es verdad, in which the writer of the novel — the great-grandson of the boy who crossed the International Bridge in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen — names the king’s promise as the originating debt of the entire one-hundred-and-eighty-three-year story. “On a king’s promise of title and land, a family crossed the Atlantic Ocean in seventeen hundred and thirty — seventy days at sea — and landed at Veracruz on the coast of New Spain. The land was barren and the water scarce. A ranch was built stone by stone and a water war ensued. Empires fell and new ones rose in their place. Despite everything, the family lost their title and their land and had to rebuild from nothing. But this became their pride.” The novel begins, in other words, by acknowledging that the period of which this chronicle now writes is the period of the debt that all the other periods would either pay or fail to pay.

The second is the opening of the First Play, the long invocation in prose and verse titled WHAT WAS IN THE AIR, in which the novel calls down the volcanic island and the king’s promise and the hidalgo on the dock at four in the morning. There was a hidalgo on the dock at four in the morning. His father smelled of leather and lanolin. In his feet he carried the whole island — the sleeping fire, the vow the king signed, the name that was not noble until they earned it. The Atlantic does not ask. It receives. The novel makes the claim, in this passage, that the family’s nobility was something not given but earned, and that the earning had been the entire labor of the next three centuries.

The third is the narrative passage of Play One in which the novel moves to Madrid and tells the story of Philip the Fifth’s six-week refusal to leave his bedroom, of Elizabeth Farnese running the empire from the corridor outside the locked door, of Farinelli the castrato singing the same four arias every night for nearly a decade. Spain declared bankruptcy nine years after our sixteen families left the dock. The novel plants the family’s voyage on the side of the Spanish balance sheet that would be empty by the time the next generation could write home, and it does this so the reader will understand from the beginning that the family’s pride was the pride of people who had been promised something the king himself could not afford to give.

This period also gives the novel its deepest layer of sound. El castellano andaluz-canario that the family carried out of Lanzarote — the seseo that made caza and casa into one word, the soft aspiration of the s at the end of every plural, the universal ustedes that displaced the Castilian vosotros, the Guanche kitchen-words that had outlasted the conquest — is the substrate of every Spanish line in the novel. It becomes Tejano in San Antonio in seventeen hundred and fifty. It becomes border-Mexican in El Paso del Norte in eighteen hundred and sixty. It becomes the bilingual register of the El Paso porch in nineteen hundred and eighty, where the great-grandfather will tell the boy the story. It is, in the deepest sense, the voice the novel is written in.

III · Los Sucesos

Events of the Period

Es de saber que entre los años de mil quinientos y mil setecientos y treinta sucedieron en el archipiélago las cosas que adelante se dirán, y todas ellas son verdaderas según constan en los papeles del rey y en los testimonios de los hombres que las vieron, y aún en aquellas cosas que no constan en los papeles, la memoria de las gentes las ha guardado en su lugar.

In the year fifteen hundred — which is to say, four years after the surrender of Tenerife had completed a century of conquest — the Castilian crown organized the seven islands into a province of itself and began the work of populating them with Andalusian and Portuguese settlers, with African slaves, and with the surviving Guanche absorbed into a Christianization that the conquerors believed they were imposing and that the converts believed they were translating. The economy that arose was an economy of sugar, in the manner of the early Atlantic colonies; the slave ships from the Senegambian coast called at Las Palmas and at Santa Cruz with their human cargo; the sugar mills of Gran Canaria and La Palma turned for a century. By the seventeenth century, the sugar of Brazil and Cuba had undercut the Canarian crop, the mills had fallen silent, and the islands had thinned to wine, fish, goat, and the small-cereal cultivation of a volcanic ground that gave back less than it received.

In the year seventeen hundred — the year in which the Habsburg king Charles the Second died in Madrid without an heir — Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis the Fourteenth of France and the seventeen-year-old great-grandson of Philip the Fourth of Spain, was named successor by the dying king’s will. The War of the Spanish Succession was fought against him for thirteen years by an alliance of Habsburg powers; he survived it and reigned as Philip the Fifth. The empire was reorganized under French administrative principles. The long financial crisis of the eighteenth-century Spanish state began, and would continue for the entire century to come.

In the year seventeen hundred and twenty-one, the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo — Don José de Azlor y Virto de Vera, governor of the province of Coahuila and Texas, who had two years before led the expedition that re-established the Spanish presidios in East Texas after the French had expelled them — proposed to the king that four hundred families be transported from the Canary Islands, from Galicia, or from Havana, to populate the frontier of New Spain. The province had been visited by missionaries and soldiers for half a century, but no civil population had been established there, and the French in Louisiana were beginning to be a problem the soldiers could not solve alone. The king approved. The Council of the Indies approved. The papers began their slow crossings of the Atlantic in both directions.

In the year seventeen hundred and twenty-three, the proclamation was printed in Madrid, copied in Cádiz, carried by ship to Las Palmas and to Santa Cruz, and posted in the harbors of Lanzarote, Gran Canaria, La Palma, and Tenerife. It offered to any family willing to make the crossing a grant of land, livestock, an annual stipend of cincuenta pesos, and — most important to the families who answered — the dignity of Hijos Dalgo, persons of nobility. La Corona de España promete a aquellos que respondan a esta proclamación el título de Hijos Dalgo, personas de nobleza, y a sus herederos en perpetuidad. The clause about perpetuity was specific. The grandchildren of the families who answered would be hidalgos. The great-grandchildren as well. The line ran forward.

It took six years for the families to be assembled and the ships to be readied, six years in which the chosen families had become accustomed to the idea that they were leaving and unaccustomed to the idea that they would actually go, six years in which the original plan of four hundred families had shrunk by way of administrative compromise to two hundred and then to twenty-five and then to sixteen, six years in which the original plan of a chain of villas across the province had shrunk to a single villa at the presidio of San Antonio de Béxar. On the fourteenth day of February of the year seventeen hundred and twenty-nine, the final embarkation order was signed. The Travieso of Tenerife, the Curbelo of Lanzarote, the Padrón, the Cabrera, the Leal Goraz, the Granadillo, and the rest of the sixteen families were named.

In the month of March of the year seventeen hundred and thirty — in a morning whose exact day no almanac records but that the family tradition has always called cuatro de la mañana — twenty-five families boarded La Santísima Trinidad y Nuestra Señora del Rosario at the harbor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and sailed. The wind was good. The Atlantic at four in the morning in March in the Canary latitudes was dark and the wind was offshore. The ship sailed at first light into a sea that the families had never crossed but that their grandfathers had crossed twice and their great-grandfathers had not crossed at all.

Six months later, on the first day of September of the same year, between the hours of nine and ten at night — entre las nueve y las diez de la noche, the priest of Yaiza would write, beginning the diary that is the only surviving record — the ground at Timanfaya on the southern part of Lanzarote opened, and the volcano answered after two hundred years of being told it was sealed. Father Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo, a cousin of some degree of the eighteen-year-old bride who three weeks earlier had married Vicente Álvarez Travieso in the parish church of Cuautitlán in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, sat down with a quill and began to write down what he was seeing. The eruption lasted six years. The eleven villages of the southern half of the island were buried. The grandmothers’ country ceased, in the shape they remembered, to exist.

The family was by then five years in San Antonio.

IV · Los Lugares

Places

Y los lugares de esta historia son cuatro: la isla pequeña, la isla grande, la corte donde el rey no quería levantarse de la cama, y el muelle desde donde partió el barco. De cada uno de ellos diré lo que se sabe.

Lanzarote. Easternmost of the seven islands, smallest in population, fierce in landscape. By the year of the proclamation the island held some five thousand souls in small villages clustered around the few fertile basins between the cinder cones, and the great southern half of the island — the malpaís, the badland that the Guanche had called the country that was no country — was a black-stone landscape so featureless that no traveler willingly crossed it. The villages of the cultivated north — Teguise, Haría, San Bartolomé — were the villages of the survivors; the villages of the volcanic south — Chimanfaya, Santa Catalina, Maretas, Mancha Blanca, San Juan, Peña Palomas, Jaretas, Rodeo, Maretilla, Tingafa — were the villages that would not survive the next decade. Water was the central problem of agricultural Lanzarote and had been for as long as Lanzarote had been Lanzarote. The cisterns — aljibes, a word the Spanish had carried out of Moorish Andalucía nine hundred years before — captured what rain came; the vineyards of Geria, which today survive by the trick of planting each vine in a circular hollow scooped out of the cinder and walled with stone, were established after the eruption, in the only way the destroyed agricultural country could be replanted. The vines that produce malvasía today grow from the soil of the disaster.

Tenerife. Largest of the seven islands, most populated, most politically important. Mount Teide at three thousand seven hundred and fifteen meters above the sea and the third largest volcano on Earth measured from the floor of the ocean, dormant in the year of which I write but never thought of as dormant by those who lived in its shadow. The port city of Santa Cruz, where the ship sailed from. The inland city of La Laguna, where the colonial governor sat. The vineyards of the southern slopes that produced vino malvasía, exported across Europe by the Sevillian wine trade and famous enough that Shakespeare’s audience would have known what was meant when a character in The Merry Wives of Windsor called for a cup of Canary. Tenerife was the political and economic center of the archipelago, and the harness-maker Juan Álvarez Travieso lived on its windward coast in a village whose name does not appear in the chart.

Madrid. A city of three hundred thousand souls in the year seventeen hundred and thirty, the political center of an empire that stretched from California to the Philippines, governed by a king who would not leave his bedroom and by a queen who governed from the corridor outside his locked door. The Royal Palace of El Real Alcázar was the king’s principal residence; it would burn in seventeen hundred and thirty-four, four years after the family sailed, and Philip would build in its place the Royal Palace of Madrid that still stands. The summer palace at La Granja de San Ildefonso, in the mountains north of the city, was the king’s preferred residence in his last years. Elizabeth Farnese had built him an Italian garden there in the manner of Versailles, and he walked in it in the rare hours of his recovery from melancholy. Farinelli would be summoned to Madrid in the year seventeen hundred and thirty-seven, seven years after the family had reached San Antonio, and would sing the same four arias every night to a king who heard them as if for the first time every time.

El muelle de Santa Cruz. The dock at Santa Cruz de Tenerife, on a morning of the month of March in the year seventeen hundred and thirty, at four in the morning. The dock is documented in the harbor records — its length, its anchorage, the ship’s draft, the date of the bill of lading. The morning itself is preserved only in the family. Cuatro de la mañana, the grandmothers said, who heard it from their grandmothers, who heard it from the ones who were there. The ship had been provisioned the day before, the families had said their goodbyes the week before, the children had been put to bed and woken in the dark and dressed in the dark and brought to the dock in the dark, and by the time the sail filled, the island was already a shadow against a sky just beginning to lighten. The wind was offshore. The harness-maker carried a tool roll. His son carried a cloth full of gofio his mother had wrapped against the salt air. The bride who would marry him in Cuautitlán six months later carried — but here the chronicle does not know what she carried, because no one wrote it down, and we will not invent it.

V · Las Personas

People

Y de la familia he de hablar primero porque es la familia la que esta crónica conserva, y después de la familia he de hablar de los grandes y de los pequeños del tiempo, porque la familia no estaba sola.

Juan Álvarez Travieso, harness-maker of Tenerife, born in the year sixteen hundred and eighty. His hands smelled of leather and of lanolin in the way that the hands of harness-makers smell, which is a smell that does not wash out and that he had carried since he had been a boy in his father’s shop and that his son would carry forward into the work he would do in Texas, even after that work was no longer making harness. He was fifty years old at the dock — old to be making such a crossing, but not so old that he could not make it. The chart records his death in the year seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, which would mean he lived to be one hundred and nine years old. Es lo que dice la carta. The chart is preserved as recorded. The longevity of Canary Islander men was a documented phenomenon and the documented oldest Canarian recorded by ecclesiastical authorities lived to one hundred and four; whether Juan Álvarez Travieso exceeded that by five years or whether the chart contains an error of five years in either his birth or his death, the family has received the chart as the family.

Catarina Cayetano, his wife, born in Tenerife in sixteen hundred and eighty-five. The chart records her death in seventeen hundred and thirty, the year of the voyage. She was forty-five years old. Whether she died on the island before the dock, or in the harbor before sailing, or in the holds of La Santísima Trinidad in the first weeks at sea, the chart does not say and the ship’s manifest is too incomplete to confirm. She is the only direct family ancestor who does not survive Period I. Her name is preserved. La memoria de su nombre la guardó su nieta, que era hija de su hijo, que era el que se embarcó.

Vicente Álvarez Travieso, born in Tenerife in seventeen hundred and five. He was twenty-five years old at the dock, unmarried, lettered enough to sign his name and to read what was put before him, taught by his father the trade of harness-making since he had been a boy. The seventh family head on the manifest of La Santísima Trinidad. He would arrive in San Antonio on the ninth day of March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one and would be elected alguacil mayor of the new villa, which is to say chief constable for life, and would serve in that office until he died on the twenty-fifth day of January of seventeen hundred and seventy-nine. He would argue water rights for the Canary Islanders before three colonial governments for forty-eight years. He would have eleven children. He would die in his bed at the age of seventy-four. None of this had happened yet on the morning of the dock at four in the morning. Aquella madrugada de marzo era un hombre joven con un rollo de herramientas y la oscuridad delante.

Mariana Curbelo, born in Lanzarote in seventeen hundred and twelve. Eighteen years old at the dock. Daughter of Juan Curbelo — who would in time become mayor of San Antonio — and of Gracia Perdomo Umpienes, and niece or first cousin or some degree of cousin of the priest of Yaiza who would record the destruction of her childhood country. She was on the manifest with her father’s family, the third of the sixteen families. She had been promised to no one. She would be married to Vicente Álvarez Travieso on the eighteenth day of September of the year of the voyage, in the parish church of Cuautitlán in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, when the families had been on the road from Veracruz for six weeks and were halfway to Mexico. Twelve days after her wedding, the volcano of her childhood country would open. She would not learn of it for nearly a year.

Felipe Quinto — Philip V of Spain — first Bourbon king. Born at Versailles in sixteen hundred and eighty-three, grandson of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain, designated successor by the dying Habsburg Charles II in seventeen hundred, fought a thirteen-year war for the throne and won it, and spent the rest of his reign in a slowly deepening melancholy that the medicine of his time called lipemanía and that he himself called the absence of God. For years at a time, from the late seventeen-twenties forward, he was, by intervals, unable to govern. He would not be dressed. He would not be shaved. He would not be heard. Elizabeth Farnese, his Italian second wife, of the ducal house of Parma, governed in his name from the corridor outside his locked door, signed the correspondence, told the ambassadors he was indisposed. She had been telling them this for years and would tell them this for many years more. The empire ran. The silver came up from Potosí and Zacatecas. The fleet sailed twice a year. The Crown’s bankruptcy of seventeen hundred and thirty-nine was nine years and an ocean away from the dock at Santa Cruz.

Carlo Broschi, called Farinelli, born in Andria in seventeen hundred and five — the same year as Vicente Álvarez Travieso. Castrato. Most celebrated singer of the eighteenth century. He sang in London in seventeen hundred and thirty-four, and at his performance Lady Bristol cried from her box “One God, one Farinelli,” which acclamation became proverbial across Europe and is recorded in the diaries of those who were present. He was summoned to Madrid in seventeen hundred and thirty-seven to sing for the melancholy king, and he stayed in Madrid for twenty-five years, singing the same four arias every night to the same king, and the king made him a caballero de la orden de Calatrava. Larga vida al cuchillo, el bendito cuchillo, the audiences shouted in the London theaters before Madrid had heard of him, referring to the surgery that had given him his voice. The knife had been long-lived. The knife had been blessed. The voice that had been made by the knife in a small Italian town in seventeen hundred and twelve cured a king and was paid in titles.

El Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo — Don José de Azlor y Virto de Vera, born in sixteen hundred and seventy-seven, died in seventeen hundred and thirty-four. Governor of Coahuila and Texas in the seventeen-twenties. His expedition of seventeen hundred and twenty-one reestablished the Spanish presidios in East Texas. His proposal of that same year to settle Texas by Canary Islander emigration is the administrative origin of the family’s crossing. He was the instrument of empire that wrote the family into the manifest of a ship.

Padre Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo, parish priest of Yaiza on Lanzarote. The dates of his birth and his death do not survive in any record I have been able to find. He was active as the priest of Yaiza from before seventeen hundred and thirty until at least seventeen hundred and thirty-six, when his diary ends. He wrote without literary ambition, in the chronicle Spanish of an eighteenth-century parish priest of a small village in a remote place, naming the villages of his parish as they disappeared one by one beneath the lava: Chimanfaya el primero, y se cayó como una casa que se derrumba a las pocas horas. Después Santa Catalina. Después Mancha Blanca. Vi la mano de Dios sobre el monte y la luz salió por el agujero. He did not know that his diary would be the only record. He thought he was writing for his bishop. Y se preservó porque era lo único que se había escrito.

VI · La Mesa

Food

Y en la mesa de aquella casa, en aquella madrugada antes del amanecer, había estas cosas que adelante se dirán; y son cosas que aún hoy se comen en las casas de los descendientes, porque la mesa es la cosa que más se conserva cuando todo lo demás se pierde.

The table the family ate from in Lanzarote in seventeen hundred and thirty was the table that two centuries of Atlantic exchange had built, and to eat at that table was to taste the whole Atlantic world in a single bowl. The Guanche pre-conquest staples had survived under Spanish names; the Mediterranean orchard crops had adapted to the volcanic soil; the American crops — the potato, the maize, the chile, the tomato — had arrived by way of the ships that stopped at Las Palmas on the way to and from the Indies and had taken root in the islands faster than they had in mainland Spain. The Moorish-Andalusian inheritance had not gone away; the African slave-trade traffic had left its layer; the Portuguese substrate had left another. La cocina de Lanzarote en seiscientos años había hecho un nudo del Atlántico entero.

The bread of that table was gofio, the most ancient continuous food of the islands — a flour ground from grain that had been toasted first over a slow fire, sometimes wheat, sometimes barley, sometimes maize, sometimes a mixture of all three with the legumes the kitchen had to hand. The Guanche had eaten gofio for fifteen centuries before the Castilians arrived. The Castilians had failed to replace it because it had refused to be replaced. It survived everything: drought, blockade, the rationing of bad years, the long sea voyages of fishermen who needed something that would keep. Mixed with milk it was gofio en leche, the morning meal of the working family. Mixed with hot wine it was the food a fisherman ate at dawn before going out. Hand-rolled with honey it was pella de gofio, the sweet a child could be given as a reward. Carried in a cloth, it was the food that traveled, and the harness-maker’s wife, packing for the dock, would have packed gofio for the journey, because gofio is what working people eat when they do not yet know where they are going.

The accompaniment to nearly everything else was the mojo, a sauce in two persistent variants — mojo rojo, made with red peppers and garlic and vinegar and olive oil and cumin, sometimes with a fragment of bread soaked into it for body; and mojo verde, made with cilantro or with parsley and the same garlic and oil and vinegar. The recipes varied from grandmother to grandmother in the manner of all peasant sauces, and the secret of each grandmother’s mojo was the secret she did not write down. The Canarian mojo would follow Canarian emigration over the next two centuries — to Cuba where it would become mojo criollo, to Puerto Rico where it would marinate roast pork, to Louisiana where it would season the Creole pot, to Florida where it would coat the cracker hog, and to the Texas of the next generation, where it would put garlic and pepper into the foundation of what would, in time, be called Tex-Mex. The garlic-and-pepper signature of the Texas border kitchen of the twenty-first century is the garlic-and-pepper signature of Lanzarote in seventeen hundred and thirty. The grandmother of Lanzarote and the grandmother of Concordia were making the same sauce.

The potato had arrived from the Andes in the late sixteenth century and had taken root in the Canary terraces faster than in mainland Spain, perhaps because the volcanic soil reminded the plant of where it came from. The small wrinkled-skin Canarian potatoes were boiled in seawater — the brine concentrated by the boil until the skins were papered with salt — and the dish was eaten by the working classes every day. Papas arrugadas, they were called. Wrinkled potatoes. They were eaten with mojo. They are still eaten with mojo three hundred years later on the same islands by the descendants of the people who did not leave.

The fish from the morning market — vieja, the parrotfish; cherne, the wreckfish or grouper; chicharro, the mackerel — were fried or grilled fresh or salted for the larder. Sancocho, a stew of salted fish with potatoes and sweet potato and mojo, was the Lenten meal in observant Catholic households and the everyday meal in poorer ones. The Cuban descendant in eighteen hundred and thirty would eat a sancocho that descended through this kitchen. The Dominican descendant in nineteen hundred and thirty would eat a sancocho that descended through this kitchen. The Venezuelan and the Puerto Rican and the Colombian would all eat sancochos that descended through this kitchen. La cocina de Lanzarote viajó.

The cheese on the table was goat — queso majorero from Fuerteventura, queso palmero from La Palma, the locally made quesos tinerfeños from the heights of Tenerife. The goat had been the central pastoral animal of the Guanche and remained the central pastoral animal of the working Canarian family. Almogrote — a pâté of aged La Palma cheese mashed with peppers and oil and garlic — was a workman’s spread, eaten on bread with wine.

The wine on the table was malvasía — the sweet amber wine that was the most celebrated of the islands’ exports, mentioned by Shakespeare and by Marlowe before him, drunk in the courts of England and the taverns of Lisbon. The vineyards of Tenerife and Lanzarote produced wine that was both the elite court drink of London and the working-table wine of the families that made it. El obrero canario y el aristócrata inglés bebían la misma uva.

The orchard and the field gave bananas, figs, almonds — and the Moorish-inherited cinnamon-and-honey desserts of which bienmesabe — it-tastes-good-to-me — was the most beloved. Bienmesabe is an almond cream made with honey and sugar and egg yolks and cinnamon and sometimes a splash of rum carried in by Caribbean trade. It was a feast dish, made for weddings and for the saints’ days, and it would have been served at the goodbye supper the families ate together the night before the dock.

The grandmother whose thumb pressed across the back of Vicente’s hand that morning at four in the morning had likely fed him, the night before, gofio in hot milk with honey, a piece of dried fish, a portion of almogrote spread on bread, a swallow of malvasía against the cold of the predawn. In the cloth she had pressed into his hand for the journey there was more gofio, wrapped tight against the salt air, and almonds in their shells. Llevaba la mesa entera consigo. He carried the whole table with him.

VII · La Lengua

Language

El castellano de aquel tiempo no era el castellano de Madrid. Era otro castellano, el del sur y el de las islas y el del Atlántico, blando en la lengua y suave en las consonantes, con palabras que venían del guanche y del portugués y del árabe y del latín y de los esclavos del África, y todas estas palabras vivían juntas en la boca de la abuela sin que ella supiese de dónde venía cada una.

The Spanish that the family carried out of the islands and onto the ship was the Spanish that the Atlantic crossings had been making for two centuries — not Castilian but Andalusian, and not even Andalusian but Andalusian-Canarian, layered over Guanche kitchen-vocabulary and Portuguese sea-vocabulary and the slow inheritance of Moorish words that all Spanish carries inside itself.

The defining feature was the seseo, the merger of the Castilian sounds /s/ and /θ/ — the z and soft c of Madrid — into a single /s/. Caza (hunt) and casa (house) were pronounced identically. Cielo and sello sounded the same. The distinction had been disappearing in the Andalusian ports for two centuries — in Seville, in Cádiz, in the harbors that fed the Indies trade — and the emigrants to the Americas, who passed through these ports or sailed from the Canaries on the same routes, carried the seseo with them to every territory of the New World. Nunca hubo en América una época en que el castellano hiciera la distinción castellana. The Spanish of the Americas was, from the beginning, the Spanish of the southern ports, and the Canary Islands were one of those ports.

The second feature was the aspiration or omission of the word-final s, and of the s before a consonant within a word. Las casas in the speech of Lanzarote in seventeen hundred and thirty became lah casah or la casa. Estos pueblos became ehtoh puebloh. The sibilant softened or vanished altogether, and the speech acquired a characteristic gentleness — the same gentleness that today defines Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, the coastal Spanish of Caribbean Mexico, and the bilingual Spanish of the Texas-Mexico border. The hard-edged consonantal Spanish of the Castilian court did not cross the Atlantic. The soft-edged Spanish of the Andalusian-Canarian dock did.

The third feature, which would matter most to the novel’s later registers, was the collapse of the Castilian vosotros into universal ustedes. The second-person plural informal of Madrid — vosotros sois, tenéis, hacéis — was absent from Canarian speech in seventeen hundred and thirty and would remain absent throughout the Americas forever after. Ustedes son. For everyone. For the grandmother and the grandchild. For the priest and the harness-maker. For the king’s officer and the family at the dock. The Spanish of San Antonio in seventeen hundred and fifty, of El Paso del Norte in eighteen hundred and sixty, of the Florence Street porch in nineteen hundred and eighty, of the Austin apartment in two thousand and twenty-six — all use the same ustedes, descended without break from the Spanish that boarded La Santísima Trinidad at four in the morning.

The fourth layer was the Guanche substrate — the kitchen-and-field vocabulary that the conquest had not been able to replace because there was no Castilian word for the thing. Gofio, gánigo, baifo, tabaiba, mencey, tagoror, guayre. In seventeen hundred and thirty these words still lived in the everyday speech of the working population. Some of them are alive today, three hundred years later, in the speech of the islands. The Guanche substrate did not cross the Atlantic with the family — the words were too local — but the principle did, the principle that you keep the word for the thing that has no other word. This is one of the principles the novel works by. Te quiero is not I love you. Mío is not mine. Yanaguana is not spirit waters. The principle came across on the ship.

The fifth layer was Portuguese. Portuguese settlement of the islands in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had left a layer of words and inflections that any Canarian sailor or fisherman of seventeen hundred and thirty could be heard to use without thinking. Fechar (to close). Millo (corn). Tuno (the cactus fruit). A long list of maritime words. The Portuguese-Castilian intermarriage and trade had produced a Canarian Spanish that any Lisbon-trained ear would still recognize as half-related.

This is the Spanish — Andalusian-Canarian, soft, sibilant-aspirating, ustedes-using, Guanche- and Portuguese-substrate, the Spanish of the southern Atlantic crossings — that boarded La Santísima Trinidad y Nuestra Señora del Rosario in March of seventeen hundred and thirty. Es el sonido que el bisnieto, trescientos años después, todavía está escribiendo.

VIII · Los Papeles

Primary Documents

Y los papeles que de aquel tiempo se preservan son pocos pero son la huesa de todo lo que vendría después; y de ellos se ha de hablar como del cimiento de una casa, porque sin ellos la casa no se sostendría.

La Proclamación Real, año de mil setecientos y veintitrés. Posted in the harbors of the four major islands by order of King Philip the Fifth. The original is preserved in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, in the colonial-administration section for the colonization of the northern frontier of New Spain. Copies were carried by the families themselves; one such copy is preserved in the Bexar Archives at the University of Texas at Austin. The proclamation specifies the offer of title, land, livestock, and the cincuenta pesos annual stipend that the family in the First Play of the novel references with the slow erosion of belief that accumulates over generations of waiting for a stipend that is never paid. The proclamation begins, in the formal administrative Spanish of the eighteenth-century Crown: La Corona de España, por la presente, ofrece…

La Orden de Embarcación, catorce de febrero de mil setecientos y veintinueve. The final order issued by the colonial authorities of the Canary Islands. Specifies the families chosen by name, and the supplies, and the ships, and the date of embarkation. Preserved in the same Spanish colonial archives. The Travieso, Curbelo, Leal Goraz, Padrón, Cabrera, and Granadillo families appear in this order. The Canary Islands Descendants Association has a transcription. The names of the families their descendants in San Antonio have been tracking for nearly three hundred years.

La Lista de Pasajeros de La Santísima Trinidad y Nuestra Señora del Rosario, marzo de mil setecientos y treinta. The manifest of the ship. The names of the sixteen families and their members. Vicente Álvarez Travieso is the seventh family head. Mariana Curbelo is on the manifest as a daughter of the third family. Catarina Cayetano is — or is not — on this manifest; the chart records her death this year and the manifest is incomplete enough that her presence or absence cannot be confirmed. Held in the Bexar Archives and reproduced in the documentary collections of the Canary Islands Descendants Association and the Bexar Genealogical Society.

El Diario del Padre Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo, mil setecientos y treinta a mil setecientos y treinta y seis. The eyewitness chronicle of the Timanfaya eruption. The diary opens on the first day of September of seventeen hundred and thirty — six months and twenty-four days after La Santísima Trinidad sailed — and continues through the end of the eruption in seventeen hundred and thirty-six. The original is held in the ecclesiastical archives of Lanzarote in the parish records of Yaiza. Transcribed selections appear in Spanish historical compilations of the volcanic disasters of the eighteenth century, and the diary is cited extensively in the geological literature on the Timanfaya eruption — in particular in the peer-reviewed study of Criado, Dorta, Bethencourt, and others published in The Holocene in 2013, which used the diary as a primary source for reconstructing the chronological sequence of village burials and lava-flow advances. The diary opens: “En el día primero de Septiembre de mil setecientos y treinta, entre nueve y diez de la noche, se abrió la tierra en Timanfaya…” — On the first day of September of seventeen hundred and thirty, between nine and ten at night, the earth opened at Timanfaya…

Correspondencia de la Corte Real, mil setecientos y veintiuno a mil setecientos y treinta. The letters between the Council of the Indies in Madrid, the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo in Coahuila, and the colonial authorities in the Canary Islands concerning the Texas settlement plan. Held in the Archivo General de Indias. Standard reference and partial transcription in modern scholarship on the Canary Islander emigration. The administrative paper trail of the family’s crossing — the slow exchange of papers across the Atlantic in both directions that took six years to produce the embarkation of a single ship.

IX · Las Fuentes

Sources

The chronicle above rests on the following sources, in the manner of all chronicles of New Spain — the historical record reconstructed from the documents that survived, and the documentary record set down beside the family memory, with attention to where the two diverge.

Chabot, Frederick C. San Antonio and Its Beginnings. San Antonio: privately printed, 1931.

Criado, C., P. Dorta, J. Bethencourt, J.F. Navarro, C. Romero, and C. García. “Evidence of Historic Infilling of Valleys in Lanzarote After the Timanfaya Eruption (AD 1730 – 1736, Canary Islands, Spain).” The Holocene 23, no. 12 (2013).

Curbelo, Father Andrés Lorenzo. Diary of the Timanfaya Eruption, 1730 – 1736. Primary eyewitness account. Held in ecclesiastical archives of Lanzarote. Transcribed selections in Criado et al. 2013 and in Spanish historical compilations of eighteenth-century volcanic disasters.

Fuentes, Armando Curbelo. The Canary Islanders in Texas: The Story of the Founding of San Antonio. San Antonio: Trinity University Press.

Global Volcanism Program, Smithsonian Institution. “Lanzarote.” https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=383060

Guerra, Mary Ann Noonan. San Fernando, Heart of San Antonio. San Antonio: Archbishop Francis J. Fuery, 1977.

Kamen, Henry. Philip V of Spain: The King Who Reigned Twice. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Lynch, John. Bourbon Spain, 1700 – 1808. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

McGeary, Thomas. The Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Texas State Historical Association. “Canary Islanders.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/canary-islanders

Texas State Historical Association. “Álvarez Travieso, Vicente.” Author: Jack Jackson. Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/alvarez-travieso-vicente

Canary Islands Descendants Association. “Our History.” https://cida-sa.org/our-history/

Bexar Genealogy. “Travieso Family.” https://bexargenealogy.org/islanders/travieso.html

Wikipedia. “Canarian Spanish.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canarian_Spanish

Wikipedia. “Canarian cuisine.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canarian_cuisine

Wikipedia. “Phonological History of Spanish Coronal Fricatives” (Seseo). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seseo

Aquí termina la Primera Parte de las Crónicas. The ship has not yet sailed.

Y aquellos que en otro tiempo hayan de leer estas páginas sabrán que en el momento en que esta página se cierra, dieciséis familias estaban en el muelle, y el sol todavía no había salido, y el viento era bueno, y nadie sabía que el viento sería bueno por setenta días.

I · El Escenario

Setting

Y fue que en aquel año de mil setecientos y treinta partió de la isla un barco con dieciséis familias a bordo, las cuales no sabían lo que les esperaba; y en setenta días de mar y seis meses de camino habrían de cruzar lo que ningún otro habría cruzado de aquel modo en aquel siglo: un océano, un golfo, una jungla, una sierra, un desierto, y una frontera que el mapa todavía no sabía dibujar.

This is the period in which the family was no longer in one place and not yet in another, which is the condition under which most of what the family would later become was decided. The crossing took thirteen months between the dock at Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the morning of arrival at San Antonio de Béxar, and in those thirteen months the family was on water for seventy days, was in Havana for an undocumented number of weeks, was at Veracruz for several more weeks of disembarkation and reorganization, and was on foot for six months on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro across the whole of New Spain from the gulf coast to the northern frontier. In that thirteen months Vicente Álvarez Travieso married Mariana Curbelo in a town neither of their families had ever heard of, and four children were born to the sixteen families along the way, and an unrecorded number of others died, and the volcano of Lanzarote opened beneath the houses of the cousins the families had left behind.

The world that the families were crossing was a world that the Spanish empire had been administering for two centuries and that the Spanish empire was barely able to administer. The Atlantic shipping lane between Cádiz and Veracruz was the spine of an empire that ran on the silver of Zacatecas and Potosí. The route from Veracruz inland to Mexico City was the Camino Real — the King’s Highway — and it had been the spine of New Spain since Hernán Cortés had marched up it in fifteen hundred and nineteen. The route north from Mexico City to the silver mines of Zacatecas and beyond, and beyond Zacatecas to the presidios of the northern frontier, was the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the road that had carried the silver south for almost two centuries and that now carried, in the wrong direction, sixteen Canarian families.

What awaited them at the end of the road was a place that did not yet exist as a town and had been waiting for someone to give it civil shape. The Presidio of San Antonio de Béxar had been built in seventeen hundred and eighteen as a Spanish military post; the Mission of San Antonio de Valero had been built the same year; the Mission of San José had been built in seventeen hundred and twenty. There were soldiers and priests and three hundred converted Coahuiltecan and Payaya Indians whose original names were not in the ledgers. There was no civil population. There was no cabildo. There was no mayor and no councilman and no constable. The frontier had been waiting for the families to arrive and become these things, and the families would arrive on a morning in March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one and become them by the afternoon.

The Spanish that was spoken on the road and on the ship and at the inns of Mexico City and at the presidios of the frontier was a Spanish that the families were carrying west and that the people they met along the way were also speaking, in slightly different versions — Caribbean Spanish in Havana, Veracruz Mexican Spanish in the gulf port, Central Mexican Spanish in the altiplano, Northern Mexican border Spanish at the frontera. The seseo and the soft s and the universal ustedes of the Canaries met versions of themselves all along the road, and the road was the first proof — to the family that was making it — that the Spanish of the Atlantic crossings had become, by seventeen hundred and thirty, one large family of speech with cousins from Havana to Saltillo who could understand each other on the first try.

Este es el periodo del cruce. Trece meses entre el muelle y el final del camino.

II · Dónde Aparece en PASADOR

Where in PASADOR

Y el cronista volverá a estas páginas cuando el lector vuelva a la novela, porque los lugares de los que se habla aquí son los lugares de los que la novela también habla, aunque con otras palabras.

The crossing enters the novel three times, each time with a different weight.

The first is in Una nota sobre lo que es verdad, the preface, in the sentence: “On a king’s promise of title and land, a family crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1730 — seventy days at sea — and landed at Veracruz on the coast of New Spain.” The seventy days are documented. The family memory has preserved the number. The novel takes the number from the memory and the chronicle takes the number from the documentary archives that confirm it.

The second is in the opening of the First Play, in a passage that comes after the dock at four in the morning has been set down and the WHAT WAS IN THE AIR invocation has been completed: “The journey itself was the first proof of what they were made of. Seventy days at sea in the hold of La Santísima Trinidad, sixty-six people in chalk-marked rectangles on the floor. Then Veracruz. Then the Camino Real north through the jungle — ceiba trees seventy feet tall, the howler monkeys announcing the dawn from two miles away, the caiman motionless in the river crossings that the mules refused. Then the desert road to San Antonio. More than a thousand miles of land travel over six months. Some families lost people along the way. Four children were born. By March 9, 1731, when they filed before Captain Juan Antonio de Almazán at eleven o’clock in the morning, they had been in motion for a year.” The novel here records what the documents record: the route, the duration, the births, the captain, the date, the hour. Las cifras son las cifras de los archivos.

The third is the brief but charged mention, also in the First Play: “The Payaya had been in the valley of Yanaguana since before the last ice age ended. The spring there had been rising through the limestone for twelve thousand years. The mission had been there for thirteen. The deed was four days old.” The four days are the days between the family’s arrival on March 9, 1731, and Captain Almazán’s marking out of the villa boundaries on March 13. The novel is making the point — quietly, in the manner of all such points the novel makes — that the family’s claim to the land was new and that the older claim was older than anyone could now remember.

The crossing is also, in a deeper sense, the period in which the novel’s bilingual practice was decided. The family that boarded La Santísima Trinidad spoke Andalusian-Canarian Spanish; the family that arrived at San Antonio thirteen months later had heard the Spanish of Cuba and the Spanish of Veracruz and the Spanish of the central Mexican plateau and the Spanish of the northern presidios, and had begun to hear the indigenous languages those Spanishes were layered over. The sound the family arrived in San Antonio with was a Spanish that had learned, on the road, that there were many Spanishes and that they were all the same language. Esa es la lección del camino. La lengua se hace en el camino.

III · Los Sucesos

Events of the Period

Es de saber que en este año se dieron los hechos que adelante se dirán, y todos ellos constan en los papeles del rey y en los registros de las parroquias y de los presidios; y donde el papel no llega, llega la memoria, y donde la memoria no llega, llega el silencio, que también es parte de la crónica.

In the month of March of the year seventeen hundred and thirty, on a morning whose exact date the harbor records of Santa Cruz preserve and whose hour the family memory has preserved as cuatro de la mañana, the ship called La Santísima Trinidad y Nuestra Señora del Rosario sailed from the harbor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife with sixteen families on board, which is to say fifty-six souls of all ages by the standard reckoning, and bearing supplies for a crossing that the captain estimated would take between sixty and ninety days depending on the weather. The first leg of the voyage — Santa Cruz to Havana — would take seventy days, by the family’s tradition, and the family’s tradition matched the documentary record closely enough that no one had ever disputed it.

In the seventy days at sea the families lived in the holds of the ship in chalk-marked rectangles on the floor, each rectangle a family’s allotment, the rectangles separated by no walls but only by chalk, the children of each family sleeping on the floor of their rectangle and the parents sleeping at its edges. The ration was galleta (ship’s biscuit), tasajo (salt-cured beef), bacalao (salt cod), garbanzos (chickpeas) cooked in olive oil, sometimes a potaje (thick stew) of dried beans and pork, vino tinto (red wine) at a ration of approximately a liter per adult per day, and water that grew progressively worse as the voyage lengthened. The families had brought gofio in cloth bundles and ate it in the early weeks; by the end of the seventy days the gofio was gone and the families were entirely on ship’s ration. The Atlantic crossing in the first decade of the eighteenth century killed, on average, between three and seven percent of the souls in the hold; the Santísima Trinidad lost some unknown number of souls, and the chart does not say whether Catarina Cayetano was one of them or whether she had died before the dock.

In the month of May of the same year — the exact date again not preserved — the ship made landfall at Havana on the northern coast of the island of Cuba. The harbor of Havana was at that date the most important Spanish port of the Caribbean, the assembly point for the annual fleet that carried the silver of New Spain and the gold of New Granada back to Cádiz. At Havana the ship paused for an undocumented number of weeks for resupply, for the discharge of some passengers, and for the assembly of a new escort. Of the original twenty-five families who had boarded at Santa Cruz, nine families remained in Cuba — the families had been authorized at the time of the embarkation to choose between Havana and Texas at the point of arrival, and nine families chose Havana. Their descendants are in Cuba today. The Canarian Spanish that those families carried into Cuba in May of seventeen hundred and thirty is the Spanish that became, over the next two centuries, the Cuban Spanish that everyone now recognizes as Cuban — the seseo, the soft s, the rapid speech rate, the slight singing-up at sentence end — every one of those features is the Canarian feature, descended without break. La hermana del castellano de los Texas es el castellano de la Habana, y son las dos hijas de la misma madre canaria.

In the months of June and July of the same year, the sixteen continuing families re-boarded the Santísima Trinidad with the assembled fleet and sailed across the Gulf of Mexico for the port of Veracruz. The crossing from Havana to Veracruz was short — three to four weeks depending on the wind — but the gulf in summer was dangerous with hurricanes and the fleet did not sail in straight lines. By the time the ship reached Veracruz, the families had been at sea for approximately one hundred and twenty days total, counting the Havana pause as sea-time because they had remained on the ship.

In the month of August of the same year — the exact date once again not preserved in the family chart, though the colonial administration’s records of disembarkation are extant and could in principle be checked — the sixteen families disembarked at Veracruz. The port of Veracruz in seventeen hundred and thirty was the principal Atlantic gateway of New Spain, the place where the silver of Zacatecas went out and where every European who came west came in. The families spent some weeks at Veracruz, recovering from the crossing, gathering supplies for the overland march, hiring the mules and the muleteers who would carry their possessions, and learning their first words of Mexican-coast Spanish, which they found to be a Spanish very like their own with additional words for things they had never seen. Aguacate. Tomate. Chocolate. Tabaco. Hule. The words were Nahuatl — the language of the people whom Cortés had conquered two hundred years earlier — and they had passed into Mexican Spanish without being aware that they had ever been anything else.

In the late summer and early autumn of seventeen hundred and thirty, the sixteen families began the long march up the Camino Real into the interior of New Spain. The route was the standard route of the silver convoys, reversed: Veracruz to Xalapa, Xalapa to Perote, Perote to Puebla, Puebla to Mexico City. The road climbed from sea level to the central plateau at seven thousand feet of altitude; the families went from the tropical jungle of the gulf coast to the cool central highland of the altiplano in a march of about six weeks. The ceiba trees and the howler monkeys and the caiman of the lowland river crossings — all of which the novel records — gave way to the maguey and the nopal and the dry plains of central Mexico. The families saw the great pyramids of Teotihuacán in the distance as they approached Mexico City. They had never seen pyramids. The pyramids were older than Spain and older than Christianity and older than the language they were thinking these thoughts in.

In the month of September of seventeen hundred and thirty, on the eighteenth day, in the parish church of San Buenaventura in the town of Cuautitlán north of Mexico City, Vicente Álvarez Travieso, harness-maker, twenty-five years old, son of Juan and Catarina Travieso of Tenerife, married Mariana Curbelo, eighteen years old, daughter of Juan Curbelo and Gracia Perdomo Umpienes of Lanzarote. The marriage was performed by the parish priest. The witnesses were drawn from the other Canarian families of the convoy. The bride wore — but here again the chronicle stops short of inventing what it does not know. The record exists; the dress does not. Lo que sí está escrito en el papel es que ese día se casaron, y que la fecha era el dieciocho de septiembre.

In the month of September of the same year, on the first day, exactly seventeen days before the wedding at Cuautitlán, the ground at Timanfaya on the southern part of the island of Lanzarote — six thousand miles east of where the bride and groom now stood — opened, and the volcano answered the prayers of two hundred years by speaking. The bride did not know. The bride had not heard. The bride was being given the sacrament of marriage at the moment in which the houses of her grandmother’s village were beginning to disappear under stone, and she would not learn of it for nearly a year. By the time she learned, she would be in Texas, and her grandmother’s village would be twenty meters under lava. El cruce y el volcán pasaron al mismo tiempo. Lo que se ganó y lo que se perdió fueron las dos caras de la misma moneda.

In the months of October, November, and December of seventeen hundred and thirty, and January and February and early March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one, the sixteen families continued north from Cuautitlán along the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro: through Querétaro, through Celaya, through San Miguel de Allende, through the high silver country of Zacatecas and the dry plains of Aguascalientes, through San Luis Potosí, through Saltillo in the province of Coahuila where the new governor met them. Children were born along the way. Some of the elders died. The mules wore down. New mules were bought. The road climbed and dropped and climbed and dropped. The families came into the rhythm of the road, which is the rhythm of all overland journeys: dawn, march, midday rest, march, sunset, camp, sleep, dawn.

In the month of February of seventeen hundred and thirty-one, the families crossed the Río Grande del Norte — the river that would in time, after many other names, come to be called the Rio Grande — at the Presidio of San Juan Bautista, the southernmost Spanish military post on the river. The crossing was uneventful. North of the river was the province of Texas, which was still being administered as part of Coahuila but which was being prepared to be its own thing. The families had two weeks of march left.

In the month of March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one, on the ninth day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the sixteen families — now fifteen, one having been lost or having dropped out along the way; or now still sixteen, the count varies in the records — filed before Capitán Juan Antonio de Almazán, Captain of the Presidio of San Antonio, in the open ground that would shortly be the central plaza of the Villa de San Fernando de Béxar. The captain received them. The captain marked their names. The captain noted the date and the hour and the count. The captain gave them permission to camp. The arrival was thirteen months and some days after the dock at Santa Cruz, which is to say it was longer than any of them had imagined when they had stood at the dock at four in the morning of the previous March.

Habían llegado. El reloj de la familia comenzó a marcar el tiempo de Tejas.

IV · Los Lugares

Places

Y los lugares que la familia atravesó en aquel año eran muchos, pero he aquí los que se han de nombrar, porque sin ellos no se entendería cómo se llegó a donde se llegó.

El Atlántico. Not a place but a state. Seventy days. The hold of the ship was thirty-five feet long and twelve feet wide. The families slept and ate and prayed in their chalked rectangles. The hatch was opened twice a day in good weather and once a day in bad. The smell, the chroniclers of all such crossings tell us, was the smell that no amount of seawater could wash from the clothes, and the families would still smell of it three months after disembarkation in Veracruz. The voyage had a single religious crisis when one of the children of the Granadillo family fell ill in the second month, and the captain — having no priest aboard — christened the child with seawater because the family feared the child would die without baptism, and the child recovered. La sal del Atlántico bautizó al niño y al niño se le dio el nombre de Atlántico, según la tradición de algunas familias, aunque otras lo niegan.

La Habana. A walled city of forty thousand souls in the year seventeen hundred and thirty, the most important Spanish port of the Caribbean, the assembly point for the silver fleet that crossed the Atlantic twice a year. The Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro guarded the harbor entrance; the cathedral was being completed. The Canarian families who arrived in Havana in May of seventeen hundred and thirty found a city already partly Canarian — Canary Islanders had been emigrating to Cuba for two centuries, and the population of Havana included Canarian merchants, Canarian tobacco farmers in the surrounding vegas, Canarian sailors and dockworkers, and Canarian cooks in the fondas of the port. Nine families of the sixteen chose to stay. The seven that went on to Texas did so knowing they had a cousin in Havana for the rest of their lives.

Veracruz. The principal Atlantic port of New Spain, founded by Cortés in fifteen hundred and nineteen on the gulf coast at the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer. The yellow fever was endemic; the heat was constant; the warehouses along the wharf held silver waiting to be loaded for Cádiz. The families spent some weeks in Veracruz acclimating to the heat and the bichos (the insects) and the local Spanish, which they could understand entirely except for the Nahuatl loanwords. The Castillo de San Juan de Ulúa, an island fortress just offshore, was the eye of the empire on the Atlantic.

El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. The road from Mexico City to Santa Fe — fifteen hundred miles long, the longest royal road of the Spanish empire, the route by which the silver of Zacatecas had been carried south for two centuries and by which the families now traveled north. The road ran through Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Durango, Chihuahua, Paso del Norte, and continued north into New Mexico. The families traveled the southern half of it — from Mexico City to the Presidio of San Juan Bautista, where they left the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro proper and turned northeast toward San Antonio. The road has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2010. Mucho antes de ser un sitio del patrimonio, era el camino por el cual una familia caminó al norte porque no tenía adónde más ir.

Cuautitlán. A town twenty miles north of Mexico City on the Camino Real. The parish church of San Buenaventura, where Vicente and Mariana were married on the eighteenth of September, dated to the sixteenth century and was administered by the Franciscan order. The town had been founded by the Mexica (the people the Spanish called the Aztecs) in the fourteenth century and had become a Spanish town under Cortés’s regime. The Franciscan monastery of Cuautitlán still stands. The marriage record of Vicente and Mariana — if it survives — is in the parish archives of San Buenaventura or in the diocesan archives of Mexico City. The chronicler has not yet found it. The chronicler intends to look.

El Presidio de San Juan Bautista. The southernmost Spanish military post on the Rio Grande, founded in seventeen hundred. The families crossed the river at this presidio in February of seventeen hundred and thirty-one. The presidio is the southern threshold of what would become the province of Texas. The presidio had a small civilian population, a mission, and a garrison. The families paused for some days. They were given provisions for the final leg. They crossed the river on the ferry. They turned northeast.

The Plain of San Antonio. The open plain along the Río de San Antonio at the latitude of the spring the Payaya had called Yanaguana, on the morning of the ninth of March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one. At that morning the plain held the Presidio de San Antonio de Béxar (built thirteen years before), the Mission of San Antonio de Valero (built thirteen years before), and three further missions in various states of construction. There was no civil town. There was no plaza. There was no street. The presidio captain, Juan Antonio de Almazán, had been ordered to receive the Canary Islander families and to establish them as the first civil settlement of Texas. The settlement would shortly be named the Villa de San Fernando de Béxar after the Spanish prince who would inherit the throne. The families were standing on the ground that would in the next four days be marked out as their plaza, their streets, their lots. La tierra los esperaba sin saber que los esperaba.

V · Las Personas

People

Y de las personas que en este año aparecen en la crónica, las hay que ya conocíamos y las hay que no, y de todas se ha de decir lo que se sabe.

Vicente Álvarez Travieso, twenty-five years old at the dock and twenty-six by the time he arrived at San Antonio. The harness-maker’s son who would, before the end of the period covered by this Part, become a husband and an Hijo Dalgo. During the seventy days at sea he made friends among the other family heads — Juan Curbelo, who would become his father-in-law and the first mayor of San Antonio; Antonio Santos; Juan Leal Goraz, who would be the first elected councilman. By the time the ship reached Havana they had begun to discuss the cabildo they would form. By the time they reached Veracruz they had begun to discuss the water. By the time they reached San Antonio they had decided who would do what. The seventy days had been a slow election of a government that would govern a town that did not yet exist.

Mariana Curbelo, eighteen years old at the dock and nineteen on her wedding day. The daughter of Juan Curbelo and Gracia Perdomo Umpienes. During the seventy days at sea she had been one of the younger women of the families, helping with the cooking, helping with the children, learning the names of the other young people. By the time the convoy reached Cuautitlán she had been promised to Vicente Álvarez Travieso, and by the time the convoy left Cuautitlán she was his wife. The marriage had been arranged among the families. It would last forty-nine years. They would have eleven children. The eldest of those children, Francisca Xaviera, would be born in San Antonio on a date the chart records but whose specific day has slipped — sometime in the year of arrival or shortly after — and would in time marry the son of the second arriving Spanish family in Texas, and that marriage would be the first convergence of two of the four lines of the family. Pero esto es para la Tercera Crónica.

Juan Álvarez Travieso, fifty-one years old at the dock, fifty-two on arrival. The harness-maker. He continued to make harness in San Antonio. He lived — as the chart records and as the chronicle preserves with appropriate caution — to an age that the chart says was one hundred and nine and that the chronicle thinks was probably closer to ninety. He saw three of his grandchildren born and two of his grandchildren die and one of his great-grandchildren born before he himself died. Su nieta Francisca lo conoció.

Catarina Cayetano does not appear in this Part. The chart records her death in seventeen hundred and thirty, and she is not in the manifest of any of the disembarkations. The chronicle preserves the most likely explanation as a possibility, which is that she died on the ship between Tenerife and Havana, and was buried at sea according to the custom of the Atlantic crossings. The custom was that the body was sewn into a piece of sailcloth weighted with shot, and at dawn the captain read the burial service and the body was tipped over the side. No hay tumba. La tumba es el Atlántico.

Juan Curbelo, father of Mariana, head of one of the leading families of the convoy. He would become the first mayor of San Antonio. He was a man of the older generation, perhaps fifty years old at the dock, who had been a cultivator in Lanzarote and who would become a cultivator in San Antonio.

Gracia Perdomo Umpienes, his wife, mother of Mariana. The chronicle does not know much about her except that she was the mother of the woman who married the harness-maker’s son. The first convergence of the family — the marriage in Cuautitlán — was in some sense her doing, because someone had spoken to her about Vicente and Vicente about Mariana, and the marriage had been arranged. The grandmothers of the convoy made the marriages. The men signed the contracts. Las mujeres construyeron la familia mientras los hombres pensaban que estaban construyendo el pueblo.

El padre Mariano Anaya, the Franciscan priest of the parish of San Buenaventura in Cuautitlán who performed the marriage of Vicente and Mariana on the eighteenth of September of seventeen hundred and thirty. His name appears in the diocesan records of Mexico City for the period. The chronicle records his name because no one else has. Los padres de las parroquias pequeñas son los cronistas verdaderos del mundo.

El Capitán Juan Antonio de Almazán, Captain of the Presidio of San Antonio de Béxar in seventeen hundred and thirty-one. He had been ordered by the Viceroy of New Spain, the Marqués de Casafuerte, to receive the Canary Islander families and to establish them as the first civil settlement of Texas. He had been preparing for their arrival for some months. On the morning of the ninth of March, at eleven o’clock, he received them in the open plain that would become their plaza. He marked their names in the register. He gave them provisional plots of land. Over the next four days he marked out the streets of the villa and the boundaries of the lots and the location of the church. He is the founding administrative figure of the city of San Antonio, and he is recorded in the registers of the Bexar Archives. El nombre del capitán está escrito en mil documentos. Era el hombre que recibió a la familia.

El Marqués de Casafuerte, Don Juan de Acuña, Viceroy of New Spain from seventeen hundred and twenty-two to seventeen hundred and thirty-four. He was the senior administrator of the empire on this side of the Atlantic during the entire period of the crossing. The orders for the establishment of the Villa de San Fernando were issued under his signature. The decree of the Hijos Dalgo — to be discussed in the Third Part of these Chronicles — would also be issued under his signature, in the summer of the year after the family arrived.

VI · La Mesa

Food

Y la mesa de aquel año fue muchas mesas, porque la familia comió en el muelle y en el barco y en la Habana y en Veracruz y en el camino y en los presidios y en la plaza de San Antonio, y cada mesa enseñaba algo nuevo a la lengua de la familia.

The table of the crossing was many tables, and the family that ate at the table of San Antonio in March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one knew foods that the family that had eaten at the table of Lanzarote in March of seventeen hundred and thirty had not yet imagined. In thirteen months the family had been introduced to the cuisines of the Atlantic crossing, of the Caribbean, of the Gulf of Mexico, of the altiplano of central Mexico, of the silver country of Zacatecas, and of the northern frontier. The cooking of the family from this period forward would always be a cooking that knew where each ingredient had come from.

La mesa del barco. Ship’s food on a Spanish transatlantic vessel in seventeen hundred and thirty was a food of preservation. Galleta — the hardtack biscuit, twice-baked, sometimes weevily, soaked in wine or coffee or water before being eaten. Tasajo — salt-cured beef, hard as wood until it had been soaked overnight. Bacalao — salt cod, the protein of all transatlantic crossings, soaked and boiled and eaten with olive oil. Garbanzos — chickpeas, the workhorse legume, cooked in the potaje with whatever pork could be kept. Aceite, vinagre, vino tinto, ajos, cebollas — the four pillars of Mediterranean preservation cooking. The vino ration was approximately a liter per adult per day, and was both a calorie source and a means of making the water drinkable. The gofio that the grandmothers had packed in cloth bundles was eaten in the first weeks; by the second month the gofio was gone. The queso — hard cheese — was eaten through the third month. By the end of seventy days, the families were entirely on ship’s ration, and the families remembered the taste of fresh vegetables only as a thing they had once known.

La mesa de la Habana. The food of Havana in May of seventeen hundred and thirty was a food the Canarian families had never tasted but recognized in pieces. The ajiaco — a stew of tubers and meat — used the yuca (cassava) and the malanga (taro) and the boniato (sweet potato) and the plátano (banana), tropical staples the Spanish had absorbed from the Taíno of the Caribbean and the West African slaves of the sugar plantations. The ropa vieja — shredded beef stewed with peppers and onions — was the ancestor of the dish the Cuban kitchen would, two centuries later, hold up as the most Cuban thing on the table; its origins were already Cuban, but its cousin was an Andalusian beef stew the Canarians knew. The first taste of the chile — the American pepper that had been unknown in the Mediterranean before the conquest — happened in Havana. The first taste of café, the Yemeni coffee bean that had reached the Caribbean by way of the French Antilles and the Dutch traders, also happened in Havana. Mariquitas — green-banana chips fried in oil — were a workman’s snack along the docks. The mojo of Havana was — astonishingly, to the Canarians — their own mojo, with the same garlic and the same oil and the same vinegar, brought across by Canarian emigration a century before, naturalized as Cuban without anyone noticing it had come from anywhere else.

La mesa de Veracruz. The food of the gulf coast was a food of fish and chile and tropical fruit. The dish that would, in the nineteenth century, be called pescado a la veracruzana — fish baked with tomatoes, olives, capers, and chiles, in the style that mixed Mediterranean and American ingredients — was already on the tables of Veracruz in seventeen hundred and thirty, although it did not yet have a name. The families ate huachinango (red snapper) and robalo (snook) and jaiba (blue crab) and the great gulf prawns. The fruits were papaya and mamey and zapote and mango — all tropical, all American, all unknown in Spain. The tortilla de maíz — corn tortilla, the bread of all of indigenous Mesoamerica, made from masa de nixtamal (corn soaked in lime water and ground) — appeared on every table, and the Canarians who tasted it for the first time in Veracruz tasted what would, three hundred years later, be the bread of their descendants’ tables in Texas.

La mesa del Camino Real. The food of the road north was the food of the muleteers, which was the food of the Mexican altiplano: frijoles (beans) at every meal, tortillas with every bowl of beans, chiles asados on the side, carne seca (jerky) for the protein, pulque (fermented maguey sap) or aguardiente (cane brandy) for the drink, café de olla (coffee boiled in a clay pot with cinnamon and piloncillo sugar) at dawn. The families learned in those six months on the road to eat what the Mexicans ate, and they would in time, in San Antonio, build a kitchen that combined what the Mexicans ate with what they themselves had been eating since the Atlantic side of the Atlantic. El Tex-Mex no es una cocina del siglo veinte. Es una cocina del siglo dieciocho que tardó doscientos años en encontrar su nombre.

La cena de bodas en Cuautitlán. On the night of the eighteenth of September of seventeen hundred and thirty, after the marriage at the parish of San Buenaventura, the families of the convoy gathered for a wedding supper. The supper has not been documented in any record. The chronicle imagines, in the manner of a chronicle that admits its imagination, the following: mole in its early form (the elaborated Mexican sauce that had been developed in the convents of Puebla in the previous century) over chicken; tamales of pork and chile wrapped in corn husks; arroz blanco con tomate; frijoles refritos; tortillas; chocolate (the Aztec drink the Spanish had Christianized with sugar and cinnamon) for the toasts; aguardiente for the men; the bienmesabe the Canarian mothers had managed to prepare from almonds bought in Mexico City. The supper would have been the first time in seven months that the family ate at a table set for a celebration. La memoria de aquella cena, si la hubo, no se conservó. Pero la chronicle la pone aquí porque la cena pasó, y porque las cenas de boda son la única cosa que un cronista tiene el derecho de imaginar cuando todo lo demás está escrito.

La mesa del Presidio de San Juan Bautista. The food of the northern frontier was the food of soldiers and missionaries: frijoles, tortillas, carne seca de res y de venado, cabra guisada (stewed goat), café, aguardiente. The families paused at the presidio for some days before the river crossing. They learned the names of the local rivers and the local trees and the local indigenous peoples. The Coahuilteco — the language family of the local indigenous nations — was not a language they would learn, but they began to hear its words in the Spanish of the presidio soldiers. Pinole, comal, chapote, mezquite. The kitchen of the northern frontier was the kitchen they would inherit.

VII · La Lengua

Language

Y la lengua que la familia hablaba en el muelle no era la misma lengua que la familia hablaba en la plaza de San Antonio trece meses después, porque la lengua aprende en el camino lo que no aprende en la casa.

The seventy days at sea were also seventy days in which the Spanish of sixteen Canarian families and the Spanish of an Andalusian-trained captain and the Spanish of a Castilian-trained ship’s officer and the Spanish of various sailors from various Atlantic ports met and rubbed against one another. The Canarians discovered that their seseo was the seseo of every Atlantic port and that their soft s was the soft s of the sailors who had been sailing for Cádiz and Seville and Las Palmas all their lives. They also discovered that there were certain words they used that the mainland sailors did not use, and certain words the mainland sailors used that they did not. The mainland sailors said patata. The Canarians said papa. The mainland sailors said autobús — though this is an anachronism, since the bus would not be invented for nearly two centuries — but the mainland sailors said many things the Canarians did not yet know. The Canarians learned. La lengua de los barcos era el laboratorio del castellano del Atlántico.

The Spanish of Havana, when the convoy arrived in May of seventeen hundred and thirty, was substantially the same as the Spanish of the Canaries — the same seseo, the same soft s, the same ustedes — with the addition of vocabulary the Caribbean had given the Spanish over two centuries: bohío (Taíno for “house”), huracán (Taíno for “the great storm”), batey (Taíno for “village center”), yuca (Taíno for “cassava”), guayaba (Taíno for “guava”), tabaco (Taíno for “the smoked plant”), canoa (Taíno for “boat”). The Canarian convoy learned these words in Havana and carried them onward. By the time the convoy reached Veracruz, these words were ordinary in their speech. El castellano de los Travieso, después de la Habana, era un castellano caribeño.

The Spanish of Veracruz added a layer of Nahuatl loanwords that the Canarians had not encountered: aguacate (avocado), tomate (tomato), chocolate (chocolate), chile (chile), tamal (tamale), atole (atole), cacahuate (peanut), coyote (coyote), jícara (a gourd cup), ahuehuete (the cypress tree). The Spanish of the central Mexican plateau, encountered between Mexico City and Querétaro and Zacatecas, added more: milpa (corn-bean-squash field), metate (grinding stone), molcajete (mortar), petate (woven mat), huipil (woman’s garment), mole (sauce), chinampa (raised field), tlacoyo (a stuffed tortilla). By the time the convoy reached San Luis Potosí, the Canarians were speaking a Spanish that had layered Caribbean Taíno vocabulary over Andalusian-Canarian phonology over Mexican Nahuatl vocabulary. Era el castellano de las Américas en proceso de hacerse.

The Spanish of the northern frontier — the Spanish of Saltillo and Monclova and San Juan Bautista — added one more layer: the Coahuilteco and Otomí and Tonkawa vocabulary that the missionaries and soldiers had learned from the indigenous nations of the region. These words were fewer because the northern indigenous languages were less widely spoken and because the Spanish had not been there as long, but they were there. Pinole (toasted corn flour, Nahuatl in origin but ubiquitous on the frontier), jacal (a rough hut, Nahuatl), peyote (the sacred cactus, Nahuatl), mezquite (the desert tree, Nahuatl). The tortilla was tortilla across all the regions; the gofio the Canarians had grown up with was, the families recognized in the kitchens of San Juan Bautista, the pinole of the north under a different name. Las dos lenguas habían estado haciendo la misma cosa en dos continentes.

The Spanish that arrived at San Antonio on the ninth of March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one was the Spanish that had learned all of this on the road. The seseo and the soft s and the ustedes were intact. The Andalusian-Canarian phonology was intact. The Guanche kitchen-vocabulary was already fading because there were no Guanche objects to attach the words to anymore. In their place were the yuca of Havana, the tortilla of Veracruz, the frijoles of the altiplano, the pinole of the frontier. La familia llegó a Tejas hablando ya el castellano de Tejas, sin saberlo.

VIII · Los Papeles

Primary Documents

Y los papeles de aquel año son menos que los papeles del año que vino después, pero los papeles que existen son los papeles que importan, y se han de nombrar.

La lista de pasajeros de La Santísima Trinidad y Nuestra Señora del Rosario, marzo y mayo de mil setecientos y treinta. The manifest of the ship. Recorded the departure from Santa Cruz on the dock in March and the arrival at Havana in May. Held in the Bexar Archives at the University of Texas at Austin and reproduced in the documentary collections of the Canary Islands Descendants Association and of the Bexar Genealogical Society.

El acta de matrimonio de Vicente Álvarez Travieso y Mariana Curbelo, parroquia de San Buenaventura, Cuautitlán, dieciocho de septiembre de mil setecientos y treinta. The marriage record. Eighteen of September of one thousand seven hundred and thirty. Signed by the parish priest, witnessed by the heads of the convoy families. The original — if it survives — is in the parish archives of Cuautitlán or in the diocesan archives of Mexico City. The chronicle has not yet attempted to retrieve it but intends to. Está escrita en algún papel, en algún archivo, todavía, en español del siglo dieciocho, en una caligrafía de pluma de ave.

El registro de paso del Presidio de San Juan Bautista, febrero de mil setecientos y treinta y uno. The crossing register at the southern presidio of Texas. Records the date of the families’ crossing of the Rio Grande and the count of souls. Held in the Spanish colonial military archives, reproduced in selections in TSHA documents.

El registro de llegada del Presidio de San Antonio de Béxar, nueve de marzo de mil setecientos y treinta y uno. The arrival record at the presidio. Signed by Captain Juan Antonio de Almazán. Records the arrival of the Canary Islander families at eleven o’clock in the morning on the ninth of March. This is one of the founding documents of the city of San Antonio. The original is in the Bexar Archives at the University of Texas at Austin. El papel es viejo. La tinta se ha desvanecido. Las palabras todavía se leen.

Las cartas de la corte virreinal a la corte real, marzo a octubre de mil setecientos y treinta y uno. The correspondence between the Viceroy Casafuerte in Mexico City and the Crown in Madrid concerning the arrival of the families and the founding of the villa. Held in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville and in copy in the Bexar Archives. Includes the order of July 19, seventeen hundred and thirty-one — the Hijos Dalgo decree — that bestowed the noble title on the families. The decree is so important that it will be treated in the Third Part of these Chronicles, in which the documentary archive of the founding of the Villa de San Fernando is given its proper place.

IX · Las Fuentes

Sources

The chronicle above rests on the following sources, in the same manner as the First Part — the documentary record set down beside the family memory, with attention to where the two converge and where they do not.

Chabot, Frederick C. San Antonio and Its Beginnings. San Antonio: privately printed, 1931.

de la Teja, Jesús F. “Indians, Soldiers and Canary Islanders: The Making of a Texas Frontier Community.” Locus 3, no. 1 (1990): 81–96.

de la Teja, Jesús F. San Antonio de Béxar: A Community on New Spain’s Northern Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.

Fuentes, Armando Curbelo. The Canary Islanders in Texas: The Story of the Founding of San Antonio. San Antonio: Trinity University Press.

Guerra, Mary Ann Noonan. San Fernando, Heart of San Antonio. San Antonio: Archbishop Francis J. Fuery, 1977.

Hadley, Diana, Thomas H. Naylor, and Mardith K. Schuetz-Miller, eds. The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain: A Documentary History. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997. Includes documentary materials on the Presidio of San Juan Bautista and the route north.

Ivey, James E. “A Reconsideration of the Survey of the Villa de San Fernando de Béxar in 1731.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 111 (January 2008): 251–281.

Johnson, David R. In the Loop: A Political and Economic History of San Antonio. San Antonio: Maverick Books, 2020.

Mörner, Magnus. Race Mixture in the History of Latin America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967. Background on the linguistic and demographic landscape of New Spain in the eighteenth century.

Texas State Historical Association. “Almazán, Juan Antonio de.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/almazan-juan-antonio-de

Texas State Historical Association. “Canary Islanders.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/canary-islanders

Texas State Historical Association. “San Juan Bautista Presidio.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/san-juan-bautista-presidio

Canary Islands Descendants Association. “Our History.” https://cida-sa.org/our-history/

Bexar Genealogy. “Travieso Family.” https://bexargenealogy.org/islanders/travieso.html

UNESCO World Heritage List. “Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1351/

Wikipedia. “Vicente Álvarez Travieso.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicente_%C3%81lvarez_Travieso

Wikipedia. “Cuban Spanish.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Spanish

Wikipedia. “Mexican Spanish.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Spanish

Aquí termina la Segunda Parte de las Crónicas. The ship has sailed, the wedding has happened, the volcano has opened, the road has been walked, the river has been crossed, and the family has been received by the Captain of the Presidio at eleven o’clock in the morning on the ninth of March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one. The villa does not yet exist. The villa will exist by sundown.

Y aquellos que en otro tiempo hayan de leer estas páginas sabrán que la familia, en este momento, está de pie en la plaza que no es todavía plaza, escuchando al capitán leer sus nombres en voz alta, y que afuera de la plaza el río fluye, y que el río ha estado fluyendo allí desde antes de que la palabra “río” existiese en ninguna de las lenguas que la familia hablaba.

I · El Escenario

Setting

Y fue el periodo más largo de esta crónica, porque duró noventa años, y noventa años son toda una vida y media, y en aquellos noventa años la familia se hizo pueblo y el pueblo se hizo ciudad y la ciudad se hizo tejana, y el rey de España se hizo cinco reyes, y al final el rey de España dejó de ser el rey, y la tierra que la familia había venido a hacer suya se hizo de un país que todavía no se había inventado.

This is the long period — the longest of these chronicles — and in it the family did the work that had been the purpose of the crossing. They built a villa. They built an acequia. They built a ranch. They fought for the water in the courts of three colonial administrations for forty-eight years and they lost the fight and they kept fighting it anyway. They married into other families. They buried their dead in the cemetery beside the church of San Fernando. They saw their grandchildren born in the place they had not yet been able to imagine when they had stood at the dock in Santa Cruz. They saw five Spanish kings on the throne — Philip the Fifth, then his son Luis the First for the eight months before his death, then Philip the Fifth again, then Ferdinand the Sixth, then Charles the Third, then Charles the Fourth, then Ferdinand the Seventh briefly, then Joseph Bonaparte during the French occupation, then Ferdinand the Seventh again — and they outlived the certainty of every one of them. By the time the period ended in eighteen hundred and twenty-one, the family had been in Texas for ninety years, and the king of Texas was no longer the king of Spain because Texas was no longer Spanish, and the great-great-grandson of the harness-maker who had stood on the dock at four in the morning was about to become the alcalde of a city that the United States would buy fifteen years later.

The Spanish empire that had brought the family to Texas in seventeen hundred and thirty was an empire at its high tide. The silver of Zacatecas and Potosí continued to flow up the Camino Real and across the Atlantic to Cádiz. The Bourbon reforms of the second half of the century — pursued most vigorously by Charles the Third, who reigned from seventeen hundred and fifty-nine to seventeen hundred and eighty-eight, and who is remembered in Spain as the best of the bad eighteenth century — modernized the imperial administration and squeezed more revenue out of the colonies. But the empire was already overextended and would, in the second half of the period, begin the slow collapse that the next chronicle would record. The Anglo settlements east of Texas, which began as a French problem and became a British problem and then in eighteen hundred and three became a North American problem when the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, were the eastern pressure that would, in eighteen hundred and ten, fracture the Spanish hold on the northern frontier. The Mexican War of Independence, which began in eighteen hundred and ten and ended in eighteen hundred and twenty-one, was fought against the Spanish Crown and won, and the family — by then in its fourth generation in Texas — was on the side that won.

The town the family had been sent to build became, slowly, the town the family had been sent to build. The Villa de San Fernando de Béxar was a small place by any European measure — five hundred souls in seventeen hundred and forty, two thousand in seventeen hundred and eighty, three thousand by the end of the period — but it was a real town with a real cabildo, real elections, real lawsuits, real marriages, real children. It had the Acequia Madre de San Pedro, completed in seventeen hundred and forty-one, which carried water from the spring of San Pedro through the fields and gardens of the villa. It had the church of San Fernando, whose cornerstone was laid on the thirteenth of May of seventeen hundred and thirty-four and which still stands today, three hundred years later, as the heart of the city. It had a plaza and a cabildo and a cárcel and an alguacil mayor. The alguacil mayor, from seventeen hundred and thirty-one until his death in seventeen hundred and seventy-nine — for forty-eight years uninterrupted — was Vicente Álvarez Travieso, the harness-maker’s son from Tenerife, who had been chosen for the office on the day of arrival and had been kept in it for the rest of his life. Fue una elección de por vida, no porque era costumbre, sino porque era el hombre.

The villa was surrounded by hostility that the documents called by various names — los apaches, los comanches, los gentiles, los bárbaros. The Apache and the Comanche were two of the most successful adaptive responses to the Spanish-Mexican frontier the indigenous peoples of North America had produced. The Apache had been raiding the missions and the villa since before the family arrived; the Comanche, who had acquired the horse from the Pueblo Revolt of sixteen hundred and eighty and become a mounted military power by seventeen hundred and twenty, were a different and more terrifying kind of threat. The villa lost cattle, horses, lives. The villa fortified itself, built walls around the casas reales, kept the women and children inside at night. The frontier was real. Lo que en los libros aparece como “la frontera” era, para la familia, el horizonte donde se podía morir al amanecer.

What the family did inside this frontier was build a future. They had eleven children, then they had grandchildren, then they had great-grandchildren. They married into the other Canarian families and then into the Mexican families that had come up from Coahuila and then into the Spanish families that had come from various parts of New Spain. By seventeen hundred and fifty — twenty years after the dock — the harness-maker’s granddaughter married the son of one of the new Mexican families, and the family became a different family because two families had been joined into one. Esa boda es la primera confluencia. Lo que en la crónica llamaremos la Primera Confluencia. The chronicle keeps the convergences of the lines as the chronicle’s spine, because the convergences are what the family did with the time they had.

Este es el periodo más largo. Noventa años. Cinco reyes. Una guerra de independencia. Cuatro generaciones de la familia. La Primera Confluencia. El Acequia. Las demandas de aguas. La fundación de la ciudad.

II · Dónde Aparece en PASADOR

Where in PASADOR

Y en la novela este periodo está presente en casi todas las escenas de la Primera Jornada, porque la Primera Jornada es la jornada de la fundación, y la fundación dura noventa años aunque en la novela se cuente en menos páginas.

This is the longest period to appear in the novel and the period most central to the First Play. The events of seventeen hundred and thirty-one through eighteen hundred and three — which is the date range stated at the head of The First Play: The Canary — are entirely contained within this Third Part of the chronicle, and the eighteen-year extension to eighteen hundred and twenty-one, which carries the chronicle into the early scenes of The Second Play: The Revolution, is also covered here. The whole of the family’s life inside the Spanish empire is documented in this Part.

The novel’s references are too many to catalogue exhaustively, but the spine of them is the following.

The water war. The novel’s First Play centers on the conflict over the Acequia de San Pedro between the Canary Islander settlers, the Franciscan missions, and the presidio soldiers. The historical conflict ran from approximately seventeen hundred and forty to seventeen hundred and seventy-one. Vicente Álvarez Travieso, as alguacil mayor, brought repeated petitions before the governor in Saltillo and the viceroy in Mexico City. The petitions are in the Bexar Archives. The novel renders one of those petitions in detail, in the courtroom scene at the heart of Play One, where Vicente speaks the line — “El agua no es de los frailes, ni del rey, ni de los soldados. El agua es del pueblo que la cultiva.” — which is not in the documents but which is, in the chronicle’s judgment, consistent with what Vicente was arguing in document after document for almost half a century.

The Acequia itself. The novel makes the Acequia de San Pedro — its construction in seventeen hundred and forty-one, its disputed allocation, its physical presence threading through the villa — the dominant material symbol of Play One. The Acequia is the bloodstream of the villa. The Acequia is also, in the novel, the metaphor for what the family is: the channel cut into the dry ground, the water made to flow because the will of the family made it flow, the as-sāqiya of the Arabic root carried through Moorish Spain and through Canarian engineering and finally laid down in the limestone of Texas. El acueducto es el cuerpo del pueblo.

The first convergence. The novel notes — briefly, in the closing sections of Play One — the marriage of Francisca Xaviera Álvarez Travieso to Francisco Flores de Ábrego y Valdés in seventeen hundred and fifty. The marriage is not given a scene in the novel. It happens between sections. But it is the most consequential event of the period after the founding, because from this marriage descend all subsequent generations of the family — the Flores-Travieso line that would carry forward through the Mexican period, through the El Paso period, through the Florence Street period, to the great-grandson writing in Austin in two thousand and twenty-six. Era la confluencia que hizo que la familia fuera la familia.

The Indigenous ground. The novel returns repeatedly to the fact that the Payaya had been at Yanaguana for twelve thousand years before the deed was signed, that the Coahuiltecan had ranged across South Texas before memory, and that the converted mission Indians whose names were in the ledgers had original names that were not. The First Play does not pretend that the family arrived into an empty land. It is one of the more careful things the novel does. La tierra estaba habitada. Los habitantes tenían nombres. Los nombres no se conservaron. La novela los nombra de todos modos.

The Bourbon era. The novel touches lightly on the Spanish kings — Carlos the Third, in particular, who reformed the empire and expelled the Jesuits and built the Spain that would lose the empire in his grandson’s reign — but the novel’s center of gravity is not Madrid. The novel’s center of gravity is the villa. The kings are weather; the villa is ground.

III · Los Sucesos

Events of the Period

Y los sucesos de este periodo son tantos que un cronista honesto debe escoger; y he escogido los que sin saberlos no se entendería lo que vino después.

On the thirteenth of March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one, four days after the family’s arrival, Captain Juan Antonio de Almazán marked out the boundaries of the Villa de San Fernando de Béxar. The plaza was laid down. The lots were assigned. The streets were named. The site of the church was chosen. The cabildo — the town council — was constituted. The first officers were elected: Juan Leal Goraz as regidor primero (first councilman); Juan Curbelo as alcalde (mayor); Vicente Álvarez Travieso as alguacil mayor. The villa existed administratively before any of its buildings had been built.

On the nineteenth of July of seventeen hundred and thirty-one, four months after arrival, the Viceroy of New Spain, Don Juan de Acuña, Marqués de Casafuerte, issued the decree that the family had been promised in the proclamation of seventeen hundred and twenty-three. The decree was read aloud in the plaza of the new villa by Captain Almazán to the assembled families, in the formal administrative Spanish of an eighteenth-century viceregal proclamation: “Por la presente, los nombrados aquí, y sus descendientes para siempre, son y serán Hijos Dalgo, personas de nobleza, según promesa hecha por la Corona de España…” The fifty-six souls of the sixteen families received titles of nobility. The promise had been kept. The family was now noble in writing. The family had not yet built a house. La nobleza vino antes que el techo.

In seventeen hundred and thirty-four, on the thirteenth of May, the cornerstone of the church of San Fernando was laid. The church — which would in the nineteenth century become the Catedral de San Fernando — would take fifteen years to complete, but the cornerstone was laid on a Wednesday in May with all the families present and the Franciscan friars officiating and the alguacil mayor, Vicente, standing in the second row. The church still stands. Some of the stones laid that day are still in the structure today. Las piedras son las piedras del año treinta y cuatro. Las manos que las pusieron son las manos de la familia.

Between seventeen hundred and thirty-two and seventeen hundred and forty-one — that is, in the first decade after the founding — the cabildo and the missions and the presidio negotiated, sometimes in writing and sometimes with fists, the distribution of the water of the Río San Antonio and the spring of San Pedro. The missions had been building the irrigation works for thirteen years before the family arrived; the family had been given lots that needed water; the soldiers wanted water for their kitchen gardens. The Acequia Madre de San Pedro — the main irrigation channel — was completed in seventeen hundred and forty-one, ten years after arrival. The completion of the acequia did not end the water disputes. The completion of the acequia began the water disputes, because once there was water flowing the question of who owned what fraction of it became urgent and litigious.

Between seventeen hundred and forty and seventeen hundred and seventy-one, Vicente Álvarez Travieso, as alguacil mayor and as representative of the Canary Islander settlers, filed at least eleven separate petitions for water rights before the colonial authorities. The petitions went first to the local governor in Béxar, then to the provincial governor in Saltillo, then in some cases to the Audiencia (the appellate court) in Guadalajara, then in some cases all the way to the Audiencia in Mexico City, and in two documented cases to the Crown in Madrid. The petitions concerned the allocation of water from the Acequia Madre, the priority of the islanders’ lots (the labores assigned to the original Canarian families) over the missions’ farmlands, the rights of new arrivals against the rights of the founding families. The petitions accumulated in the legal archives and are now in the Bexar Archives, in a continuous documentary record that constitutes one of the longest single-individual legal campaigns in eighteenth-century colonial Texas. Vicente lost most of them. He filed the next one anyway.

In the year seventeen hundred and fifty, in the parish church of San Fernando, Francisca Xaviera Álvarez Travieso, eldest daughter of Vicente Álvarez Travieso and Mariana Curbelo, born in seventeen hundred and thirty-one in the first months after the family’s arrival, married Francisco Flores de Ábrego y Valdés, son of a Mexican Spanish family that had arrived in San Antonio some years after the Canarians. The Flores de Ábrego y Valdés were not Canary Islanders. They were a criollo family from the interior of New Spain, with roots in Mexico City and Saltillo. Francisco’s father had come to San Antonio as a trader and had been integrated into the cabildo. The marriage was the first major intermarriage between the Canary Islander founding families and the post-founding Mexican Spanish families of the villa. From this marriage descend every subsequent generation of the family of which this chronicle treats. Esta es la Primera Confluencia. El día de la Primera Confluencia es el día en que la familia se hizo la familia.

In the seventeen-fifties, on a date the chart does not preserve, Vicente Álvarez Travieso founded the Rancho de las Mulas on Cibolo Creek some thirty miles east of San Antonio. The ranch — the first long-distance cattle and mule operation of the Canarian settlers, on a stream that gave the Cibolo region its name — was named for the mules that were the principal animal of the long-haul trade between Béxar and the Gulf coast and the silver country. The grant for the land was issued by the governor in Saltillo. The ranch operated through Vicente’s lifetime and beyond. El rancho fue la primera empresa de la familia más allá del pueblo. Era la prueba de que la familia ya no necesitaba el agua del Acequia para vivir; tenía agua propia, en el Cíbolo.

In seventeen hundred and seventy-six, in his seventieth year, Vicente Álvarez Travieso was elected alcalde of San Antonio for one term — fifteen years after he had stopped being needed in the office of alguacil mayor, he allowed himself to be elected to the higher office. He served one year. He was, by then, the longest-serving public official in the history of the villa.

On the twenty-fifth of January of seventeen hundred and seventy-nine, Vicente Álvarez Travieso died in his bed in his house in San Antonio. He was seventy-four years old. He had been in Texas for forty-eight years. He had spent more than half of those years in the office of alguacil mayor. He had filed petitions for water rights before the governments of two viceroys, four governors of the province, and one king. He had married, raised eleven children, founded a ranch, and seen the first of his great-grandchildren born. His funeral was attended by every family in the villa. Lo enterraron en el cementerio de San Fernando, debajo de las piedras que él mismo había ayudado a levantar.

In the years between seventeen hundred and eighty and seventeen hundred and ninety, the next generation of the family — the children of Francisca and Francisco — came into adulthood. Their second son, Vicente de la Trinidad Flores de Ábrego y Valdez, born in seventeen hundred and fifty-seven, was given the name de la Trinidad in deliberate memorial of the ship his great-grandparents had crossed on. El nombre del barco se conservó en el nombre del nieto. La memoria de la familia era una memoria escritural. He married María Antonia de la Fuente Fernández and had several children, of whom the most important to subsequent history would be the son born on the fifth of January of seventeen hundred and eighty-one, in San Antonio, baptized José Gaspar María Flores de Ábrego y Valdez. This Gaspar would, in the Fourth Part of these Chronicles, become the alcalde of San Antonio under four flags and would die during the Texas Revolution. But in seventeen hundred and eighty-one he was a newborn infant in his mother’s arms in the casa real on the plaza of San Fernando.

In seventeen hundred and eighty-eight, Carlos the Third of Spain died, and his son Carlos the Fourth succeeded him. Carlos the Fourth was a less capable king. The Bourbon reforms slowed. The empire began the period of administrative drift that would, in the next generation, end it.

In seventeen hundred and ninety-one, Francisco Flores de Ábrego y Valdés died in San Antonio. He was approximately sixty-eight years old. He had married into the founding family, raised his children with Francisca Xaviera, and seen the villa transition from frontier outpost to small functioning town. His widow, Francisca, lived another four years.

In seventeen hundred and ninety-five, Mariana Curbelo Álvarez Travieso, the widow of Vicente, died in her bed. She was eighty-three years old. She had crossed the Atlantic in seventeen hundred and thirty as an eighteen-year-old bride-to-be; she died sixty-five years later having seen four generations of her descendants in Texas. El día de su muerte fue el día en que el último testimonio vivo de la travesía se fue. La memoria se hizo segunda mano.

In eighteen hundred and three, on the thirtieth of April, France sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States. The new boundary of Spain in North America was now the boundary with the United States. The eastern edge of Texas became the western edge of the United States. The Anglo-Saxon Protestant North American republic that the Spanish empire had been worried about — but had been worried about from a distance — was now contiguous with Texas. El imperio español tenía un vecino nuevo, y el nuevo vecino tenía menos paciencia que el viejo.

In eighteen hundred and ten, on the sixteenth of September, the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla gave the Grito de Dolores in the town of Dolores in Guanajuato, calling the people of New Spain to rebellion against the Spanish Crown. The Mexican War of Independence had begun. It would last eleven years. The Canarian-Flores family of San Antonio, by then four generations deep in the villa, had complicated loyalties: they were Hijos Dalgo of the Spanish Crown, but they were also Tejanos who had been chafing under the colonial administration for decades, and they were Mexican in the slow sense that all of New Spain was becoming Mexican.

In eighteen hundred and thirteen, on the eighteenth of August, the Battle of Medina was fought south of San Antonio between Spanish royalist forces and an early independence army that included Tejano fighters. The royalists won. The reprisal was severe. San Antonio was occupied. Families were executed. The villa would not fully recover its population for a decade. The Flores family survived because they had not been openly aligned with the rebels, but the villa they returned to in eighteen hundred and fourteen was a different villa than the one of eighteen hundred and ten. Se sembró la inquietud que no se cosecharía hasta mil ochocientos treinta y seis.

In eighteen hundred and twenty-one, in late August, the Treaty of Córdoba was signed and the Mexican War of Independence officially ended. Spain ceded sovereignty over what had been the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The new country — México — included the province of Texas. The family that had crossed the Atlantic on a Spanish promise in seventeen hundred and thirty became, on a date in eighteen hundred and twenty-one, citizens of Mexico. The Hijos Dalgo status the Crown had bestowed in seventeen hundred and thirty-one had no legal force under the new republic. The family kept the name in private; the public record began to call them simply los Flores. Los Hijos Dalgo se convirtieron en mexicanos sin perder ninguna de las cosas que la nobleza les había dado, porque la nobleza nunca había sido el papel: había sido la familia que el papel certificaba.

IV · Los Lugares

Places

Y los lugares de este periodo son los lugares de la fundación, y siguen estando en pie hoy en día, o algunos de ellos; y los que no están en pie, están bajo la tierra de los que sí están en pie, que es otra forma de seguir estando.

La Villa de San Fernando de Béxar. The first civil town of Spanish Texas, founded on the thirteenth of March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one. By the end of the period covered by this Part, the villa had grown from sixteen Canarian families into a town of three thousand souls. The plaza was the center; the casas reales (the official houses of the cabildo officers) lined the plaza; the church of San Fernando was on the west side; the streets ran east toward the river and the Acequia. The villa was contained, in its first decades, within walls that were rebuilt and extended as the population grew. By the end of the eighteenth century the walls had been allowed to fall into disrepair because the threat they had been built against — the Apache and the Comanche — had become a different kind of threat: continuous raiding rather than mass attack, and walls did not stop the kind of raids the villa was now facing.

El Acequia Madre de San Pedro. The main irrigation channel, drawing from the spring of San Pedro and carrying water through the lands of the villa, the missions, and the presidio. Completed in seventeen hundred and forty-one. The first major piece of civil engineering in Spanish Texas. The Acequia — a word the Spanish had carried out of Moorish Andalucía nine hundred years earlier from the Arabic as-sāqiya, “the irrigator” — was, in seventeen hundred and forty-one in San Antonio, putting Moorish engineering knowledge into Texas limestone. The Acequia still flows today in places, though most of it has been buried or paved over in the twentieth century. The fight for the water that flowed in it was the central legal conflict of Vicente Álvarez Travieso’s life and the central material conflict of the Villa de San Fernando’s first half-century.

La Iglesia de San Fernando. The parish church, cornerstone laid on the thirteenth of May of seventeen hundred and thirty-four. Completed in seventeen hundred and fifty. The first stone church in the Spanish settlement of Texas. The walls of the original eighteenth-century structure are still standing inside what is now the Catedral de San Fernando, the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio. The cornerstone was laid by the families who had arrived in March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one. Las piedras se conservan. Los nombres de los que las pusieron también.

Las Cinco Misiones. The five Franciscan missions of San Antonio, four of which had been established before the family arrived and one in the years immediately after. Mission San Antonio de Valero (established 1718, later the Alamo), Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo (established 1720), Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña (established 1731, the year of arrival, on the south side of the villa), Mission San Juan Capistrano (established 1731), Mission San Francisco de la Espada (established 1731 in its San Antonio location after relocation from East Texas). All five missions still stand and are administered as the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2015. In the eighteenth century the missions were the central institution of the Indigenous-Spanish frontier, with their own agricultural lands, their own water rights, their own labor regime drawn from converted Coahuiltecan, Payaya, and other Indigenous peoples, and their own political and legal power that often clashed with the cabildo’s. Las misiones tenían sus propias acequias. Las misiones tenían sus propios labradores. La familia y las misiones competían por todo, y ese conflicto duró todo el siglo.

El Rancho de las Mulas. The ranch founded by Vicente Álvarez Travieso on Cibolo Creek some thirty miles east of San Antonio, sometime in the seventeen-fifties. The first long-distance cattle and mule operation of the Canarian families. The land grant is documented in the Bexar Archives. The ranch operated through several generations of the family. El Cíbolo — the creek named for the bisonte, the buffalo, that had once ranged there in vast herds — was a stream that flowed when other streams did not, fed by springs in the limestone. The ranch made the family’s fortune not in money but in independence. They no longer needed the Acequia. They had their own water on their own land. Era la primera vez que la familia no necesitaba el favor del rey.

El Camino del Bajío. The main road connecting San Antonio to the rest of New Spain, running south through Goliad, Refugio, the Presidio of San Juan Bautista, and continuing into Coahuila and the silver country. The Camino del Bajío was the artery of the family’s commerce. Their cattle went south on it. Their lawsuits went south on it. Their letters to the viceroy went south on it. Their flour and their sugar and their wine came north on it. The road was as much the spine of the family’s economic existence as the Acequia was the spine of its agricultural existence.

La Plaza Mayor. The central plaza of the villa, laid out by Captain Almazán on the thirteenth of March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one. The plaza was — and is — bounded by the cathedral on the west, the casas reales on the north, and various commercial buildings on the south and east. Today it is Main Plaza. The market was held there. The proclamations were read there. The whippings were carried out there. The marriages were celebrated there. The births of the next generation were announced there. The plaza is the same plaza today. The buildings are not the same buildings, but the ground is the same ground.

Madrid. Still the political center of the empire, but increasingly distant from the lived experience of the villa. The court at the Palacio Real de Madrid, rebuilt after the fire of seventeen hundred and thirty-four. Carlos the Third’s reign in particular saw an attempt to bring the colonies under closer administrative control through the intendencia system — Texas was made a gobierno under the Intendencia de San Luis Potosí — but the actual administration of the villa remained local. The kings reigned. The villa governed itself. El rey era una idea. El alcalde era el hombre que firmaba los papeles.

V · Las Personas

People

Y de las personas de este periodo se ha de hablar generación por generación, porque el periodo dura cuatro generaciones, y cada generación tiene su voz.

La primera generación · The First Generation

Vicente Álvarez Travieso (1705–1779). The harness-maker’s son who became alguacil mayor for forty-eight years. The central figure of this period. He filed the petitions, he led the cabildo, he founded the ranch, he sat in the front row at all the funerals and the second row at all the celebrations. He aged into his office. He died at seventy-four in his bed in his house on the plaza, having outlived every other member of the original sixteen family heads. He is the founding father of the family in Texas in a way that no other figure can claim, because he was the longest-serving and the most active and the most documented. The chronicle ends Part III still in his shadow.

Mariana Curbelo Álvarez Travieso (1712–1795). The bride at Cuautitlán who became, over the next sixty-five years, the matriarch of the Canarian families in Texas. She bore eleven children. She buried six of her grandchildren — the eighteenth century was kind to no one. She kept the house. She kept the gardens. She kept the family. She lived to be eighty-three. Era una mujer pequeña que no se cansaba.

Juan Curbelo (Mariana’s father, the first mayor of San Antonio). He served as alcalde from seventeen hundred and thirty-one until his death in seventeen hundred and forty-four. He was the senior figure of the founding generation in the political role.

Juan Leal Goraz (the first regidor, councilman). A carpenter from Tenerife. He served on the cabildo for the rest of his life.

Antonio Santos (a founding family head). The Santos line continued in San Antonio for several generations.

Juana Curbelo, Tomás de la Cruz, and the other mission and presidio figures — the people who appear in the novel’s Dramatis Personae of the First Play. They are documented in the Bexar Archives as having been present at various cabildo proceedings, marriages, and disputes throughout the period.

La segunda generación · The Second Generation

Francisca Xaviera Álvarez Travieso (1731–1761). Born in the first months after the family’s arrival. Eldest daughter of Vicente and Mariana. Married Francisco Flores de Ábrego y Valdés in seventeen hundred and fifty. The Primera Confluencia. She bore children to him until her death at thirty, which was young even by eighteenth-century standards. The cause of her death is not preserved in the chart. Lo que se conserva es la fecha y los nombres de sus hijos.

Francisco Flores de Ábrego y Valdés (1723–1791). A criollo of Mexican Spanish descent, of a family that had come to San Antonio in the second wave of post-founding settlement. He married Francisca Xaviera in seventeen hundred and fifty and survived her by thirty years. After Francisca’s death he remarried and had additional children, but it is his children with Francisca who carry the line that this chronicle follows.

Other children of Vicente and Mariana. Ten more — six daughters, four sons, by various accountings — most of whom married into other founding-generation families. The genealogical research of Alfredo C. Flores traces several of these branches.

La tercera generación · The Third Generation

Vicente de la Trinidad Flores de Ábrego y Valdés (1757–1812). Son of Francisca Xaviera and Francisco. Named for his great-grandfather and for the ship. El nombre del barco en el nombre del bisnieto. He married María Antonia de la Fuente Fernández in the seventeen-seventies. He was active in the cabildo in the seventeen-nineties. He died in eighteen hundred and twelve, two years into the Mexican Independence War, of natural causes.

María Antonia de la Fuente Fernández (1754–1815). His wife. Of a Saltillo Spanish family. She survived him by three years. She raised her children through the chaos of the independence war.

La cuarta generación · The Fourth Generation

José Gaspar María Flores de Ábrego y Valdez (5 January 1781 – 6 September 1836). Born in San Antonio. Great-grandson of Vicente Álvarez Travieso through the Travieso–Flores convergence of seventeen hundred and fifty. At the close of this Third Part of the Chronicles, he is forty years old and is about to become one of the central political figures of Mexican Texas. He will be alcalde of San Antonio four times by the public record and five times by the family count. He will sign the anti–Santa Anna memorial of eighteen hundred and thirty-four. He will offer his goods and beeves to the Texan defenders at the Alamo. He will die during the Runaway Scrape. Pero esto es para la Cuarta Crónica.

Las figuras coloniales españolas · Spanish Colonial Figures

Capitán Juan Antonio de Almazán. Captain of the Presidio of San Antonio. Founding administrator of the villa. He served until approximately seventeen hundred and forty. After his service in Texas he was reassigned to other northern frontier posts. El padre fundador administrativo.

Don Juan de Acuña, Marqués de Casafuerte (1658–1734). Viceroy of New Spain from seventeen hundred and twenty-two to seventeen hundred and thirty-four. Signed the Hijos Dalgo decree of July 19, 1731. Standard reference: TSHA Handbook of Texas.

Carlos III (1716–1788), King of Spain from seventeen hundred and fifty-nine to seventeen hundred and eighty-eight. The Enlightenment monarch who reformed the empire in the second half of the eighteenth century. Expelled the Jesuits in seventeen hundred and sixty-seven. Reformed the colonial administration with the intendencia system. The Spanish king most remembered as having tried to govern well.

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753–1811). Catholic priest in the town of Dolores in Guanajuato. On the sixteenth of September of eighteen hundred and ten, he gave the Grito de Dolores — “Long live our Lady of Guadalupe and death to bad government!” — and began the Mexican War of Independence. He was captured and executed in eighteen hundred and eleven, four years before the war was won by other leaders. His feast day is the Mexican national day.

The Franciscan friars of the five missions. The friars of the eighteenth century in San Antonio were largely from the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Querétaro and the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas. They administered the missions, fought the cabildo over water and labor, baptized the Indigenous converts, and kept the parish records that are now the spine of all the genealogical research of the period. The friars were the chroniclers of the period in a more literal sense than this chronicle is.

Los pueblos originarios · The Indigenous Peoples

The Payaya. The indigenous nation in residence at the spring of Yanaguana at the time of contact. The novel notes that the Payaya had been at the spring for twelve thousand years before the deed was signed. The Payaya were absorbed into the Coahuiltecan mission population in the early eighteenth century and largely disappeared as a distinct people by mid-century, their descendants integrated into the Tāp Pīlam and other surviving Coahuiltecan groups whose modern recognition is one of the longer chapters in this larger story.

The Coahuiltecan. The collective name (Spanish-bestowed) for the dozens of small nations that had inhabited South Texas and northeastern Mexico for thousands of years before contact. The mission populations of San Antonio in the eighteenth century were largely Coahuiltecan. Their original languages are extinct. Their genealogical lines, in many cases, continue. The Tāp Pīlam Coahuiltecan Nation is the contemporary federal-recognition-seeking descendant nation, with archaeological and ecclesiastical evidence of continuous presence in the region for twelve thousand years.

The Apache and the Comanche. The two mobile Indigenous powers of the eighteenth-century Texas frontier. The Apache had been on the southern plains for centuries before contact and had been raiding the Spanish settlements since the seventeenth century. The Comanche, having acquired the horse from the Pueblo Revolt of sixteen hundred and eighty, became a mounted military empire by the second quarter of the eighteenth century and were the dominant power on the southern plains for the next century and a half. The villa fought, traded, made peace, broke peace, and accommodated itself to both. La frontera nunca fue de la familia. La frontera fue de ellos, y ellos lo sabían.

VI · La Mesa

Food

Y en este periodo la cocina se hizo tejana, y la cocina tejana es lo que la familia llevó al norte cuando llegó la hora de ir al norte; pero antes de ir al norte se quedó noventa años en San Antonio aprendiendo a cocinar como cocinaba San Antonio.

The Tejano kitchen of the eighteenth century — the cuisine the family built in San Antonio over four generations of marriage and settlement — was the synthesis of the Canarian foodways the founding generation had brought across the Atlantic and the Mexican Spanish foodways their children and grandchildren learned from the Mexican families that married into them and the Indigenous foodways that the Coahuiltecan and Payaya population of the missions had been bringing to the local table for twelve thousand years. By eighteen hundred and twenty-one, the family had been eating Tejano cooking for ninety years. La cocina tejana es la cocina de la familia.

The bread of this table was no longer gofio. Gofio had survived the crossing and the first generation; it had not survived the second. The wheat had not done well in San Antonio’s climate. The maize had done very well. The tortilla de maíz — corn tortilla, made from masa de nixtamal (corn soaked overnight in lime water, drained, ground on a metate and patted flat by hand or rolled with a bola) — became the bread of the family. The bread of the family that had crossed in seventeen hundred and thirty was, by the time their great-grandchildren were eating it, a bread their grandparents had never seen. La tortilla reemplazó al pan, y el pan dejó de ser pan.

The center of the kitchen was the fogón — the open hearth, lined with stone, with a comal (the flat clay or iron griddle on which the tortillas were cooked) in the center and pots set around the fire on three-stone supports. Beans — frijoles, originally the small dark frijol negro of central Mexico, later increasingly the frijol pinto that became standard on the northern frontier — were on the fogón in some form at all hours. Chiles — poblanos, anchos, guajillos, piquines, and the wild chiltepín that grew on the South Texas brush country — were dried and ground and made into the sauces that turned every dish into a Tejano dish. Chocolate — the Aztec drink, prepared in the eighteenth century with sugar and cinnamon and milk, frothed with a molinillo — was the morning drink of the family at every level of wealth.

The carne asada tradition began in this period. The family’s cattle — first from the Rancho de las Mulas, later from other holdings — provided the beef. The beef was cut thin, salted, and grilled over wood coals. Eaten with tortillas, with chiles, with beans. El asado was the meal of celebration and the meal of ordinary Sundays. La barbacoa — the slow underground roasting of meat in a pit, an Indigenous Caribbean technique that had crossed Mexico and arrived in Texas with the Mexican settlers — became, in San Antonio, a Sunday tradition that has continued unbroken for two hundred and fifty years. The cabrito (kid goat) of the northern frontier joined the beef. The carnero (mutton) of Castile met the cabrito of Coahuila and the two traditions intermarried in the family kitchen as the families had.

The wedding of Francisca Xaviera and Francisco Flores in seventeen hundred and fifty was — like the wedding of Vicente and Mariana in Cuautitlán twenty years earlier — undocumented in its specifics but reliable in its likely shape. The wedding feast would have been: barbacoa de res (slow-cooked beef from a pit dug behind the house, prepared by the men over thirty-six hours from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning); tamales of pork and red chile and green chile, made by the women of three families over two days; arroz con tomate; frijoles refritos; guacamole (avocado, salt, lime — the Aztec dish that had become Mexican and was becoming Tejano); salsa of fresh chile and tomato; tortillas — corn for the working people, flour for the señores who could afford wheat; café de olla and chocolate; aguardiente and vino tinto; bienmesabe and the new dessert of the Mexican kitchens, flan (caramel custard, descended from the Spanish crema catalana by way of the Mexican convents); pan de muerto if the wedding had been near a feast day; piloncillo candy for the children. The wedding would have been a full day. The chronicle has not invented this. The chronicle has assembled it from what the period documents about its wedding meals. Las bodas son la única cosa que un cronista puede reconstruir cuando los documentos guardan silencio, porque las bodas siempre han comido las mismas cosas.

The pan de campo — the cowboy bread of South Texas, a flatbread cooked in a Dutch oven over a campfire — emerged in this period as the food of the vaqueros who worked the Rancho de las Mulas and the other ranches. The vaquero tradition itself emerged in this period — the vaquero was a Mexican cowboy who learned the trade from the Spanish cattle handlers of the altiplano and developed it on the Texas frontier into the form that the Anglo cowboy of the nineteenth century would, in turn, learn from the vaquero. The vocabulary of the American cowboy — lariat, lasso, rodeo, bronco, corral, ranch, chaps, stampede, buckaroo — is the vocabulary of the eighteenth-century Spanish-Texan vaquero, anglicized in the nineteenth century. La palabra “cowboy” es una traducción tardía de “vaquero.”

The cooking developed, over the four generations of this period, into something that no longer remembered being Canarian and did not yet remember being Tejano. It was simply la comida de la casa. The food of the house. The grandmothers passed the recipes to the granddaughters by demonstration in the kitchen, without writing them down, because there was nothing to write down — the recipes were the gestures of the hands. La mano izquierda sobre el comal, la mano derecha enrollando la masa, los dedos sabiendo lo que el papel no sabe.

VII · La Lengua

Language

Y en este periodo la lengua se hizo tejana, aunque la palabra “tejana” no existía todavía como adjetivo de un sustantivo singular; existía sólo como nombre de una tierra. La lengua se hizo tejana antes de que nadie supiese llamarla tejana.

The Spanish of the family in San Antonio over the ninety years of this period evolved into the Spanish that the Texas State Historical Association now recognizes as Tejano Spanish. The TSHA Handbook of Texas dates the emergence of the noun Tejano — as an adjective denoting a person of Spanish-Mexican descent born or raised in Texas — to approximately eighteen hundred and twenty-four, three years after the end of this period. But the language register that the noun would describe had been forming inside the villa for the entire period, generation by generation.

The Spanish of the founders in seventeen hundred and thirty-one was, as the previous chronicles have documented, Andalusian-Canarian phonology overlaid with Caribbean Taíno vocabulary and Mexican Nahuatl loanwords picked up on the road north. The Spanish that the family spoke by eighteen hundred and twenty-one — the fourth generation — was a Spanish in which the Canarian features had become the foundation, the Mexican features had become the everyday register, and the Indigenous features had become the kitchen-and-field vocabulary that no one thought of as borrowed because it had been there since before anyone was alive who remembered when it had not been there.

The Canarian foundation. The seseo remained. The soft s remained. The universal ustedes remained. The Andalusian-Canarian phonology was the spine. Every Tejano of seventeen hundred and ninety-five and of eighteen hundred and twenty-one sounded — to a Madrid ear — exactly like a Canarian sailor on shore leave. La lengua de la abuela canaria estaba viva en la boca del bisnieto tejano.

The Mexican Spanish overlay. The vocabulary and the syntactic habits of central and northern Mexican Spanish were now the everyday register. Ahorita (the diminutive of ahora, meaning right now in a flexible sense), padrino and madrina (godparent), compadre and comadre (co-parent — the godparent of one’s child), órale (an interjection of emphasis and assent), qué padre (how cool), mero (just, right), nomás (just, only), de tin marín, the children’s counting rhyme. These were Mexican before they were Tejano. They became Tejano because the children of seventeen hundred and ninety in San Antonio were learning them from the children of the Mexican families who had married into the Canarian families. La lengua mexicana entró por las bodas.

The Nahuatl substrate. The kitchen vocabulary was largely Nahuatl by eighteen hundred and twenty-one: tomate, aguacate, chocolate, chile, tamal, atole, cacahuate, jícama, jitomate, elote, esquite, mole, pozole, ponche. The agricultural vocabulary was largely Nahuatl: milpa, metate, molcajete, comal, petate, jacal, chinampa, mecate. The Nahuatl words were not perceived as Nahuatl. They were perceived as Spanish, because everyone said them and everyone had said them since the speaker had been a child. La lengua mexica vivía dentro del castellano y nadie se daba cuenta.

The Coahuiltecan and Karankawa and other Indigenous traces. Smaller in volume than the Nahuatl substrate but real. The names of the local rivers and creeks and plants and animals: Cíbolo (from cibolo, the buffalo), Medina (Spanish but with Coahuiltecan-named tributaries), Mezquite (from Nahuatl mizquitl, but absorbed into the Tejano kitchen for the smoke flavor of the mesquite wood that grilled the carne asada). The Indigenous names of the mission Indians — Pajalat, Pakawa, Pasalves, the dozens of small groups absorbed into the mission populations — survived in the ecclesiastical records and in some place names but did not enter the everyday Tejano vocabulary.

The Caddoan trace. The very word Texas — sometimes spelled Tejas in the Spanish documents — came from the Caddo word taysha, meaning “friend” or “ally,” the word the Caddo of East Texas had used to describe themselves to the early Spanish missionaries. By seventeen hundred and thirty-one the word had become the Spanish name for the province. El nombre del lugar venía de una palabra que significaba “amigo.” La familia llegó a un lugar cuyo nombre era una mano abierta. La historia de los noventa años siguientes sería la historia de qué se hizo con esa mano abierta.

The legal register. The Spanish of the cabildo, of the Audiencia, of the petitions Vicente Álvarez Travieso filed for forty-eight years, was the formal administrative Spanish of the eighteenth-century empire — a Spanish whose syntactic conventions had been codified by the Real Academia in seventeen hundred and thirteen and whose vocabulary had been honed by two centuries of colonial paperwork. Sea notorio a todos los que la presente vieren… (Be it known to all who see this present document…). En la villa de San Fernando de Béxar, en el día… (In the villa of San Fernando de Béxar, on the day…). Comparezco ante Vuestra Excelencia… (I appear before Your Excellency…). This register was the register of every legal document the family produced for ninety years, and it was the register the children of the family learned to write at the Franciscan school. The literate members of the family wrote in this register. The illiterate members — the great majority — heard it read aloud and understood it.

The bilingual seam beginning. By the end of this period — eighteen hundred and twenty-one — the eastern edge of Texas was sharing a border with the United States, and the first English-speaking settlers were beginning to arrive in the region under empresario contracts granted by the new Mexican government. Stephen F. Austin, born in seventeen hundred and ninety-three, would arrive in Texas in eighteen hundred and twenty-one — the very year Mexican independence was declared — to take up the empresario grant his father had negotiated. The bilingual register the family would speak in for the next two hundred years was, at the close of this period, just beginning. El bilingüismo empezó con Stephen F. Austin, y la familia estuvo de acuerdo, porque la familia siempre había estado dispuesta a hablar la lengua del que estaba al lado.

VIII · Los Papeles

Primary Documents

Y los papeles de este periodo son muchos, porque la familia gastó noventa años escribiendo papeles; el cabildo escribió, las misiones escribieron, los gobernadores escribieron, los virreyes escribieron, y la familia escribió las peticiones que ahora son la columna vertebral del archivo de Béxar.

El Decreto de los Hijos Dalgo, diecinueve de julio de mil setecientos y treinta y uno. The viceregal decree of Don Juan de Acuña, Marqués de Casafuerte, naming the fifty-six souls of the sixteen Canarian families Hijos Dalgo — Persons of Nobility — by the promise of the Crown. The original is held in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville and in copy in the Bexar Archives. The decree confers the title in perpetuity on the descendants of the named individuals. Cada miembro de la familia que esta crónica trata es hijo dalgo según este papel.

El Plano de la Villa de San Fernando de Béxar, marzo de mil setecientos y treinta y uno. The original survey of the villa, prepared by Captain Almazán in the four days after arrival. Records the dimensions of the plaza, the location of the lots, the names of the assigned families, the streets and the boundaries. The original is in the Bexar Archives; reproductions appear in James E. Ivey’s foundational study, “A Reconsideration of the Survey of the Villa de San Fernando de Béxar in 1731,” published in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in two thousand and eight.

Las Actas del Cabildo de San Fernando de Béxar, mil setecientos y treinta y uno a mil ochocientos y veintiuno. The minutes of the town council, covering ninety years of meetings, elections, lawsuits, ordinances, and disputes. The Cabildo of San Fernando is one of the most continuously documented colonial municipal governments of northern New Spain. The minutes are in the Bexar Archives. Cada decisión, cada disputa, cada matrimonio que el cabildo registró, está en esos papeles.

Las Peticiones de Vicente Álvarez Travieso sobre Aguas, mil setecientos y cuarenta a mil setecientos y setenta y uno. The accumulated legal petitions filed by Vicente Álvarez Travieso over forty-eight years concerning the water rights of the Canarian Islander settlers against the missions and the presidio. Approximately eleven separate documented petitions, with the responses of three governors, two viceroys, and the Audiencia in Mexico City. The petitions are the central documentary corpus of Vicente’s lifelong legal campaign. They are in the Bexar Archives. Si una persona quisiera leer una vida de cabo a rabo a través de un solo expediente, podría leer estos papeles y conocer a Vicente entero.

La Concesión del Rancho de las Mulas, mil setecientos y cincuenta. The land grant issued by the governor in Saltillo to Vicente Álvarez Travieso for the ranch on Cibolo Creek. Documents the boundaries of the grant, the water rights, the cattle allotments, the obligations of the grantee. In the Bexar Archives.

El Acta de Matrimonio de Francisca Xaviera Álvarez Travieso y Francisco Flores de Ábrego y Valdés, parroquia de San Fernando, mil setecientos y cincuenta. The marriage record of the Primera Confluencia. Held in the parish archives of San Fernando Cathedral. The chronicle has not yet retrieved the original but intends to. Hay que buscarlo en los archivos parroquiales. El papel existe. Es necesario encontrarlo.

El Testamento de Vicente Álvarez Travieso, mil setecientos y setenta y nueve. The last will and testament of Vicente Álvarez Travieso, signed shortly before his death. Records his property, his obligations, his bequests to his eleven children, his instructions for his burial. In the Bexar Archives.

Los Registros de Bautismo, Matrimonio y Defunción de la Parroquia de San Fernando, mil setecientos y treinta y uno a mil ochocientos y veintiuno. The continuous parish registers of the church of San Fernando across the entire period. The genealogical spine of the Canarian-Tejano families of San Antonio. These records — held in the parish archives of San Fernando Cathedral and microfilmed for distribution through the FamilySearch Library — are the documentary foundation of the family chart compiled by Alfredo C. Flores. Sin estos libros parroquiales, no habría carta. Sin la carta, no habría la novela.

Las Cartas del Cabildo a los Virreyes, mil setecientos y treinta y uno a mil ochocientos y veintiuno. The continuous correspondence between the cabildo of San Fernando and the viceroys of New Spain. Concerning water, Indian raids, supplies, soldiers, taxes, ordinances, disputes. Held in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville and in copy in the Bexar Archives. El virrey recibía cartas de San Antonio. El virrey no contestaba todas. Las que contestaba están guardadas también.

Los Mapas de las Cinco Misiones, siglo dieciocho. The maps of the five San Antonio missions, prepared at various dates in the eighteenth century. Document the irrigation works, the boundaries, the labor lands, the chapels. Held in various Spanish colonial archives and partially reproduced in the studies of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park.

IX · Las Fuentes

Sources

The chronicle above rests on the following sources, the foundational corpus for the documented history of eighteenth-century Spanish Texas.

Chabot, Frederick C. With the Makers of San Antonio. San Antonio: privately printed, 1937. Foundational genealogical compilation of the founding families.

Chipman, Donald E. Spanish Texas, 1519–1821. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992. Standard scholarly history of the entire Spanish colonial period in Texas.

de la Teja, Jesús F. San Antonio de Béxar: A Community on New Spain’s Northern Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. The definitive modern study of the founding and early development of the villa.

de la Teja, Jesús F., ed. Tejano Leadership in Mexican and Revolutionary Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010.

Habig, Marion A. The Alamo Chain of Missions: A History of San Antonio’s Five Old Missions. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1968. Foundational study of the five San Antonio missions.

Ivey, James E. “A Reconsideration of the Survey of the Villa de San Fernando de Béxar in 1731.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 111 (January 2008): 251–281.

Johnson, David R. In the Loop: A Political and Economic History of San Antonio. San Antonio: Maverick Books, 2020.

Poyo, Gerald E., and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, eds. Tejano Origins in Eighteenth-Century San Antonio. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. Collected scholarly essays on the founding generation and its descendants.

Texas State Historical Association. “Álvarez Travieso, Vicente.” Author: Jack Jackson. Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/alvarez-travieso-vicente

Texas State Historical Association. “Béxar, San Antonio de.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/san-antonio-de-bexar

Texas State Historical Association. “Casafuerte, Marqués de.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Canary Islanders.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/canary-islanders

Texas State Historical Association. “San Antonio Missions.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Spanish Missions.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/spanish-missions

Texas State Historical Association. “Tejano.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/tejano

Texas State Historical Association. “Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Tijerina, Andrés. Tejanos and Texas Under the Mexican Flag, 1821–1836. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994.

UNESCO World Heritage List. “San Antonio Missions.” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1466/

Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Standard one-volume history of the Spanish presence in what became the U.S. Southwest.

Bexar Archives, University of Texas at Austin. The continuous documentary record of San Antonio’s colonial administration. Online catalog: https://briscoecenter.org/research/bexar-archives/

San Fernando Cathedral, Parish Archives. The continuous baptismal, marriage, and burial registers of the parish from 1731 forward.

Family Chart of Alfredo C. Flores (Hall of Honor, El Paso County Historical Society). The compiled genealogical record of the family across all four lines. In the family’s keeping.

Aquí termina la Tercera Parte de las Crónicas. Vicente has died. Mariana has died. The Primera Confluencia has occurred. The Acequia has been built and the lawsuits over its water have been filed for forty-eight years. The Rancho de las Mulas operates on Cibolo Creek. The fourth generation has been born. The Spanish Crown has lost the Mexican War of Independence. The villa is in Mexico now. The next chronicle begins with a young alcalde named Gaspar, and ends with Gaspar dying of fever in a small house east of San Felipe, six months after the Alamo.

Y aquellos que en otro tiempo hayan de leer estas páginas sabrán que en el momento en que esta página se cierra, José Gaspar María Flores de Ábrego y Valdez tiene cuarenta años, está sentado en el cabildo de San Fernando, y está firmando los primeros documentos de la nueva república mexicana con la misma pluma con la que su bisabuelo había firmado los primeros papeles de la villa española.

I · El Escenario

Setting

Y fue que en el año de mil ochocientos y veintiuno la familia se hizo mexicana sin haberse movido de la casa donde había sido española; y en el año de mil ochocientos y treinta y seis se hizo tejana sin haberse movido tampoco; y en menos de quince años la familia tuvo tres banderas distintas sobre el cabildo, y la cuarta bandera ya venía en camino, aunque eso es para la crónica que vendrá después.

This is the shortest period of the chronicles and the most consequential. In fifteen years the family lived under three sovereignties — the last weeks of the Spanish Crown, the eleven years of the Mexican Republic, and the first six months of the Republic of Texas — and at the end of the fifteen years the alcalde who had carried the family through all three sovereignties died of fever in a stranger’s house a hundred and twenty miles east of the city he had governed. The villa that the harness-maker’s son had founded in seventeen hundred and thirty-one and that had been administered by the family in unbroken succession through four generations did not, after the Texas Revolution, govern itself in the same way again. The Tejano families who had held the cabildo for a century became, after eighteen hundred and thirty-six, citizens of a republic in which their first language was now a foreign language and their long-established offices were now the offices of a minority. La continuidad colonial se rompió. La familia no se rompió, pero la continuidad sí.

The Mexican Republic that the family inherited in eighteen hundred and twenty-one was a republic in continual political crisis. Eleven different governments occupied the executive in eleven years. The Constitution of eighteen hundred and twenty-four made Mexico a federal republic on the United States model, with the province of Texas joined to Coahuila as the single state of Coahuila y Tejas. The Mexican federalists believed in local self-government; the Mexican centralists believed in strong rule from Mexico City; the question of which faction would govern the country was unsettled for the entire fifteen years of this period and was, in fact, the question over which Santa Anna would lead his army into Texas in eighteen hundred and thirty-six.

The Anglo-American settlement of Texas, which had begun in eighteen hundred and twenty-one under the empresario grant of Moses Austin and his son Stephen F. Austin, transformed the demographic and political character of the province. By eighteen hundred and thirty, the Anglo settlers in Texas outnumbered the Tejano population by a margin that would, by eighteen hundred and thirty-five, be approximately four to one. The Mexican government’s attempt to ban further Anglo immigration in eighteen hundred and thirty was too late and was, in practice, unenforceable. The Anglo settlers regarded the Mexican government as a distant inconvenience and the Mexican law as something to be evaded; the Mexican government regarded the Anglo settlers as ungovernable and probably treasonous. The Tejano families — whose great-grandparents had crossed the Atlantic on a Spanish promise — were in the middle, holding the cabildos that the Mexican government nominally controlled and that the Anglo settlers were beginning to ignore.

The family in this period was led by José Gaspar María Flores de Ábrego y Valdez, born on the fifth of January of seventeen hundred and eighty-one in San Antonio, great-grandson of Vicente Álvarez Travieso through the Primera Confluencia of seventeen hundred and fifty. Gaspar was forty years old at Mexican independence and fifty-five years old at his death. In those fifteen years he served as alcalde of San Antonio at least four times by the public record — eighteen hundred and nineteen, eighteen hundred and twenty-four, eighteen hundred and twenty-nine, and eighteen hundred and thirty-four — and a fifth time by the family count. He was the political voice of the Bexareños. He signed the anti-Santa Anna memorial of October the thirteenth of eighteen hundred and thirty-four, which was contemporaneously described as “the first strictly revolutionary meeting in Texas.” He was elected to the Convention of eighteen hundred and thirty-six alongside Antonio Navarro, José Francisco Ruiz, and Erasmo Seguín. He fed and provisioned the Texan defenders of the Alamo. He led the Tejano families east during the Runaway Scrape. He died of fever at the home of George Huff, a few miles east of San Felipe, on the sixth of September of eighteen hundred and thirty-six — six months after the Alamo, five months after San Jacinto, two weeks before the harvest he would not see. Murió antes de ver si la república por la que había firmado lo iba a recordar. La república no lo recordó por mucho tiempo. La familia sí.

The Texas Revolution of eighteen hundred and thirty-five and eighteen hundred and thirty-six was not — despite a certain version of the story that has been told about it — a war between Mexicans and Anglos. It was a federalist revolt against the centralist regime of Santa Anna, fought by a coalition of Anglo settlers and Tejano federalists who believed they were defending the Mexican Constitution of eighteen hundred and twenty-four against Santa Anna’s dictatorship. The Tejano fighters at the Siege of Béxar, at the Alamo, at the Convention, and in the Runaway Scrape — Juan Seguín, Salvador Flores, Plácido Benavides, José Antonio Navarro, José Francisco Ruiz, Gaspar Flores, and many others — were fighting under the federalist banner. Only after independence had been declared and the Anglo majority had taken control of the new republic did the Tejanos discover that the new republic had a different attitude toward them than the federalist movement had had. Juan Seguín — who had commanded a Tejano cavalry company at San Jacinto, who had been a senator in the Republic of Texas, who had returned to San Antonio as its mayor after the war — would, by eighteen hundred and forty-two, flee Texas under threat of his life and write his famous memoir from exile in Mexico, calling himself “a foreigner in my own land.” The phrase is the leitmotif of the Tejano experience after eighteen hundred and thirty-six. El extranjero en su propia tierra. La frase que la familia conoció en su propia carne.

Este es el periodo más corto y más violento. Quince años. Tres soberanías. La muerte del alcalde. El inicio de la diáspora.

II · Dónde Aparece en PASADOR

Where in PASADOR

Y este periodo es el periodo de la Segunda Jornada de la novela, La Revolución, casi entero. Los nueve años que la Segunda Jornada cubre son los nueve años que en esta crónica están cubiertos también, y son los nueve años en que la familia perdió a su patriarca y a su villa al mismo tiempo.

The novel’s Second Play: The Revolution — dated in its header as 1781 – 1836, beginning with Gaspar’s birth and ending with his death — is the play that this Fourth Chronicle documents most directly. Almost every scene of the Second Play is set in some part of the period covered by this Part.

Gaspar’s political career. The novel renders Gaspar’s terms as alcalde of San Antonio in several scenes — the swearing-in, the cabildo meetings, the petitions, the increasingly fraught relationship with the Mexican governors. The novel’s Gaspar is the same Gaspar the documentary record preserves: a careful federalist, a long-tenured local administrator, a man whose office had been in his family for four generations and who took the office seriously. El alcalde por costumbre. El hombre que firmaba los papeles porque su bisabuelo había firmado los papeles.

The 1834 memorial. The novel reproduces the central content of the anti-Centralist memorial of October 13, 1834 — the memorial in which thirty-five Tejanos, including Gaspar Flores and his son Nicolás, the Seguíns, the Navarros, and others, protested Santa Anna’s centralization and called for a convention of Texan citizens. The novel takes this document as the moral fulcrum of the Second Play: the moment when the Tejano federalists committed themselves, in writing, to a course that would in less than two years lead to independence. La firma fue el momento en que la decisión se hizo. Antes era pensamiento. Después era hecho.

The Bowie and Seguín scenes. The novel imagines — in the central section of the Second Play — meetings between Gaspar Flores, Juan Seguín, and James Bowie in the weeks before the fall of the Alamo. The historical record confirms that these three men knew each other well, that Bowie had married Ursula Veramendi (daughter of the governor of Coahuila y Tejas) in San Antonio in eighteen hundred and thirty-one, that Seguín served alongside Bowie in the Siege of Béxar, and that Gaspar Flores offered his goods and beeves to the Texan army. The specific conversations are invented. The documented behavior of the three men in the documented relationships of their lives is the foundation. Las conversaciones son ficción. La presencia de los tres hombres en la misma habitación, varias veces, en aquellas semanas, no lo es.

The Alamo and what happened next. The novel does not stage the fall of the Alamo. It is offstage, reported, the way the most consequential events in Greek tragedy were always offstage. What the novel stages is the consequence: Gaspar gathering his family and three thousand sheep, leading them east, dying of fever in George Huff’s house. The death is the close of the Second Play. The novel renders it as the death of a Tejano patriarch who has spent the whole play trying to hold the villa together and who has failed, not through any fault of his own but because the conditions under which the villa had existed for a hundred years had ended.

The Runaway Scrape. The novel takes the documented event of March-April 1836 — the mass evacuation of Texas civilians eastward as Santa Anna’s army advanced — and centers it on Gaspar’s loaded oxcarts, the 3,000 sheep, the women and children he led. The historical record confirms this leadership; Juan Seguín’s memoir credits both Gaspar and the Seguíns with organizing the Tejano evacuation. La huida fue real. Las ovejas fueron tres mil. La fiebre que mató a Gaspar fue real también.

Petra de León Flores. The novel’s Second Play Dramatis Personae includes Petra — Gaspar’s second wife, executor of his estate after his death. The historical record confirms Petra Zambrano (in some records Petra de León) as Gaspar’s second wife, his executor, and the mother of several of his surviving children. She is not a fictional character. The novel uses her name and her documented role.

III · Los Sucesos

Events of the Period

Y los sucesos de estos quince años son tan apretados que un cronista honesto debe pararse a respirar al final de cada año, porque cada año tiene su peso.

In the late summer of eighteen hundred and twenty-one, the Treaty of Córdoba was signed and the Mexican War of Independence officially ended. Spain ceded sovereignty over what had been the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Province of Texas became part of the new Mexican Republic. José Gaspar María Flores de Ábrego y Valdez, forty years old, was reconfirmed in the office of alcalde under the new government. The transition was administrative; the actual conduct of life in San Antonio did not change in eighteen hundred and twenty-one, because the same family was governing the cabildo and the same priest was officiating at San Fernando and the same houses were on the same plaza. La continuidad fue el secreto del pueblo. Las banderas cambiaban; la familia se quedaba.

In the same year of eighteen hundred and twenty-one, Stephen F. Austin, twenty-seven years old, arrived in Texas to take up the empresario grant his father Moses Austin had negotiated with the dying Spanish administration earlier in the year. The grant authorized Austin to settle three hundred Anglo-American families in the province. Austin established his headquarters at San Felipe de Austin on the Brazos River, and the first of the three hundred families began arriving in eighteen hundred and twenty-two. The Anglo settlement of Texas had begun. Gaspar Flores, in the cabildo of San Antonio, received reports of the new arrivals. The cabildo cooperated with the empresario system because the empresario system was the policy of the Mexican government. The cabildo also began, quietly, to keep careful records of who was arriving, where they were settling, and what they were doing. Era la prudencia del alcalde. Era la prudencia de la familia.

In eighteen hundred and twenty-four, on the fourth of October, the Mexican Constitution was ratified. Mexico became a federal republic. The Province of Texas was joined to the Province of Coahuila as the single state of Coahuila y Tejas, with its capital at Saltillo. Gaspar Flores was alcalde of San Antonio in eighteen hundred and twenty-four. He served as the local executive for the new federal-republican government in the city. The constitution of eighteen hundred and twenty-four would, in the decade to come, become the rallying document of the federalist resistance to Santa Anna; the Texas Revolution would, in its early phases, be fought in defense of this constitution, not against the Mexican government as such.

In eighteen hundred and twenty-six, on the date of his marriage that the parish records of San Fernando preserve, Juan Nepomuceno Seguín, twenty years old, son of Erasmo Seguín, married María Gertrudis Flores de Ábrego, who was either Gaspar’s relative by direct cousinage or by a more distant kinship that the Alfredo C. Flores chart records as connected but does not specify exactly. The wedding witness was Gaspar Flores. The marriage joined the Seguín family — politically the most active Tejano family of the Mexican period — with the Flores family — administratively the most established Tejano family of the colonial period. The political alliance that the marriage cemented would carry through the rest of the period and into the Republic of Texas. La familia se hizo amigos de los Seguín porque la familia siempre había sido amiga de los Seguín. La boda fue el contrato.

In eighteen hundred and twenty-nine, Gaspar Flores served his third documented term as alcalde of San Antonio. The cabildo dealt that year with disputes over Anglo settlement east of the Brazos, with raids by the Comanche on the cattle herds, with a smallpox outbreak that killed thirty-seven souls in the villa, and with the routine business of marriage records, land transfers, and tax collection. El alcalde firmó muchos papeles. Cada papel era una decisión.

In eighteen hundred and thirty, the Mexican government passed the Law of April 6, which banned further Anglo immigration to Texas and required all existing Anglo settlers to comply with Mexican customs law (including the abolition of slavery, which the Anglo settlers in Texas had been illegally maintaining). The law was unenforceable and was widely violated. It also produced, among the Anglo settlement, the conviction that the Mexican government was hostile to its interests. The next five years would intensify this conviction.

In eighteen hundred and thirty-three, Antonio López de Santa Anna was elected President of Mexico. He had been elected as a federalist. He governed as a centralist. By eighteen hundred and thirty-four he had dissolved the federal Congress, suspended the Constitution of eighteen hundred and twenty-four, and was governing by decree. The federalist opposition — both in central Mexico and in the northern states — began to organize.

On the thirteenth of October of eighteen hundred and thirty-four, in San Antonio de Béxar, thirty-five Tejano federalists signed a memorial protesting Santa Anna’s dictatorial actions and calling for a convention of Texan citizens to be held on the fifteenth of November of that year. The signers included Erasmo Seguín and Juan Nepomuceno Seguín; José Gaspar Flores and his son José Nicolás Flores; Luciano and José Antonio Navarro; Salvador Flores (a relative); and the other federalist leaders of the Bexareño community. The contemporary newspaper El Mexicano described the meeting as “the first strictly revolutionary meeting in Texas.” The memorial is in the Bexar Archives and in copy in the Texas State Library. The chronicler is signing his name to the family’s commitment in the same hand his great-grandfather had used to sign water rights petitions, sixty years before, in the same villa.

In eighteen hundred and thirty-five, in the autumn, the Texas Revolution began with skirmishes at Gonzales (the “Come and Take It” cannon affair, October 2) and the Siege of Béxar. The siege ran from October to December of eighteen hundred and thirty-five. Tejano fighters — including a company under Juan Seguín and another under Salvador Flores — fought alongside Anglo Texan volunteers under Stephen F. Austin and Edward Burleson. General Martín Perfecto de Cos, the Mexican commander, surrendered San Antonio on the ninth of December. The Texans took control of the city. Gaspar Flores offered his goods, his groceries, and his beeves to the Texan defenders. The phrase is in the contemporary records.

On the first of February of eighteen hundred and thirty-six, the citizens of Béxar elected four delegates to the Convention of 1836 that would meet at Washington-on-the-Brazos: José Antonio Navarro, José Francisco Ruiz, Erasmo Seguín, and José Gaspar Flores. The election was a Tejano statement. The four delegates would meet with the Anglo delegates at Washington-on-the-Brazos in early March and would, on the second of March, sign the Texas Declaration of Independence. De los cuatro firmantes tejanos del documento que vendría, tres eran de la familia o de la familia política.

On the twenty-third of February of eighteen hundred and thirty-six, Santa Anna’s army arrived at San Antonio. The Texan garrison — approximately one hundred and eighty-five men, under William B. Travis, James Bowie, and Davy Crockett — retreated into the Mission of San Antonio de Valero, which had been fortified and was now being called the Alamo. The siege lasted thirteen days. Gaspar Flores had by then left San Antonio to attend the Convention. Juan Seguín had been at the Alamo for the early days of the siege but had been sent out as a courier on February 25 to seek reinforcements from Goliad. The reinforcements did not come.

On the sixth of March of eighteen hundred and thirty-six, before dawn, the Alamo fell. All of the defenders were killed. Bowie, Travis, Crockett, the rest. Gaspar Flores’s relative Toribio Losoya was among the Tejano defenders who died inside the walls. The bodies were burned by Santa Anna’s order. The smoke rose over San Antonio for two days. Las cenizas cayeron sobre la plaza. La familia las vio caer.

On the second of March of eighteen hundred and thirty-six, four days before the Alamo fell, the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos had declared Texas an independent republic. Gaspar Flores’s signature is on the convention rolls. The Declaration of Independence itself was signed on March 2; the Convention continued in session through March 17, writing the Constitution of the Republic of Texas and electing the first interim government.

In March and April of eighteen hundred and thirty-six, as Santa Anna’s army advanced eastward from San Antonio after the Alamo and Goliad (where another massacre occurred on March 27), the Runaway Scrape — the mass civilian evacuation — began. Gaspar Flores and Juan Seguín took charge of organizing the Tejano civilian evacuation from the Béxar region. According to Seguín’s later memoir, the evacuation involved “loaded oxcarts and three thousand sheep,” and was directed eastward toward Nacogdoches and the Louisiana border. The route was difficult, the weather was bad, the evacuees were exposed to disease and exhaustion. Children were born along the way. Several elderly evacuees died on the road. Era la huida. La familia caminaba en la misma dirección en que su bisabuelo había caminado hacia adelante un siglo antes. Solo que ahora caminaba hacia atrás.

On the twenty-first of April of eighteen hundred and thirty-six, at the Battle of San Jacinto, Sam Houston’s Texan army surprised and routed Santa Anna’s force. The battle lasted eighteen minutes. Santa Anna was captured the next day. Juan Seguín’s Tejano cavalry company — Company A of the Texan army — participated in the battle. The Republic of Texas had won its independence. The Runaway Scrape ended. The evacuees began to return to their homes. Pero algunos no llegaron.

On the sixth of September of eighteen hundred and thirty-six, José Gaspar María Flores de Ábrego y Valdez, fifty-five years old, alcalde of San Antonio under three sovereignties, signer of the anti-Centralist memorial of eighteen hundred and thirty-four, delegate to the Convention of 1836, organizer of the Runaway Scrape, great-grandson of Vicente Álvarez Travieso, died of fever at the home of George Huff a few miles east of San Felipe. He had been on his way back to San Antonio with his family and the survivors of the evacuation. The fever was endemic on the lower Brazos that summer; many of the returning evacuees were stricken. Several died. Gaspar was the most prominent of the dead. Murió en la casa de un extraño anglosajón, en una cama prestada, con su esposa Petra y su hijo Nicolás presentes, según la tradición de la familia, que en este punto se ha de creer porque no hay otra fuente que la confirme ni la desmienta.

His funeral was held in San Felipe — not in San Antonio, because the body could not be transported back in the September heat. Petra de León Flores was appointed executor of his estate. The estate was substantial: the houses in San Antonio, the lots along the Acequia, fractional interests in several ranches, livestock, hardware, a library of Spanish legal texts that his grandfather Vicente de la Trinidad had collected. The estate would take three years to settle. La familia no se reuniría completamente en el cabildo de San Antonio nunca más.

In late autumn of eighteen hundred and thirty-six, the surviving members of the family returned to San Antonio. The villa was occupied by the new Republic of Texas government. The cabildo was now an Anglo-dominated council. The Spanish-speaking population of the villa had been reduced by a third — through evacuation, disease, and emigration to Mexico — and the Anglo population was rising. La familia volvió a la villa. La villa había vuelto sin la familia.

IV · Los Lugares

Places

Y los lugares de este periodo se han de nombrar con cuidado, porque algunos siguen siendo lugares y otros han desaparecido, y los que han desaparecido son los que más importan, porque la desaparición es lo que la familia ha de recordar.

San Antonio de Béxar. Still the central place. By eighteen hundred and thirty-five the villa had a population of approximately two thousand five hundred souls, of whom approximately two thousand were Tejano and the balance were Anglo, Mexican-from-the-interior, mission Indian, and free black. The plaza was the same plaza. The Acequia still flowed. The church of San Fernando still stood. By the end of the period the population had been reduced to perhaps one thousand five hundred — the war, the disease, the emigration. The villa was much diminished. San Antonio tardó treinta años en volver a tener la población que tenía en mil ochocientos y treinta y cinco.

The Mission of San Antonio de Valero · The Alamo. Founded in 1718 as a Franciscan mission, secularized in 1793, occupied as a Spanish military post (and called by the soldiers the Alamo, after the cottonwood trees — álamos — that grew near it), used by Mexican troops and then by Texan rebels. From February 23 to March 6, 1836, the besieged fortress. After the battle, the burnt walls and the ash and the smoke that hung over San Antonio for days. The building still stands. It is now the most visited historic site in Texas. The Tāp Pīlam Coahuiltecan Nation has been pursuing a legal claim to the burial ground that underlies the Alamo plaza for two decades — the mission cemetery contains the remains of mission Indians whose descendants are still alive. El sitio es de todos los muertos que están enterrados allí, no solo de los que murieron en la batalla.

San Felipe de Austin. The seat of Stephen F. Austin’s empresario colony on the Brazos River, founded in eighteen hundred and twenty-three. The administrative center of Anglo Texas during the colonial period. The town was burned by retreating Texan forces on March 30, 1836, to deny it to Santa Anna’s advancing army. A small portion was rebuilt after the war. The settlement never recovered its pre-war prominence. The town of San Felipe today preserves only fragments of the original site. La casa de George Huff, donde Gaspar murió, estaba unas pocas millas al este. La casa ya no existe.

Washington-on-the-Brazos. A small town on the Brazos River where the Convention of 1836 met from the first of March through the seventeenth of March. The Texas Declaration of Independence was signed there on the second of March. The Constitution of the Republic of Texas was written there. The town is preserved today as a Texas State Historic Site. Allí firmaron los cuatro delegados de Béxar la Declaración. El nombre de Gaspar está en los rollos.

The Alamo Plaza. The plaza in front of the Mission of San Antonio de Valero. After the burning of the bodies on the night of March 6 and the day of March 7, eighteen hundred and thirty-six, the ash was thick on the ground for weeks. The wind from the south carried the smell into the city for days. La plaza estuvo gris durante semanas. Los niños no jugaban allí.

The Brazos River. The major river of central Texas, running south from the high plains to the Gulf coast. The river was the central artery of the Anglo settlement (Austin’s colonies were along the lower Brazos). The river was also the route of the Runaway Scrape — the evacuees moved along its valley toward Louisiana. The Mexican army crossed it in pursuit of Houston’s forces. San Jacinto was fought near its mouth, where the Brazos joined the Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River in the marshy lowlands east of present-day Houston.

The Plain of San Jacinto. The marshy lowlands at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou, the San Jacinto River, and Galveston Bay, on which the Battle of San Jacinto was fought on the twenty-first of April, eighteen hundred and thirty-six. The battlefield is preserved as the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site. The Tejano cavalry company under Juan Seguín fought on the Texan left flank. The battle began at four in the afternoon and was effectively over in eighteen minutes. Texan losses were nine killed; Mexican losses were six hundred killed, three hundred wounded, and seven hundred and thirty captured. Era el final militar de la revolución. El final político vino después.

V · Las Personas

People

Y de las personas de este periodo se ha de hablar con cuidado, porque algunas son las personas que la familia siempre ha de recordar, y otras son las personas que la familia ha de recordar con menos amor, y de ambas se ha de decir lo que se sabe.

La familia

José Gaspar María Flores de Ábrego y Valdez (5 January 1781 – 6 September 1836). The central figure of this Part. Great-grandson of Vicente Álvarez Travieso through the Travieso–Flores convergence of seventeen hundred and fifty. Alcalde of San Antonio in eighteen hundred and nineteen, twenty-four, twenty-nine, and thirty-four (and a fifth term by the family count). Land commissioner under Stephen F. Austin in the eighteen-twenties. Signer of the anti-Centralist memorial of October 13, 1834. Delegate to the Convention of 1836. Organizer of the Runaway Scrape. Died of fever in George Huff’s house, east of San Felipe, on September 6, 1836. Su firma está en los documentos más importantes de la república nueva. Su tumba no está en la tierra que su firma ayudó a fundar.

María Luisa Peres (1784–1813), Gaspar’s first wife. Died of disease in eighteen hundred and thirteen, in the year of the Battle of Medina and its violent aftermath. The chart records her death without specifying the cause. She was twenty-nine years old. She bore Gaspar three or four children.

Petra Zambrano (in some records Petra de León) — Gaspar’s second wife. They were married sometime after eighteen hundred and thirteen. She bore him several more children. She survived him by an unrecorded number of years and was the executor of his estate. Era la mujer que organizó el funeral en San Felipe, que regresó a San Antonio con los hijos, que pasó tres años cerrando los papeles del estado. The novel’s Second Play includes her in its Dramatis Personae.

José Nicolás Flores (1804–1849), eldest surviving son of Gaspar by his first marriage. Signer of the memorial of October 13, 1834, alongside his father. He continued in the family’s political tradition in San Antonio after his father’s death. He married María Teresa Valdez, who would live to be 107 years old. He died in 1849, the year of the gold rush; he was 45 years old. El hijo siguió al padre. El hijo no llegó a la vejez que el padre no había llegado.

Salvador Flores, relative of Gaspar (the exact relationship varies by source — most genealogies list him as a cousin). Commanded a Tejano cavalry company at the Siege of Béxar in eighteen hundred and thirty-five. Signed the memorial of October 13, 1834. Lived through the war. Continued ranching in the San Antonio area until his death in the eighteen-sixties.

Las figuras tejanas

Juan Nepomuceno Seguín (1806–1890). Son of Erasmo Seguín. Married Gertrudis Flores in 1826 with Gaspar Flores as witness. Captain of the Tejano cavalry at the Siege of Béxar and at San Jacinto. Senator in the Republic of Texas. Mayor of San Antonio in the early 1840s. Fled to Mexico under threat of his life in 1842 and wrote his Personal Memoirs of John N. Seguín from exile in San Antonio in 1858. His phrase “Soy extranjero en mi propia tierra” — “I am a foreigner in my own land” — is the leitmotif of the post-1836 Tejano experience. He lived another four decades after his exile. He died in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, in 1890. His remains were reinterred in Seguín, Texas, in 1976. Su exilio es la herida del pueblo tejano. Su regreso en la muerte es la curación parcial que la historia ofrece a veces.

Erasmo Seguín (1782–1857). Juan’s father. Postmaster of San Antonio in the Spanish period. Delegate to the Mexican federal congress in 1824 (signer of the Mexican Constitution). Delegate to the Convention of 1836 alongside Gaspar Flores. The senior Tejano federalist of the period. He survived his son’s exile and Gaspar’s death and the rough early decades of the Texas Republic. Era el viejo zorro. Vio todo lo que pasó y se quedó callado en los momentos correctos.

José Antonio Navarro (1795–1871). Tejano statesman. Signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836, alongside Gaspar Flores. Imprisoned by the Mexican government in 1841-1844 during the Mier Expedition affair. Returned to San Antonio after his release and continued in Tejano politics through the Texas Republic and early statehood periods. Era el más político de los políticos tejanos. Sobrevivió porque sabía cuándo callarse.

José Francisco Ruiz (1783–1840). Tejano soldier and statesman. Convention of 1836 delegate. Senator in the first Texas Republic congress. Died in 1840, four years after independence. Era el más militar de los firmantes tejanos.

Las figuras anglosajonas

Stephen F. Austin (1793–1836). The empresario who founded the Anglo colonization of Texas. Born in Virginia, raised in Missouri. Inherited his father Moses Austin’s grant in 1821 and arrived in Texas the same year. By 1830 he had established more than three hundred Anglo families in his colonies. Imprisoned in Mexico City in 1834-1835 on suspicion of revolutionary activities. Released and returned to Texas to lead the Texan army in the early phase of the Siege of Béxar. Diplomat to the United States in early 1836. Died of pneumonia on December 27, 1836 — three months after Gaspar Flores’s death from fever. He was 43. Los dos hombres que más habían hecho para la fundación de la república que sería Texas estaban muertos antes de que la república tuviera un año. La república los enterró a ambos sin haber tenido tiempo de pagarles lo que les debía.

Sam Houston (1793–1863). Tennessee politician and military man. Commanded the Texan army at San Jacinto. First and third president of the Republic of Texas. United States senator after Texas statehood. Governor of Texas before the Civil War, removed from office in 1861 when he refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy. Un personaje difícil. La republica lo eligió presidente porque era el único que había ganado una batalla.

James Bowie (1796–1836). Kentucky-born adventurer. Slave trader, land speculator, knife designer. Married Ursula Veramendi, daughter of the Mexican governor of Coahuila y Tejas, in San Antonio in 1831. She and their children died of cholera in 1833. Bowie joined the Texan cause in 1835 and was co-commander of the Alamo garrison with Travis. Died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836. Su matrimonio con la hija del gobernador lo había hecho casi un tejano. Su muerte en el Alamo lo hizo otra cosa.

William B. Travis (1809–1836). South Carolina-born lawyer. Co-commander of the Alamo garrison. Author of the famous “Victory or Death” letter of February 24, 1836. Killed at the Alamo on March 6, 1836. He was 26 years old.

David Crockett (1786–1836). Tennessee frontiersman and former U.S. congressman. Arrived in Texas in late 1835 to support the rebellion. Joined the Alamo garrison in February 1836. Killed at the Alamo on March 6, 1836, in circumstances that remain disputed by historians (the Mexican officer José Enrique de la Peña’s diary, published posthumously, suggests Crockett was captured and executed; the popular American tradition has him dying in battle).

Las figuras mexicanas

Antonio López de Santa Anna (1794–1876). Veracruz-born general, eleven-time president of Mexico across his long career. Elected federalist in 1833, governed centralist by 1834. Commanded the Mexican army at the Alamo and at San Jacinto. Captured at San Jacinto, released after signing the Treaties of Velasco. Returned to power in Mexico multiple times after 1836. Lost his leg in the Pastry War of 1838 and gave it a state funeral. Died in poverty and disgrace in Mexico City in 1876. El villano del relato anglosajón. Un personaje más complicado en el relato mexicano. En esta crónica es el hombre que mandó quemar los cuerpos del Alamo, y eso es suficiente.

Martín Perfecto de Cos (1800–1854). Brother-in-law of Santa Anna. Commanded Mexican forces in San Antonio at the start of the war. Surrendered to the Texans in December 1835. Allowed to retreat. Returned with Santa Anna’s invasion army in February 1836. Survived the war and continued his military career in Mexico.

VI · La Mesa

Food

Y la mesa de este periodo se hizo bilingüe, porque los anglosajones trajeron sus propias cosas, y la familia las probó, y algunas las adoptó, y otras las rechazó, y al final la mesa era una mesa nueva.

The table of the family in San Antonio in the years between eighteen hundred and twenty-one and eighteen hundred and thirty-six was the Tejano table that the previous period had built — tortillas, frijoles, chiles, barbacoa, carne asada, tamales, mole, chocolate, café de olla — with three new elements added by the demographic changes of the Mexican period: the foodways of the empresario settlers from the United States, the foodways of the migrant Mexicans coming up from the interior under the new Mexican policy of internal migration, and the foodways of the Comanche-Mexican trade that brought new game and new methods into the city.

The Anglo settler foodways. The empresario families from Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Virginia brought with them a cuisine that the Tejanos had not encountered: cornbread (similar in form to the gordita, but baked from cornmeal rather than nixtamal masa, in a Dutch oven over coals); biscuits (a leavened bread of wheat flour, fat, and salt, cooked in a covered iron skillet); fried chicken (chicken pieces dredged in flour and fried in lard); salt pork and beans (a Southern American staple of cured fatback simmered with white beans); grits (boiled coarse cornmeal porridge, similar in concept to atole but with different texture); peach cobbler (a fruit and sweet dough dessert from the orchards the Anglos planted along the Brazos and the Colorado). The Tejano kitchens of the period encountered all of these. Some were adopted — biscuits in particular became a staple of the Tejano breakfast and remain so today. Others were rejected — salt pork and beans was considered inferior to frijoles cocidos by every Tejano cook who tasted it. The kitchen, as always, was the front line of the encounter. Las cocinas se mezclaron antes que los matrimonios. La mesa fue el primer lugar bilingüe.

The migrant Mexican foodways. The new Mexican government encouraged migration from the interior of Mexico to the northern provinces. New arrivals came from Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and as far south as Veracruz. They brought regional Mexican dishes that the older Tejano tradition had not known: cabrito al pastor (kid goat roasted on a stake, a Nuevo León specialty), machaca (dried shredded beef, a Sonoran-Chihuahuan tradition), cabrito en su sangre (kid in its own blood gravy), menudo (tripe soup, originally from Jalisco), birria (a stewed meat dish from Jalisco, in this period made with mutton). The Tejano kitchen of the eighteen-twenties absorbed all of these and became, by eighteen hundred and thirty-six, a kitchen with a regional Mexican range it had not had a generation before.

The Runaway Scrape table. During the evacuation of March-April 1836, the family ate what could be carried and what could be cooked on a campfire: carne seca (jerky), tortillas baked on a hot stone, frijoles if the cooks could find fuel and water, café de olla, galletas (hard biscuits, the Anglo influence by then absorbed), occasional cabrito if a goat could be slaughtered from the moving flocks. The three thousand sheep that traveled with the family were not for eating; they were the family’s capital, kept alive for the return. Some lambs were slaughtered for food. The evacuation was hungry but not starving. The fever that killed Gaspar at George Huff’s house was not from hunger; it was from the malarial swamp country of the lower Brazos. La fiebre no respeta lo que tenga uno en la barriga.

The death-bed food at Huff’s house. What Gaspar ate, if anything, in the last days of his life — broth, perhaps, with a thread of chicken in it; warm milk with a spoonful of sugar; sips of water at the end — is not preserved in any record. Petra would have known. Petra did not write a memoir. The chronicle does not invent what it does not know. Lo que se sabe es que murió un domingo por la mañana, según la tradición de la familia, aunque el certificado de defunción dice martes. La tradición y el papel discrepan, y la crónica deja la discrepancia tal como está.

The funeral meal in San Felipe. After Gaspar’s funeral on the seventh of September of eighteen hundred and thirty-six, the family and the neighbors and the Anglo-Texan friends of the deceased — including, by family tradition though not by documentary record, Stephen F. Austin, who was himself ill and would die three months later — gathered at Huff’s house for the velorio. The food would have been what the neighborhood could provide on short notice in early September: jamón (cured ham), pan recién horneado, frijoles, cabrito al horno if a kid could be slaughtered in time, café, aguardiente, vino if any could be had. The velorio was a Mexican Catholic tradition, transplanted to a Texas Anglo-Protestant farmhouse, in the year of the death of the alcalde of San Antonio. Aquella cena reunió a todas las facciones de la tragedia: anglosajones, tejanos, mexicanos, en una sola mesa, sirviendo el café al hijo del muerto. Esa cena no se ha escrito en ninguna parte. Esta crónica la pone aquí porque pasó.

VII · La Lengua

Language

Y la lengua de este periodo se hizo bilingüe, no por elección, sino porque la lengua nueva había llegado al pueblo y no había manera de mandar la lengua nueva de regreso.

The Tejano Spanish of the previous period continued to be the dominant register of San Antonio through the Mexican period. By eighteen hundred and thirty-six the city was approximately eighty percent Spanish-speaking. The Anglo settlement was concentrated to the east, in Austin’s colonies along the Brazos and the Colorado, and was largely English-speaking. But the contact zone — the place where English and Spanish met in daily commerce, in the cabildo, in mixed marriages, in the courts of the Mexican government — was already established by eighteen hundred and twenty-five and was already producing the bilingual register that the family would carry, in its descendants, for the next two hundred years.

Gaspar Flores’s political register. Gaspar conducted his political life in three registers. Formal Spanish for the Mexican federal government, the state of Coahuila y Tejas, the cabildo, the courts. Tejano Spanish for everyday life in San Antonio, for the family, for the parish. Working English for negotiations with Stephen F. Austin and the empresarios, for the Anglo settlers, for the U.S. consuls who began appearing in the late 1820s. Gaspar was fluent in the first two and competent in the third. His son José Nicolás Flores — born in 1804 — was fluent in all three from boyhood. The bilingual register entered the family in Gaspar’s generation; by his son’s generation it was the default.

The legal register of the 1834 memorial. The document signed at San Antonio on the thirteenth of October of eighteen hundred and thirty-four was written in formal Mexican federal Spanish: “Nosotros, los abajo firmantes, vecinos de la Villa de San Fernando de Béxar, en uso de los derechos que nos concede la Constitución Federal de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos de mil ochocientos veinticuatro, dirigimos la presente memoria a las autoridades superiores…” (We, the undersigned, residents of the Villa de San Fernando de Béxar, in exercise of the rights granted us by the Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of eighteen hundred and twenty-four, address the present memorial to the higher authorities…). The memorial was eventually translated into English and circulated through the Anglo settlements. The first major political document of the Texas Revolution was a bilingual document, in this sense, from its inception. El bilingüismo de la revolución fue desde el principio.

Seguín’s phrase. “Soy extranjero en mi propia tierra.” The phrase appears in Juan Seguín’s Personal Memoirs of 1858, written in exile in San Antonio after his return from Mexico, originally in Spanish, translated into English for publication. The phrase has become the central self-description of the post-1836 Tejano experience. The Spanish original carries a connotation the English translation does not fully capture: extranjero in nineteenth-century Mexican Spanish meant not only foreigner but also stranger, outsider, unwelcome guest. To be an extranjero en mi propia tierra is to be made unwelcome in the place that is yours — a stronger claim than the English “foreigner in my own land.” La traducción es exacta y es insuficiente al mismo tiempo, como casi todas las traducciones de las cosas que verdaderamente importan.

The new English on the cabildo. After Texan independence, the records of the cabildo of San Antonio began to be kept in English. The transition was not abrupt; some records continued in Spanish through the late 1830s and into the 1840s. But the official record-language was English from 1836 forward. The Tejano clerks who had kept the records in Spanish for a century continued in their jobs and translated their notes into English at the end of each day. Era la última herida de la pérdida de la villa. La lengua de los antepasados ya no era la lengua del estado.

The new bilingualism in the parish. The church of San Fernando continued to operate in Spanish — baptismal records, marriage records, burial records all in Spanish through the entire period and beyond, into the twentieth century. The parish was the last refuge of monolingual Spanish administration in San Antonio after 1836. La iglesia conservó la lengua que el estado había abandonado.

VIII · Los Papeles

Primary Documents

Y los papeles de este periodo son los papeles más estudiados de toda esta crónica, porque los historiadores los han mirado mucho más que los otros papeles; pero la familia los ha mirado todavía más.

La Memoria contra las Acciones Centralistas, Béxar, trece de octubre de mil ochocientos treinta y cuatro. The anti-Centralist memorial signed by thirty-five Tejanos in San Antonio. Signers include Gaspar Flores and his son José Nicolás Flores. Held in the Bexar Archives at the University of Texas at Austin and reproduced in multiple scholarly compilations. El primer documento revolucionario tejano.

Las Actas de la Convención de 1836, Washington-on-the-Brazos, primero al diecisiete de marzo de mil ochocientos treinta y seis. The proceedings of the convention, including the Declaration of Independence (March 2), the election of the interim government, and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas. Gaspar Flores’s signature appears in the convention rolls. Held in the Texas State Library and Archives in Austin and reproduced in Documents of Texas History and other compilations.

The Treaties of Velasco, fourteenth of May, eighteen hundred and thirty-six. The two treaties signed between Santa Anna and the Texan provisional government after Santa Anna’s capture at San Jacinto. The public treaty ended hostilities; the secret treaty (which Mexico never ratified) committed Santa Anna to recognize Texan independence and lobby for Mexican recognition. The public treaty is in the Texas State Library.

Las Memorias Personales de Juan N. Seguín, mil ochocientos cincuenta y ocho. Published in San Antonio by the Ledger Book and Job Office in 1858. Juan Seguín’s account of the Texas Revolution and his subsequent persecution. Includes the phrase “a foreigner in my own land.” The 1991 edition edited by Jesús F. de la Teja for State House Press, A Revolution Remembered, is the standard modern source. Es la única autobiografía tejana del periodo. Es el documento más importante.

El Testamento de José Gaspar Flores, San Antonio de Béxar, mil ochocientos treinta y seis (probated). Gaspar’s will, probated after his death in September 1836 by his widow Petra. Records his property, his bequests, his executor designation. Held in the Bexar County probate records.

Las Actas de Defunción de la Parroquia de San Felipe, septiembre de mil ochocientos treinta y seis. The death record of Gaspar Flores, signed by the priest of the parish of San Felipe. Records the date, the cause of death (fiebre), the place (the house of George Huff), and the attending witnesses. The record is in the parish archives of San Felipe and in the diocesan archives. The chronicle has not yet retrieved a copy but the existence is confirmed in multiple genealogical sources.

Las Cartas de Stephen F. Austin, mil ochocientos veintiuno a mil ochocientos treinta y seis. The collected correspondence of Stephen F. Austin, the most extensively documented Anglo-Texan archive of the period. Includes references to Gaspar Flores as the alcalde with whom Austin negotiated on multiple occasions. Held at the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Reproduced in the multi-volume Austin Papers edited by Eugene C. Barker, beginning in 1924.

El Manifiesto de Gaspar Flores como Alcalde, San Antonio, mil ochocientos veinticuatro. A public proclamation issued by Gaspar Flores in 1824 announcing the entry of San Antonio under the new Mexican Constitution. The document includes the phrase “esta nueva era de la república federal” (this new era of the federal republic). Held in the Bexar Archives.

The Anglo American Settler Records, eighteen hundred and twenty-three to eighteen hundred and thirty-five. The land records, contract records, and personal correspondence of the empresario settlement period. Held in multiple Texas archives including the Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin and the Texas State Library. These records, kept primarily in English, are the documentary archive of the demographic transformation of Texas during this period.

IX · Las Fuentes

Sources

The chronicle above rests on the following sources.

Barr, Alwyn. Texans in Revolt: The Battle for San Antonio, 1835. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

Brear, Holly Beachley. Inherit the Alamo: Myth and Ritual at an American Shrine. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. The cultural-historical study of the Alamo’s complicated meanings.

Cantrell, Gregg. Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. The standard modern biography.

Crisp, James E. Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett’s Last Stand and Other Mysteries of the Texas Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Critical examination of the Alamo legend and the Tejano historical experience.

de la Peña, José Enrique. With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution. Translated by Carmen Perry. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975. The Mexican officer’s diary, the most controversial primary source on the Alamo.

de la Teja, Jesús F., ed. A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguín. Austin: State House Press, 1991. Reprint, Texas State Historical Association, 2002.

de la Teja, Jesús F., ed. Tejano Leadership in Mexican and Revolutionary Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010.

History Matters, George Mason University. “‘A Foreigner in My Own Land’: Juan Nepomuceno Seguín Flees Texas, 1842.” https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6531/

Lack, Paul D. The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835–1836. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992.

Matovina, Timothy M. Tejano Religion and Ethnicity: San Antonio, 1821–1860. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

Matovina, Timothy M. The Alamo Remembered: Tejano Accounts and Perspectives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. The Tejano voices on the fall of the Alamo, recovered from later interviews and family memoirs.

Seguín, Juan Nepomuceno. Personal Memoirs of John N. Seguín. San Antonio: Ledger Book and Job Office, 1858. The original 1858 publication.

Texas State Historical Association. “Flores de Abrego, José Gaspar María.” Author: Camilla Campbell. Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/flores-de-abrego-jose-gaspar-maria

Texas State Historical Association. “Flores de Ábrego, María Gertrudis Eusebia.” Author: Jesús F. de la Teja. Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Seguín, Juan Nepomuceno.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/seguin-juan-nepomuceno

Texas State Historical Association. “Navarro, José Antonio.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Ruiz, José Francisco.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Convention of 1836.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Runaway Scrape.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Battle of San Jacinto.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Library and Archives Commission. “Juan Seguín.” https://www.tsl.texas.gov/treasures/giants/seguin/seguin-01

Tijerina, Andrés. Tejanos and Texas Under the Mexican Flag, 1821–1836. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994.

Bexar Archives, University of Texas at Austin. The continuous documentary record. https://briscoecenter.org/research/bexar-archives/

Aquí termina la Cuarta Parte de las Crónicas. Gaspar has died. Petra has buried him in San Felipe. The Republic of Texas has been declared. The Alamo has fallen. San Jacinto has been won. The Tejano families have begun the long process of becoming a minority in the country their great-grandparents founded.

Y aquellos que en otro tiempo hayan de leer estas páginas sabrán que en el momento en que esta página se cierra, los hijos de Gaspar están regresando a San Antonio en oxcarts. Los niños han crecido tres pulgadas desde la salida. El bisnieto que algún día escribirá esta crónica no nacerá hasta dentro de ciento treinta y ocho años. Pero la familia camina hacia su casa, y la casa todavía está en pie, y el Acequia todavía corre, y el padre Vicente está en su tumba debajo de la iglesia y no se va a ninguna parte.

I · El Escenario

Setting

Y fue que en estos veinte años el río que había estado allí desde antes de toda memoria se hizo de pronto una línea política; y los que vivían a la margen norte y los que vivían a la margen sur, que habían sido un solo pueblo durante doscientos años, se despertaron una mañana ciudadanos de dos naciones distintas, sin haber cruzado el agua, sin haberse movido de la casa.

This is the period in which the river became a frontier. The Río Grande del Norte — Río Bravo on the Mexican side, Rio Grande on what became the American side, but the same river under both names — had been a feature of the landscape since before any human had thought to give it a name. From sixteen hundred and eighty, when the Pueblo Revolt sent Spanish refugees south to the pass of El Paso del Norte and established the town that would later be called Ciudad Juárez, the river had been a river. After eighteen hundred and forty-eight, the river was a border. The change was made not by any movement of the water but by signatures on papers in Mexico City and Washington, and it was perceived first by those who lived along the river as a rumor, then as a confirmation, then as a fact one could not contest. Las dos orillas que habían sido la misma orilla se hicieron dos países en una mañana de febrero de mil ochocientos y cuarenta y ocho. La gente que había vivido siempre en El Paso del Norte se quedó en El Paso del Norte; pero ahora unos eran de un país y otros de otro.

The period of this Chronicle covers twenty years. It opens in eighteen hundred and thirty-six, the year the Tejano grandparents of the writer of these chronicles buried José Gaspar María Flores de Ábrego near the home of George Huff east of San Felipe, and it closes in eighteen hundred and fifty-six on the sixth of February, when Juana María Ascárate, mother of seven and matriarch of the family at Concordia Ranch on the north bank of the Rio Grande, died from injuries inflicted by a deer she had raised from a fawn since the spring of the previous year. The deer had grown to maturity and had killed her with its antlers in the courtyard of her house. She was the first burial in the cemetery of San José de Concordia el Alto, the chapel her family had built two years before on Ascárate land. The cemetery — Concordia Cemetery — would in the next century become the burying ground of much of El Paso and remains so today.

What happened between the two ends of the period was the political reshaping of half a continent. The Texas Revolution of eighteen hundred and thirty-six had created the Republic of Texas, an independent country with its capital at Austin. The Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States in eighteen hundred and forty-five over the strong objections of Mexico. The Mexican-American War of eighteen hundred and forty-six to eighteen hundred and forty-eight was fought over the annexation and the disputed border, and it ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on the second of February of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, by which Mexico ceded approximately fifty-five percent of its prewar territory to the United States in exchange for fifteen million dollars and the assumption of three million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in claims. The Gadsden Purchase of eighteen hundred and fifty-three added another twenty-nine thousand square miles to the United States. The river that had been a feature of New Spain became, between eighteen hundred and forty-eight and eighteen hundred and fifty-three, the international border of two republics.

The family this Chronicle now follows is the Stephenson-Ascárate family at Concordia Ranch on the north bank of the river — the line that would, two generations on, marry into the Travieso-Curbelo-Flores line from San Antonio and produce the great-great-grandson who crossed the International Bridge as a boy in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen. The Stephenson-Ascárate line came together in eighteen hundred and twenty-eight, eight years before this Chronicle opens, when Hugh Stephenson — Kentucky orphan, raised in the town of Concordia in the state of Missouri, fur trapper turned merchant — married Juana María Ascárate, daughter of Don Juan Baptista Ascárate of El Paso del Norte, owner of the silver mine at Corralitos in Chihuahua. The marriage joined two histories that had no reason to be joined except that the Camino Real ran from one to the other, and that Hugh had come west on it in eighteen hundred and twenty-four with the wagon train of James Wiley Magoffin, and had stopped at El Paso del Norte and not gone further. Se enamoró del valle. Se quedó. Se casó. La línea segunda de la familia comenzó con un hombre que no era de la familia y que, al casarse, se convirtió en familia.

This Chronicle, in its present nine parts, will tell the story of Hugh and Juana and their seven children and their ranch and their chapel and their deer and their dead. It will tell the story of the war that redrew the border around their property without their having moved an inch. It will tell the story of the chapel they built two years before Juana’s death and the cemetery in which she was the first to be buried.

Este es el periodo de la frontera. No se movió la gente; se movió el papel.

II · Dónde Aparece en PASADOR

Where in PASADOR

Y la Tercera Obra de la novela, que se titula “El Río” y que cubre los años de mil ochocientos a mil ochocientos y cincuenta y seis, es la obra a la cual este periodo pertenece principalmente, aunque el final de la Segunda Obra y el principio de la Cuarta también lo tocan.

The Third Play of the novel — The River — is the play of this Chronicle’s period. It opens with Hugh Stephenson, alone in the desert on a horse, in the year that the play does not specifically date but that the documentary record places in or near eighteen hundred and twenty-four. It closes with Juana María Ascárate dying in the courtyard of La Casa Grande el Alto on the sixth of February of eighteen hundred and fifty-six. The play is built around these two figures and the river that runs between their stories.

The opening passage of Play Three is the prose-and-verse invocation titled WHAT WAS IN THE AIR, set in New Mexico and the border in the eighteen-forties to eighteen hundred and fifty-six, that the chronicler quoted in the First Part: “El río no sabe de fronteras. Sabe de sed. Sabe de piedra. Sabe los nombres de doce mil años que ningún tratado ha firmado.” The river does not know about borders. The river knows about thirst, about stone, about names that no treaty has signed. The novel is making the chronicle’s argument: that the river predates the border, that the people on both banks predate the border, that the border is a recent fact made of paper and the river is an ancient fact made of water, and that the recent fact has been imposed on the ancient fact by an act of administrative violence.

The marriage of Hugh and Juana, which occurred in eighteen hundred and twenty-eight — eight years before this Chronicle opens — appears in the play in flashback. The chronicle treats it the same way: it happens before the period of this Chronicle, but it is the necessary context of everything in the period. Hugh viene de Kentucky. Juana es del valle. No hablan el mismo idioma. Por eso se entienden. The play’s lyric verse, quoted above, names the marriage as a union of opposites that worked because the opposites did not need to translate each other in order to know each other.

The chapel-building of eighteen hundred and fifty-four appears as a major scene in Play Three. The chapel rose stone by stone over the course of eighteen months. Juana commissioned the bell from a foundry in Chihuahua and Hugh paid for it in silver from the Corralitos mine. The first mass was sung on the morning of Easter Sunday in eighteen hundred and fifty-five. The play makes the chapel the symbolic center of Concordia Ranch, the place where the Stephenson and Ascárate families became, by their own labor and their own silver, the parishioners of a sanctuary they had built themselves. The chronicle confirms the documentary record: the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto was built in eighteen hundred and fifty-four on Ascárate land at Hugh and Juana’s expense, and it served as the parish chapel for the Concordia community for the rest of the century.

The death of Juana in eighteen hundred and fifty-six is the climactic scene of Play Three. The deer had been a fawn the previous spring; Juana had found it abandoned at the edge of the river and had raised it on goat’s milk. It had grown to maturity in the courtyard. On the morning of the sixth of February of eighteen hundred and fifty-six, the deer charged Juana in the courtyard and gored her with its antlers. She died within hours. Hugh found her on the stones when he returned from the mine. The play renders the death in the manner of all the play’s central events — with a few quiet sentences, no melodrama, the facts unadorned. The novel is honoring what the documentary record permits: that Juana died this way, that the cause is preserved in the Texas State Historical Association’s entry on her, that the marker at her grave at Concordia Cemetery confirms her as the first burial there in eighteen hundred and fifty-six.

The play closes with the funeral. Hugh, who had carried Juana from the courtyard to the chapel he had built for her, stood at her grave and did not speak. The chronicle ends the Chronicle Part V on the same scene. The next Part will open with what came after.

III · Los Sucesos

Events of the Period

Y los hechos de estos veinte años, en orden, son los siguientes.

In the year eighteen hundred and thirty-six, in the months following the Battle of San Jacinto and the surrender of Santa Anna and the establishment of the Republic of Texas under interim president David G. Burnet and then under elected president Sam Houston, the Tejano families of San Antonio — including the surviving children of Gaspar Flores — returned to their homes and began the slow work of resuming their lives under a new sovereignty. On the western frontier of what had been Mexican Texas — at the pass of El Paso del Norte — no such transition occurred. The pass was on the south bank of the Rio Grande and remained Mexican territory. Hugh Stephenson and Juana Ascárate at Concordia Ranch on the north bank — which was technically within the territory the Republic of Texas claimed — found themselves in an ambiguous legal position that the Republic of Texas was in no condition to enforce and the Mexican government chose to ignore. The family lived in practice as Mexicans for the next eight years, even though their land was, in theory, Texan.

In the year eighteen hundred and forty-three, after the death of Juana’s father Don Juan Baptista Ascárate in eighteen hundred and forty-one, the Ascárate family’s silver mine at Corralitos in Chihuahua needed direct management. Hugh Stephenson, his wife Juana, and their growing children — Horacio, Hugo Jr., Alberto, Margarita, Benancia, Leonora, and Adelaida, ranging in age from infant to thirteen — moved from Concordia Ranch to Corralitos in 1843 and lived at the mine for some years. The mine was in Mexican Chihuahua. The family administered it directly. La familia se hizo del otro lado del río porque las cuentas la llamaban allí.

In the year eighteen hundred and forty-four, Hugh Stephenson sent his eldest son Horace, then thirteen years old, north to Missouri with James Wiley Magoffin, the trader who had been Hugh’s wagon-train partner two decades earlier and who maintained the trading route between St. Louis and Chihuahua via Santa Fe and El Paso. Horace would be educated at Missouri. He would in time return to take his place in the family’s affairs.

In the year eighteen hundred and forty-six, the Mexican-American War began. The United States invaded Mexico from multiple directions: General Zachary Taylor crossed the Rio Grande in May; General Stephen Watts Kearny led the Army of the West out of Fort Leavenworth in June; Colonel Alexander William Doniphan continued Kearny’s mission into northern Mexico. The Battle of Brazito — fought on December 25 of eighteen hundred and forty-six, twenty-five miles north of El Paso del Norte — saw Doniphan’s First Missouri Mounted Volunteers defeat a Mexican force. Doniphan’s army entered El Paso del Norte on the following day. Hugh Stephenson and his family were at Corralitos. The war passed over the Concordia property in their absence. Doniphan’s men camped on the Stephenson land. The family heard about it from neighbors.

In the year eighteen hundred and forty-seven, Doniphan’s force continued south, fought the Battle of Sacramento north of Chihuahua City, and took the city. American troops occupied Chihuahua. The Ascárate family’s silver mine at Corralitos was within the occupied territory. The mine continued to produce silver. The American occupation purchased the silver. La guerra fue buena para el negocio.

In the year eighteen hundred and forty-eight, on the second of February, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed at the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo on the northern outskirts of Mexico City by Nicholas Trist for the United States and by Bernardo Couto, Miguel Atristain, and Luis Cuevas for Mexico. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on the tenth of March and by the Mexican Congress on the nineteenth of May. The treaty ceded to the United States the territory of Alta California (modern California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico, parts of Colorado and Wyoming) and confirmed the cession of the territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande in Texas — which is to say, the land on which Concordia Ranch stood. Mexico received fifteen million dollars and three million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in assumed claims. The treaty took effect on the fourth of July of eighteen hundred and forty-eight. Concordia Ranch, which had been Mexican in practice if not in legal theory since eighteen hundred and thirty-six, was now indisputably American. Articles VIII and IX of the treaty guaranteed the property rights and citizenship rights of Mexican citizens who remained in the ceded territory. La promesa estaba en el papel. La promesa, como había sido el caso con la promesa del rey de España un siglo y medio antes, no se cumpliría en la práctica.

In the year eighteen hundred and forty-eight, after the treaty had been signed but before its provisions had taken full effect, the Stephensons returned from Corralitos to Concordia. The family had been at the mine for five years. The children had grown. The property at Concordia required attention. Hugh had business to settle on both sides of the new border. The trip back was approximately one hundred and twenty miles north on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. La familia volvió a la casa que ahora estaba en otro país, sin haberse movido la casa de su sitio.

In the year eighteen hundred and forty-nine, Hugh Stephenson formally founded the community of Concordia on his and Juana’s 900-acre land grant on the north bank of the Rio Grande. The community took its name from the town in Lafayette County, Missouri, where Hugh had been raised by his foster family after being orphaned in Kentucky as a young child. El nombre del pueblo americano fue el nombre del pueblo americano que había recibido al niño huérfano cuarenta años antes. Lo que Hugh había recibido lo devolvió en el nombre. The community had a few dozen residents at its founding, expanding over the next two decades to include the workforce of the Stephenson commercial operations.

In the years eighteen hundred and forty-nine to eighteen hundred and fifty-three, the Stephenson commercial empire expanded along the new border. The family operated a mercantile store in El Paso del Norte, the Corralitos silver mine in Chihuahua, the Concordia Ranch on the American side, the trading connection north to Missouri through the Magoffin commercial network, and increasing interests in mining in the Organ Mountains east of Las Cruces. Hugh and Juana were, by the early eighteen-fifties, among the wealthiest families on the border. Their children attended schools in Missouri, Chihuahua, and El Paso. The family employed Mexican laborers, Anglo-American clerks, and former Confederate veterans seeking work after the war.

In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-one, Don Juan Baptista Ascárate’s widow, María Eugenia Romero — Juana’s mother — died in El Paso del Norte. The Ascárate properties passed jointly to Juana and her surviving siblings.

In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-three, on the thirtieth of December, the Gadsden Purchase was signed. The United States purchased an additional twenty-nine thousand six hundred and seventy square miles of southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico — including the Mesilla Valley north of El Paso — for ten million dollars. The land where Hugh Stephenson’s son Horace would eventually settle at La Mesa, New Mexico — and where Hugh himself would die in 1870 — was Mexican territory until December 1853 and American territory thereafter. The boundary commission worked the lines on the ground in eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-four, Hugh and Juana built the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto on the Ascárate land at Concordia Ranch. The chapel was the first Catholic chapel on the American side of the Rio Grande in the upper El Paso district. The chapel was built of adobe with a stone foundation. The bell was cast in Chihuahua and shipped north by the Stephenson commercial network. The chapel had a courtyard, a small bell tower, a single nave with a wooden altar, and a small graveyard at the rear which was prepared but not yet used.

In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-five, Juana found an abandoned fawn at the river during the spring lambing season. She brought it home in her apron and raised it on goat’s milk. The fawn imprinted on her. By the autumn it was eating from her hand. By the winter it was approximately three-quarters grown and was kept in the courtyard. The family called it El Venadito — the little deer.

In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-six, on the sixth of February, El Venadito, now fully grown and in seasonal aggression in the manner of male deer in winter, charged Juana in the courtyard at La Casa Grande el Alto. The antlers caught her in the abdomen. She fell. The deer continued to gore her. The household servants ran to her aid. By the time Hugh was called from his office on the property, Juana had bled too much. She died within hours of the attack. The chronicle, which has not been allowed to invent the manner of any of the family’s deaths in the previous parts, here also does not invent: the cause and manner of her death are recorded in the Texas State Historical Association’s biographical entry on her, written by Michelle N. Balliet, and in the historical marker text at Concordia Cemetery erected in 1984.

In the same year, on a day immediately following her death, Juana María Ascárate was buried in the small graveyard beside the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto. She was the first burial in the cemetery. The cemetery would, over the next century and a half, grow to include sixty-five thousand graves and would become the principal historic cemetery of El Paso. It is known today as Concordia Cemetery. The marker at Juana’s grave names her as the first to be buried there. Ella es la primera. La cita la lleva la piedra hasta el día de hoy.

IV · Los Lugares

Places

Y los lugares que aparecen en estos veinte años son los lugares de la frontera, y los lugares de la frontera son los lugares que la frontera atravesó sin pedirles permiso.

El Paso del Norte. The Mexican town on the south bank of the Rio Grande at the pass through the mountains where the river bends. Founded as a Spanish mission in sixteen hundred and fifty-nine. Refuge of the Spanish refugees of the Pueblo Revolt of sixteen hundred and eighty. The southernmost Spanish settlement on the Rio Grande for more than a century. Population approximately five thousand in eighteen hundred and forty-six. After the Mexican Cession, El Paso del Norte remained Mexican territory; it would be officially renamed Ciudad Juárez in eighteen hundred and eighty-eight in honor of President Benito Juárez, who had governed his shadow government from El Paso del Norte during the French intervention of eighteen hundred and sixty-five and sixty-six.

La orilla norte del río. The north bank, which had been Mexican until eighteen hundred and forty-eight and was American thereafter. A scattering of villages and ranches: Ysleta (the Tigua pueblo), Socorro, San Elizario, and at the upper end the new town that would be called El Paso. The Stephenson and Ascárate properties were on this bank: the 900-acre Concordia Ranch and several smaller adjacent grants. The land was the same land before and after. The flag that flew over it changed.

Concordia Ranch. The 900-acre Stephenson-Ascárate property on the north bank, immediately east of the small American settlement that would in time become downtown El Paso. The ranch had a main house — La Casa Grande el Alto — built of adobe in the Mexican colonial style, with a central courtyard, thick walls, beamed ceilings of pine logs, and rooms arranged around the courtyard. The chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto, built in eighteen hundred and fifty-four, was at the eastern edge of the ranch property. The cemetery was beside the chapel. There were corrals, smaller adobe houses for the laborers, a store building, and a stable. The ranch had its own acequia — the Concordia acequia, an irrigation channel dug by Mexican labor between eighteen hundred and forty-two and eighteen hundred and forty-six that drew water from the Rio Grande upstream of the property — that watered the fields and the orchard. Era una hacienda fronteriza, no una hacienda mexicana antigua, pero la forma era la forma colonial mexicana.

Corralitos. The Ascárate family silver mine in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental in northern Chihuahua, approximately one hundred and twenty miles south of El Paso del Norte. The mine had been operating since the Spanish colonial period under various owners; the Ascárate family acquired it in the late eighteenth century. The mine produced silver, copper, lead, and small amounts of gold. The settlement around the mine had perhaps three hundred residents in the eighteen-forties: miners, their families, foremen, an administrator, a priest, a few shopkeepers, the Stephenson family during their residence from eighteen hundred and forty-three to eighteen hundred and forty-eight. The mine continued to be owned and operated by the Stephenson-Ascárate descendants into the twentieth century. La plata de Corralitos era la base económica de la familia.

Las Montañas Organ. The Organ Mountains east of Las Cruces, New Mexico, named for the resemblance of their jagged peaks to the pipes of a pipe organ. The Stephenson-Bennett Mine, in the foothills of the Organs, had been worked intermittently since the Spanish colonial period and was reorganized as a serious commercial operation by Hugh Stephenson and various Anglo-American partners after the U.S. acquisition of New Mexico. The mine became increasingly important to the family’s holdings after Juana’s death. Pero esta cita pertenece a la Sexta Crónica.

La Mesa, New Mexico. A small village south of Las Cruces in the Mesilla Valley. Hugh Stephenson’s son Horace would, in the eighteen-sixties, establish a farm there, and Hugh would live the last years of his life at Horace’s farm and die there in eighteen hundred and seventy. The village was in Mexican territory until December eighteen hundred and fifty-three and American territory after the Gadsden Purchase. La línea política se movió por encima del pueblo sin que el pueblo se moviese.

El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, Sección Norte. The road from Chihuahua north through El Paso del Norte to Santa Fe and beyond. This was the road by which Hugh had come west in eighteen hundred and twenty-four, by which silver flowed north and trade goods flowed south, by which the family moved between Corralitos and Concordia. The road today survives in fragments as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Camino Real de Tierra Adentro and as the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail administered by the National Park Service.

La Capilla de San José de Concordia el Alto. The chapel built by Hugh and Juana in eighteen hundred and fifty-four on the Ascárate land at Concordia. Single nave, beamed ceiling, adobe walls washed white, painted wooden altar with a hand-carved retablo of the Virgin and Saint Joseph, a small belltower with the bell cast in Chihuahua. The chapel served the Concordia community for the rest of the century. The current Concordia Cemetery still includes the chapel grounds, though the original chapel structure has been altered and partially rebuilt over the years. El nombre — Concordia — es el nombre que Hugh trajo de Misuri. Lo puso sobre la capilla, sobre el rancho, sobre el cementerio. Es el nombre que sigue siendo el nombre.

V · Las Personas

People

Y de las personas que aparecen en este periodo, las principales son las siguientes; y de algunas la chronicle conoce mucho, y de otras menos, y de otras solo el nombre y la posición.

Hugh Stephenson (18 July 1798 – 11 October 1870). Born in Kentucky on the eighteenth of July of seventeen hundred and ninety-eight. Orphaned in early childhood by causes not preserved in the family record. Raised by a maternal cousin in the town of Concordia, Lafayette County, Missouri. Came west with a fur-trapping expedition in eighteen hundred and twenty-four at the age of twenty-six. Stopped at El Paso del Norte. Stayed. Married Juana María Ascárate in August of eighteen hundred and twenty-eight. Established a mercantile store at El Paso del Norte by eighteen hundred and thirty-five. Acquired the Concordia Ranch through Juana’s family land grant. Moved with his family to Corralitos to administer the silver mine after his father-in-law’s death in eighteen hundred and forty-one. Returned to Concordia in eighteen hundred and forty-eight. Formally founded the community of Concordia in eighteen hundred and forty-nine. Built the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto in eighteen hundred and fifty-four. Survived his wife by fourteen years. He died at his son Horace’s farm at La Mesa, New Mexico, on the eleventh of October of eighteen hundred and seventy. But this is for the Sixth Chronicle.

In this Part of the Chronicles, Hugh is in the prime of his life — between his thirty-eighth and his fifty-eighth year. He is a man who has built two countries’ worth of business on a single border, who speaks Spanish with a Kentucky-Missouri inflection that local people still imitate gently, who reads English better than he writes it and writes Spanish better than he speaks it, who has fathered seven children with the woman he found at the edge of the river thirty years before, and who will, on the morning of the sixth of February of eighteen hundred and fifty-six, lift his dying wife from the courtyard stones and carry her to the chapel he built with her. Llevaría su luto el resto de su vida. Catorce años. No se volvió a casar.

Juana María Ascárate Stephenson (1809 – 6 February 1856). Born in El Paso del Norte in eighteen hundred and nine (by the family chart; the public record gives eighteen hundred). Daughter of Don Juan Baptista Ascárate, wealthy merchant and silver mine owner, and his wife María Eugenia Romero. Educated in the manner of the daughters of wealthy frontier families: literate in Spanish, numerate, skilled in household management, in needlework, in the supervision of servants. Married Hugh Stephenson in August of eighteen hundred and twenty-eight at the age of nineteen. Bore seven children between eighteen hundred and twenty-nine and eighteen hundred and forty-five: Horacio, Hugo Junior, Alberto, Margarita, Benancia, Leonora, and Adelaida. She managed the household at Concordia Ranch during her husband’s absences. She managed the household at Corralitos during the five-year residence at the mine. She returned to Concordia in eighteen hundred and forty-eight. She commissioned the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto in eighteen hundred and fifty-four. She found the abandoned fawn at the river in the spring of eighteen hundred and fifty-five. She fed it on goat’s milk. She named it El Venadito. She died from the wounds it inflicted on the sixth of February of eighteen hundred and fifty-six. She was buried the following day at Concordia Cemetery, the first to be interred there.

The chronicle has gone to some length to recover what is known of her. The Texas State Historical Association entry by Michelle N. Balliet is the most complete published account. The Concordia Cemetery records, the historical marker at her grave, and the Stephenson family papers preserved in various El Paso archives confirm the principal facts. KBAT Radio, in a 2025 piece, summed up the relationship of the founders of Concordia thus: “Hugh brought ambition. Juana brought the empire.” The chronicle keeps the formulation. It is accurate.

Los hijos de Hugh y Juana. Seven children born between eighteen hundred and twenty-nine and eighteen hundred and forty-five. By the time of Juana’s death in eighteen hundred and fifty-six their ages ranged from eleven (Adelaida) to twenty-six (Horacio). Horacio (1829 – 1893), the eldest, educated in Missouri from age thirteen, would in time inherit and run the Concordia and La Mesa properties. Hugo Junior (1831 – 1859), the second son, would die young of cholera. Alberto (1834 – 1907). Margarita (1836 – 1914), the elder daughter, born the same year as the Texas Revolution, would in eighteen hundred and sixty marry José María Flores from San Antonio and be the bridge of the Segunda Confluencia — the second convergence of the family lines, which is the spine of the Seventh and Eighth Chronicles. Benancia (1838 – 1898). Leonora (1841 – ?). Adelaida (1845 – ?), the youngest, ten years old at her mother’s death.

Don Juan Baptista Ascárate (1783 – 1851). Juana’s father. Born in El Paso del Norte. Wealthy merchant. Owner of the Corralitos silver mine. Member of one of the leading families of the El Paso district. He sold the 900-acre Concordia land grant to his daughter and son-in-law in the early eighteen-thirties. He died in eighteen hundred and fifty-one at the age of sixty-eight. His widow María Eugenia Romero died in eighteen hundred and fifty-five. The Ascárate family properties — Corralitos, the lots in El Paso del Norte, the smaller holdings — were inherited jointly by Juana and her surviving siblings.

James Wiley Magoffin (1799 – 1868). Hugh Stephenson’s old partner from the eighteen-twenty-four wagon train. Trader between Missouri and Chihuahua via Santa Fe. El Magoffin of the Mexican frontier press. He maintained Magoffinsville at the upper end of El Paso, served as the principal U.S. intelligence officer in the Mexican-American War (he secured the bloodless surrender of New Mexico to Kearny in eighteen hundred and forty-six), and continued to do business with the Stephenson family for the rest of his life. He took Horace Stephenson to school in Missouri in eighteen hundred and forty-four. He provided the silver-route protection by which Stephenson silver moved north from Corralitos. He was a foundational figure of Anglo-American commercial settlement on the Rio Grande. El nombre Magoffin sigue siendo el nombre de una calle, un barrio, una casa, y un cementerio en El Paso, hasta el día de hoy.

General Stephen Watts Kearny (1794 – 1848). Commander of the U.S. Army of the West in the Mexican-American War. Marched from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe in eighteen hundred and forty-six, secured New Mexico for the United States, continued to California and conquered it the same year. Died in eighteen hundred and forty-eight of yellow fever contracted in Mexico. The state of Kearny County, Kansas; the city of Kearny, New Jersey; Fort Kearny in Nebraska; and numerous streets bear his name.

Colonel Alexander William Doniphan (1808 – 1887). Commander of the First Missouri Mounted Volunteers. Took El Paso del Norte on the twenty-sixth of December of eighteen hundred and forty-six the day after the Battle of Brazito. Marched south into Chihuahua, defeated the Mexican forces at Sacramento, took Chihuahua City. His campaign — the most successful unsupported expedition of the war — covered six thousand miles in twelve months. Returned to Missouri in eighteen hundred and forty-seven and went into law. Era de Misuri. Conocía a los Magoffin. Sabía quién era Stephenson. La guerra fue, en muchos sentidos, una guerra de Misuri en contra de Chihuahua, peleada por hombres que se conocían.

Nicholas Trist (1800 – 1874). United States diplomat. Sent to Mexico by President Polk to negotiate the peace; recalled by Polk after refusing to leave; negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo anyway in defiance of his recall. Signed the treaty on the second of February of eighteen hundred and forty-eight. Polk submitted the treaty to the Senate over his own objections; the Senate ratified it. Trist was fired and not paid for his work. The treaty he signed redrew half a continent.

VI · La Mesa

Food

Y la mesa de Concordia, en estos veinte años, era una mesa donde el norte de Misuri y el sur de Chihuahua se sentaban juntos sin pelearse, porque la mesa es el único lugar donde dos países pueden sentarse juntos sin pelearse.

The table at La Casa Grande el Alto was a table that combined the Mexican northern frontier kitchen with the Anglo-American Missouri kitchen that Hugh had grown up in. Juana cooked. Juana directed the women who cooked. The kitchen had two voices.

La cocina mexicana del norte. The dominant register of the Concordia table. The food of Chihuahuan and El Paso del Norte cooking in the mid-nineteenth century: carne asada on mesquite coals; chiles rellenos stuffed with cheese or with picadillo, dipped in egg, fried in lard; asado de bodas — a rich Chihuahuan stew of pork or beef with dried chiles, almonds, raisins, and chocolate, traditionally served at weddings (the dish that the Stephenson-Flores convergence wedding of eighteen hundred and sixty would feature, but here on the Concordia table it was Sunday food); machaca — dried beef shredded and stewed with eggs, onions, chiles, tomatoes; enchiladas — corn tortillas dipped in red or green chile, filled with cheese or meat or onion, served stacked rather than rolled in the El Paso style; frijoles refritos; tortillas de maíz and tortillas de harina — flour tortillas were a northern Mexican specialty that arrived in the family kitchen through Juana’s Chihuahuan heritage; café de olla — coffee boiled in a clay pot with cinnamon and piloncillo (cone sugar); atole — corn-flour drink, sweetened, sometimes flavored with chocolate or vanilla. The northern Mexican kitchen of the Stephenson-Ascárate table was the kitchen that would, over the next century, become the foundation of what is now called New Mexican and West Texan border cooking.

La cocina americana de Hugh. The minority register of the Concordia table but the register that produced certain regular dishes. Biscuits — what the Mexican kitchen knew as bizcochos — baked daily and eaten with butter and honey. Bacon and eggs — Hugh’s American breakfast, still cooked for him on Sunday mornings. Apple pie in the autumn when apples were available from the Mesilla orchards. Coffee — the same coffee, but Hugh drank it black and the family drank it as café de olla. Ham — cured pork, prepared in the Missouri style, distinct from the Mexican jamón. Cornbread — eaten by Hugh as a memory of his Missouri childhood, distinct from the Mexican pan de maíz. The Missouri kitchen kept Hugh in the Missouri he had left, in the way that the food of all immigrants keeps the immigrant in two countries simultaneously. Lo que se come es lo que se recuerda.

El vino y el aguardiente. The El Paso district had been a wine-producing region since the Spanish colonial period. The vineyards on both sides of the river produced a sweet table wine — the El Paso Mission wine — that was widely consumed in the mid-nineteenth century. The Stephenson-Ascárate family had their own small vineyard at Concordia and pressed wine for the household and for sale. Aguardiente — cane brandy — was the spirit of the daily table. Mezcal from Sonora and Chihuahua was beginning to appear regularly by the eighteen-fifties; tequila as a specifically Jaliscan product would not become widely known on the El Paso border until the late nineteenth century. Whiskey — bourbon and rye from the United States — arrived in El Paso del Norte with the American merchants and was on the table when Anglo-American visitors came to dinner.

La fruta y la huerta. The Mesilla Valley and the El Paso district were among the most agriculturally productive of the desert Southwest in the mid-nineteenth century. The acequias that ran from the Rio Grande watered orchards of apricot, peach, pear, fig, pomegranate, apple, and grape. The Stephenson-Ascárate property had its own orchard. Juana managed the orchard the way she managed the household — by hands-on supervision of the Mexican gardeners who did the actual labor. El durazno seco — dried peaches — was a staple of the winter pantry. Pomegranates were the autumn fruit. Apricots were the early summer’s first sweetness. The family pressed grape juice for the children and grape brandy for the adults.

El pan de muerto. Every first and second of November the family observed the Día de los Muertos. The kitchen baked the round sweet bread crossed with bone-shaped strips of dough — the bread of the dead — and set it on the household altar with cempasúchil flowers, the candles, the photographs of the dead. By eighteen hundred and fifty-six the household had its dead: Juana’s father, Juana’s mother, two infant children who had not survived. The altar was prepared each year. The bread was eaten on the second of November after the dead had been honored. In eighteen hundred and fifty-six the household would prepare the altar for the first time with Juana herself on it. Pero el pan de aquel año todavía no había sido horneado el día en que ella murió.

La cena del último domingo. On the last Sunday in January of eighteen hundred and fifty-six — eight days before her death — Juana hosted a dinner at La Casa Grande el Alto for the extended family and the principal neighbors of Concordia. The dinner is not documented in any record the chronicle has found, but the household would have held such a dinner — the late winter Sunday meal was traditional — and the chronicle imagines, in the manner of a chronicle that admits its imagination, the following menu: asado de bodas for the men, enchiladas verdes for the women and children, chiles rellenos as the side dish, frijoles refritos, arroz mexicano, tortillas de harina, guacamole with totopos, dried peaches stewed in honey for dessert, café de olla and aguardiente afterward. Juana sat at one end of the long table. Hugh sat at the other. The seven children and various extended family and neighbors filled the space between. Era el último domingo en que la familia estaría completa. Pero nadie en aquella mesa lo sabía.

VII · La Lengua

Language

Y la lengua de la frontera, en estos veinte años, se complicó. Antes había sido una sola — el castellano mexicano del norte — y después de la guerra se hicieron dos, y las dos lenguas se hablaban en los mismos hogares por las mismas familias, sin que nadie pudiese decir cuál era la primera y cuál era la segunda.

The Spanish of El Paso del Norte and the Mexican border in the eighteen-forties and eighteen-fifties was Chihuahuan-Sonoran border Spanish — a variety that had developed at the intersection of central Mexican Spanish, the Indigenous languages of the northern frontier (Tarahumara, Yaqui, Mansos), and the long mining-and-trade vocabulary of the Real de Minas system. It was a Spanish that any Mexican of the period recognized as northern and that any Spaniard would have recognized as distinctively American. The features:

Seseo and aspirated word-final s — inherited from the Andalusian-Atlantic stream that had been the Spanish of all New Spain since the conquest. The same features the Travieso family had carried out of the Canaries a hundred and twenty years before.

Indigenous substrate vocabulary, mostly Nahuatl in origin but with a distinctive northern frontier addition: huizache (acacia), mezquite (the great desert tree), zacate (grass), jacal (a humble dwelling), peyote (the sacred cactus), coyote, mapache (raccoon), cacahuate (peanut). And the words for the things specifically northern: atole, pinole, machaca, asado, carne seca.

The northern register of formal Mexican Spanish used in the courts at Chihuahua and at El Paso del Norte. The Ascárate family knew this register; Hugh learned enough of it to negotiate contracts. The land grants, the mining records, the marriage records, the baptismal records, the burial records — all were in this register.

After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, two new linguistic facts entered the El Paso district. First, the southern bank — El Paso del Norte — continued in Spanish, with no immediate change. The Mexican government continued to administer it; the parish church continued to record baptisms and marriages and deaths in Spanish; the cabildo continued to meet in Spanish. Spanish remained the language of public life in El Paso del Norte until eighteen hundred and eighty-eight when the town was renamed Ciudad Juárez and forever after. Second, the northern bank — the new American territory — slowly acquired English as a co-official language but did not displace Spanish at the household level. The Stephenson-Ascárate children, who had grown up bilingual, became the model of the bilingual upper class of the new American district. The Mexican laborers and small farmers continued in Spanish. The Anglo merchants and U.S. Army officers spoke English. El Paso, by the eighteen-fifties, had become a bilingual community on the American side and a monolingual community on the Mexican side. The bridge between the two — and the bridge was at first a literal bridge, later many bridges — was the bilingual class.

The Stephenson children of this period were the founding members of the bilingual El Paso class. Their education was bilingual — at home with their mother in Spanish, at the Missouri schools they attended with the Magoffin convoys in English. They wrote business letters in English to American partners and in Spanish to Mexican partners. They prayed in Spanish at the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto and conducted their inheritance disputes in English in the territorial courts of Texas and New Mexico. El bilingüismo de El Paso comenzó en esta familia.

The Spanish of Concordia Ranch was the Spanish of the Ascárate family — Chihuahuan, formal in business, intimate in family, with the Stephenson children’s Kentucky-inflected English audible underneath like a melodic line under a song. Hugh’s own Spanish was, by all accounts, fluent but accented; he was always identifiably from somewhere else. His Spanish had a slight Kentucky lift that nephews and grandchildren remembered. Hablaba el español de un americano que lo había aprendido bien. Era un buen español. No era el español de un nativo.

The chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto used Latin in the mass (the Tridentine rite), Spanish in the sermon, and Spanish in the parish registers. The first burial register at the chapel — the entry for Juana María Ascárate Stephenson, dated the seventh of February of eighteen hundred and fifty-six — was written in Spanish in the formal ecclesiastical register of the period: “En el día siete de febrero del año del Señor de mil ochocientos y cincuenta y seis, en la capilla de San José de Concordia el Alto, fue sepultado el cuerpo de Doña Juana María Ascárate de Stephenson, esposa legítima de Don Hugo Stephenson…” The chronicle is here imagining the form of the entry on the assumption that it followed the standard ecclesiastical form. The actual entry may differ in details. El registro se preserva. La chronicle no lo ha visto en su forma original, pero tiene su forma estándar.

VIII · Los Papeles

Primary Documents

Y los papeles de estos veinte años son muchos, porque la frontera produce papeles, y los tratados producen aún más papeles, y la muerte de un alma produce un papel también.

El Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo, dos de febrero de mil ochocientos y cuarenta y ocho. Signed at the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo by Nicholas Trist for the United States and by Bernardo Couto, Miguel Atristain, and Luis Cuevas for Mexico. Ratified by the U.S. Senate March 10, 1848; by the Mexican Congress May 19, 1848. The treaty ceded approximately 525,000 square miles to the United States, established the Rio Grande as the international boundary between Mexico and the United States from the gulf coast to the Pacific watershed, and provided in Articles VIII and IX for the protection of the property and citizenship rights of Mexican citizens residing in the ceded territory. The original treaty is held in the U.S. National Archives. El papel que rehízo el mapa.

El Tratado de la Mesilla (Gadsden Purchase), treinta de diciembre de mil ochocientos y cincuenta y tres. Signed by James Gadsden for the United States and by Antonio López de Santa Anna for Mexico. The United States purchased 29,670 square miles in southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico for ten million dollars. The treaty included provisions for the Mesilla Valley north of El Paso. Ratified June 30, 1854. Original held in the U.S. National Archives.

Los Registros Bautismales, Matrimoniales y Funerarios de El Paso del Norte y de la Capilla de Concordia, mil ochocientos y veintiocho adelante. The parish records of El Paso del Norte (now Ciudad Juárez) and of San José de Concordia el Alto record the family events: the marriage of Hugh and Juana in August of eighteen hundred and twenty-eight; the baptisms of all seven children; the deaths of Juan Baptista Ascárate in 1851 and of María Eugenia Romero in 1855; the burial of Juana María Ascárate Stephenson on February 7, 1856 as the first interment at Concordia Cemetery. The original registers are held by the Diocese of Ciudad Juárez (for the Mexican side) and by the Diocese of El Paso (for the American side after eighteen hundred and fifty-four).

Los Documentos de los Terrenos Ascárate, siglo dieciocho y diecinueve. The land grant records of the Ascárate family — the 13,000-acre grant from the Spanish Crown to Don Ignacio Ascárate in the seventeen-fifties, and the 900-acre grant on the north bank of the Rio Grande that became Concordia Ranch. The original Crown documents are in the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City; the U.S. land confirmation documents after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo are in the U.S. General Land Office records and in the Texas General Land Office.

Los Documentos del Comercio Stephenson-Magoffin, mil ochocientos y veinticuatro adelante. Commercial records of the trade between Hugh Stephenson, James Wiley Magoffin, and the various firms with which they did business. Receipts, bills of lading, correspondence with St. Louis houses, mine production records from Corralitos. Some of these survive in the Magoffin family papers held in El Paso and at the University of Texas at El Paso; others are scattered in business archives in Missouri and Chihuahua.

El Marcador Histórico de Texas en el Cementerio de Concordia, mil novecientos ochenta y cuatro. The Texas state historical marker erected at Concordia Cemetery in 1984. Confirms Juana María Ascárate Stephenson as the first burial, on the seventh of February of eighteen hundred and fifty-six. The marker text is preserved at HMDB.org and at the Concordia Heritage Association’s records. Es un papel que es de piedra. La piedra es el papel más durable.

La Tumba de Doña Juana María Ascárate de Stephenson, febrero de mil ochocientos y cincuenta y seis. Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas. The grave itself is a primary document of the period — the inscription, the position relative to the chapel, the dates carved in the stone. The grave has been preserved by the Concordia Heritage Association.

IX · Las Fuentes

Sources

Beck, Warren A. New Mexico: A History of Four Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962. Standard reference on the territorial period.

Chamberlin, Eugene Keith. “Mexican Colonization Versus American Interests in Lower California.” Pacific Historical Review 20, no. 1 (1951): 43–55.

El Paso Community College Borderlands. “Pioneer Ranch Became Concordia Cemetery.” 2000. https://epcc.libguides.com/c.php?g=754275&p=5406137

El Paso Community College Borderlands. “Town of El Paso Grew from Pioneer Settlements.” 1999. https://epcc.libguides.com/c.php?g=754275&p=5406138

Eveleth, Robert W. “An Historical Vignette — Stephenson-Bennett Mine.” New Mexico Geology 5, no. 1 (1983): 9.

Gonzalez, Nancy. “Utilizing Concordia Cemetery as a Framework: The Social and Economic Development of El Paso County After the U.S.-Mexico War.” Dissertation, University of Texas at El Paso, 2014.

Griswold del Castillo, Richard. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

HMDB.org. “Concordia Cemetery Historical Marker.” El Paso, Texas. Erected 1984. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=37947

KBAT Radio. “How Juana Maria Ascarate Shaped El Paso’s History.” 2025. https://kbat.com/ixp/63/p/first-lady-concordia-cemetery/

Kiser, William S. Turmoil on the Rio Grande: History of the Mesilla Valley, 1846–1865. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011.

Kohout, Martin Donell. “Stephenson, Hugh.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/stephenson-hugh

Magoffin, Susan Shelby. Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico: The Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846–1847. Edited by Stella M. Drumm. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1926. Reprint, University of Nebraska Press, 1962. Susan Shelby Magoffin was the young wife of James Wiley Magoffin’s brother Samuel; her diary is the foundational firsthand source on the Santa Fe trade and the Mexican-American War in New Mexico.

National Park Service. “El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail.” https://www.nps.gov/elca/index.htm

Romo, David Dorado. Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez: 1893–1923. El Paso: Cinco Puntos Press, 2005. Standard reference for later periods, but with important historical background on this period.

Strickland, Rex W. Six Who Came to El Paso: Pioneers of the 1840s. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1963. The standard biographical reference on the Anglo-American pioneers of El Paso, including Hugh Stephenson.

Texas State Historical Association. “Battle of Brazito.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Concordia.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/concordia-tx

Texas State Historical Association. “Mexican War.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Stephenson, Juana María Ascárate.” Author: Michelle N. Balliet. Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/stephenson-juana-maria-ascarate

Timmons, W. H. El Paso: A Borderlands History. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1990. The standard modern history of El Paso, including this period.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. Full text via National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-guadalupe-hidalgo

Concordia Heritage Association. “About Concordia Cemetery.” https://www.concordiacemetery.org/

Aquí termina la Quinta Parte de las Crónicas. La capilla ha sido construida. El venadito ha crecido. Juana ha muerto en el patio de la casa que ella misma había hecho. Hugh ha cargado a su esposa muerta desde el patio hasta la capilla que él había construido para ella. La cementerio ha recibido a su primera sepultura.

Y aquellos que en otro tiempo hayan de leer estas páginas sabrán que en el momento en que esta página se cierra, los siete hijos de Hugh y Juana — Horacio, Hugo Junior, Alberto, Margarita, Benancia, Leonora, y Adelaida — están de pie alrededor del cuerpo de su madre en la capilla, y que Hugh está afuera en el patio con un rifle en las manos, mirando al venadito, que también está mirándolo. El venadito sabe lo que ha hecho. Hugh sabe lo que va a hacer. El sol está saliendo. La capilla, recién terminada, está fría todavía por dentro. Y el río, que no sabe nada de fronteras y nada de muertes, sigue corriendo hacia el sur como ha corrido siempre.

I · El Escenario

Setting

Y fue que en estos catorce años el hombre que se había quedado solo en la casa de Concordia vio pasar por la frontera tres cosas que ningún mortal debiera ver en una sola vida: la pérdida de su mujer, la pérdida de su país, y la pérdida de su tierra. Y de las tres, la primera fue la que más le pesó. Las otras dos no fueron sino capítulos del mismo libro.

This is the period that opens with a man standing in a courtyard with a rifle in his hands at sunrise on the seventh of February of eighteen hundred and fifty-six, and that closes with the same man dying in his son’s farmhouse at La Mesa, New Mexico, on the eleventh of October of eighteen hundred and seventy. Between those two mornings lay fourteen years of widowhood, the rise and the confiscation and the recovery of the Stephenson commercial empire, the Civil War in the American Southwest, the second great convergence of the family lines through the marriage of Margarita Stephenson to José María Flores in eighteen hundred and sixty, the secession of Texas in eighteen hundred and sixty-one, the brief Confederate occupation of the upper Rio Grande, the Union recovery of the territory by eighteen hundred and sixty-two, the Federal marshal’s sale of Concordia Ranch and Brazito as enemy properties in eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, the purchase of those properties at the sale by Hugh’s son-in-law Albert H. French for the sum of one silver dollar, the relocation of Fort Bliss to Concordia after the Rio Grande flooded Magoffinsville in November of the same year, and the final move of the widower to the home of his eldest son at La Mesa, where he would die.

What was built with hands, the war could take. What was built with the name, the river could carry. What was built with love had no deed — and therefore could not be confiscated. This is what the period proved.

The American Southwest in this fourteen-year span was a region in convulsion. The Texas annexation of eighteen hundred and forty-five had been followed by the Mexican Cession of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, and the cession had been followed by the discovery of California gold and the rush of Anglo-American population west, and the gold rush had been followed by the rapid drawing of railroad lines and telegraph lines across territory the Federal government did not entirely understand it had acquired, and the railroad lines and the telegraph lines had been followed by the long political crisis over the extension of slavery into the new territories, and the crisis over slavery had been followed by the Civil War. Texas seceded in February of eighteen hundred and sixty-one. The Confederacy, briefly, claimed New Mexico and Arizona. Confederate troops marched up the Rio Grande from Texas in the autumn of eighteen hundred and sixty-one. The Battle of Valverde was fought near Socorro in February of eighteen hundred and sixty-two. The Battle of Glorieta Pass — sometimes called the Gettysburg of the West — was fought near Santa Fe in March of the same year, and the Confederate supply train was destroyed there by Colorado volunteers under Major John M. Chivington, and the Confederate dream of a Pacific empire ended in a single battle. The Confederates retreated south. By the summer of eighteen hundred and sixty-two the Union forces had reoccupied the territory. The war continued in the East for three more years. In the Southwest the war was effectively over.

For the Stephenson family the war was a problem the family had not invited. Hugh, like most of the Anglo-American merchants of El Paso, had business ties to Missouri and Kentucky that made him sympathetic to the Confederate position. He purchased Confederate bonds. He sold supplies to the Confederate troops in the brief period of their occupation. He did not take up arms. When the Union returned in eighteen hundred and sixty-two and held the territory thereafter, Hugh continued his business affairs as best he could, but the Federal authorities did not forget. In eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, after the war had ended and the Reconstruction had begun, the Federal authorities confiscated the Concordia Ranch and the Brazito property as enemy property and sold them at the Federal marshal’s sale. The bonds had been a small investment. The price was the entire estate. The lesson would have been worth remembering, if remembering would have changed anything.

The Federal marshal’s sale was a public auction held at El Paso in eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, advertised in the local press, attended by Federal officers and a small number of bidders. The Concordia property — the 900-acre ranch, the Casa Grande el Alto, the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto, the cemetery, the outbuildings, the laborers’ houses, the acequia — was offered as a single lot. The high bidder was Albert H. French, husband of Hugh’s daughter Benancia, who had married into the family in eighteen hundred and sixty-three. The price was one silver dollar. French then transferred the property back to the Stephenson heirs in a separate transaction. The Federal marshal had been satisfied. The property was preserved. El dólar de plata que rescató a la familia es la pieza más famosa de toda la crónica. Está en la novela. Está en la memoria. Está en la moneda misma, que la familia guardó.

In the same year, in November, the Rio Grande flooded the lower river valley with such force that the Magoffinsville garrison of Fort Bliss was unsalvageable. The Army relocated the post to Concordia and called it Camp Concordia. The post remained at Concordia from November of eighteen hundred and sixty-seven until March of eighteen hundred and sixty-nine, when it was renamed Fort Bliss again and relocated to a different site. For sixteen months the Stephenson Ranch was a U.S. Army post. La casa que había recibido el primer entierro del cementerio se convirtió, once años después, en el cuartel del ejército de los Estados Unidos. Y la familia, que era dueña de la tierra y arrendataria del Acuartelamiento, fue pagada en oro federal por su propia casa.

Hugh, by the end of eighteen hundred and sixty-nine, was seventy-one years old. He had buried his wife thirteen years before. He had buried two of his children — Hugo Junior in eighteen hundred and fifty-nine of cholera, and one infant in the eighteen-forties. He had married off five of his remaining children. He had reorganized the Stephenson-Bennett Mine in the Organ Mountains in eighteen hundred and fifty-eight. He had survived the war. He had lost the Concordia property and gotten it back. The household at Concordia was being managed by his daughter Margarita, who lived there with her husband José María Flores and their growing children, and Hugh found that he was a guest in the house he had built. Era hora de irse.

He moved to La Mesa, New Mexico, in the spring of eighteen hundred and seventy. His eldest son Horace, who had been farming in the Mesilla Valley since the mid-sixties, had a farmhouse with room for the patriarch. Hugh moved with his books, his correspondence, a small chest of personal effects, and the silver dollar Albert French had paid for Concordia in eighteen hundred and sixty-seven. The dollar he kept in a small leather pouch in the inside pocket of his coat for the rest of his life. El dólar que había sido el precio de la familia entera. Lo llevaba sobre el corazón.

He died at La Mesa on the eleventh of October of eighteen hundred and seventy. Horace was at his bedside. The cause was pneumonia. He was buried two days later in Las Cruces, in the cemetery of the small Methodist congregation that had grown up in the Mesilla Valley after the Gadsden Purchase. He was not buried at Concordia beside Juana, because the chapel of San José was Catholic and Hugh had been raised Methodist and had never formally converted to Catholicism despite his Catholic marriage and his Catholic-raised children. The chronicle has not been able to establish whether his separation from Juana in burial was a matter of his own preference or of the family’s interpretation of the rules. The chronicle records the fact and does not invent the motive. La separación es la última cosa que la frontera hizo entre ellos. La frontera, que había sido un río, se hizo de pronto una pared en el cementerio.

This is the period of La Mina y la Guerra. The mine produced silver bars stamped with the family name. The war took the land and gave it back at a discount that proved the absurdity of the taking. The widower died alone. The second convergence joined the families. The next generation began.

El bisnieto que escribiría esta crónica no estaría aquí si Margarita y José María no se hubiesen casado en mil ochocientos sesenta. Por eso este capítulo, aun en su tristeza, es también el capítulo de la promesa.

II · Dónde Aparece en PASADOR

Where in PASADOR

Y la Cuarta Obra de la novela, que se titula “La Mina” y que cubre los años de mil ochocientos y cincuenta y ocho a mil ochocientos y setenta, es la obra de este periodo.

The Fourth Play of the novel — The Mine — is the play of this Chronicle. It opens in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, two years after Juana’s death, with Hugh organizing the Stephenson-Bennett operation in the Organ Mountains. It closes with Hugh’s death at La Mesa in eighteen hundred and seventy. The play is held together by three threads: the silver of the mine, the war that takes and returns the land, and the widower who walks through both as a man already half-removed from the world.

The opening passage of Play Four is the prose-and-verse invocation titled WHAT WAS IN THE AIR, set in California, Texas, and the world in eighteen hundred and fifty-eight to eighteen hundred and seventy, that the chronicler quoted in the First Part: “Las Organ Mountains se levantaron del desierto en diez millones de años. La guerra duró cuatro. En la mina a seis mil pies hay un hombre con tos. Lleva seis años bajo tierra. La montaña sabe su nombre mejor que el libro de contabilidad.” The Organ Mountains rose from the desert in ten million years. The war lasted four. In the mine at six thousand feet there is a man with a cough. He has been six years underground. The mountain knows his name better than the account ledger does. The play is making the same argument the chronicle makes: that the long times of the earth absorb the short times of the wars, and that what is done with the hands in the mine survives the names on the bonds.

The second convergence — the marriage of Margarita Stephenson to José María Flores in eighteen hundred and sixty — appears in Play Four as a quiet wedding scene in the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto. Margarita is twenty-four. José María is twenty-eight. He has come from San Antonio, where his family has been since seventeen hundred and thirty-one, to find a wife in the El Paso district because the El Paso district is where the silver is and the silver is where the future is. The play does not labor the structural significance of this wedding, but it is the structural moment that joins the two Spanish-Tejano lines of the family — the San Antonio line of the Travieso-Curbelo-Flores convergence of seventeen hundred and fifty, and the El Paso line of the Stephenson-Ascárate marriage of eighteen hundred and twenty-eight. De este matrimonio saldría, dos años más tarde, José Jesús Flores Stephenson — el alcalde de Ciudad Juárez de la Quinta Obra — y nieto de Juana María Ascárate, que ya estaba bajo tierra cuando él nació.

The Civil War in the Southwest appears in Play Four in compressed form. The play shows the brief Confederate occupation of El Paso del Norte in eighteen hundred and sixty-one — Confederate troops camped on the Concordia property, paying nominal rent in Confederate scrip that would be worthless in eighteen months — and the Union recovery in eighteen hundred and sixty-two. The play shows the Battle of Glorieta Pass in March of eighteen hundred and sixty-two through the eyes of a Confederate quartermaster who survived the destruction of the supply train and limped back to Texas. The play does not show the Battle of Valverde or the major engagements of the eastern theater. The play does show the silent month after Glorieta when the family at Concordia did not know whether to expect Confederate reinforcements or Union retribution.

The Federal confiscation of eighteen hundred and sixty-seven appears in Play Four as a courtroom scene. The Federal officer reads the order of confiscation aloud. The auction is held three weeks later. The bidding is brief. Albert French places his bid of one silver dollar. There are no other serious bidders, because everyone in the district knows the property and knows why French is bidding and knows that the auction is a face-saving gesture by the Federal authorities. The marshal accepts the bid. The dollar is paid. The deed is transferred. The play renders the scene as the formal but theatrical proceeding it actually was — one of the documented absurdities of Reconstruction-era property law in the territories. The novel is careful to note that the same federal authorities who confiscated Stephenson property were, eighteen months later, paying rent to the Stephenson estate for the Camp Concordia post on the same land. La burocracia federal se confiscó la tierra a sí misma y se pagó alquiler a sí misma. La familia estaba en medio, recibiendo el alquiler.

The fourteen years of Hugh’s widowhood are not depicted in the play in detail. The play shows him at the mine, at the Concordia office, at the courtroom, at the wedding of his daughter, at the funerals of his son and his other dead. The play does not show him eating dinner alone in the kitchen of La Casa Grande el Alto at the long table that had been built for seven children and two parents. The novel knows what dinner alone in that kitchen would have been. The novel chooses not to depict it. La novela respeta el luto. La crónica también.

The death of Hugh at La Mesa in October of eighteen hundred and seventy appears at the end of Play Four. He died in his son’s farmhouse in the Mesilla Valley. Horace was beside him. The dollar was in the leather pouch over his heart. The play ends the Fourth Play with the burial in Las Cruces. The chronicle ends Part VI on the same scene.

III · Los Sucesos

Events of the Period

Y los hechos de estos catorce años, en orden, son los siguientes.

In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-six, on the morning of the seventh of February, the day after Juana’s death, Hugh Stephenson went into the courtyard at La Casa Grande el Alto with his rifle. El Venadito was still there. The deer had not run. It was standing against the wall of the courtyard, head lowered, antlers down, in the posture of an animal that has done something it does not understand. Hugh shot it once. The shot was clean. The body of the deer was carried out by two of the household servants and buried somewhere on the property that the chronicle does not record. Hugh did not eat that day. He did not eat the next day. El luto de Hugh duró catorce años. Comenzó esa mañana.

In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, after a year of administrative silence, Hugh began to reorganize the Stephenson commercial operations. The household at Concordia was managed by the elder daughters and by Hugh’s sister-in-law Isabel Ascárate, who came up from El Paso del Norte to help in the year of grief and stayed two years. The mine at Corralitos in Chihuahua continued under its administrator. The mercantile store in El Paso del Norte continued under its clerks. The interest in the silver mining in the Organ Mountains east of Las Cruces, which Hugh had been holding casually since the late eighteen-forties, began to be developed seriously.

In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, Hugh and his partner George F. Bennett, an Anglo-American merchant of Las Cruces, formally organized the Stephenson-Bennett Mine in the Organ Mountains. The mine had been worked intermittently since the Spanish colonial period, and Hugh had acquired the basic mineral rights some years earlier, but the eighteen hundred and fifty-eight reorganization brought serious capital, modern equipment, and Anglo-American labor practices to the operation. The mine produced primarily lead with associated silver, and was, in its peak years of the early eighteen-sixties, one of the more important mines in the Mesilla Valley. Hugh’s silver from Stephenson-Bennett, like his earlier silver from Corralitos, was stamped with bars marked STEPHENSON and shipped north to Santa Fe and east to St. Louis through the Magoffin trading network. La plata llevaba el nombre. El nombre llevaba la plata. Eran la misma cosa.

In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, in the spring, the second son of Hugh and Juana — Hugo Junior, aged twenty-eight — died of cholera in El Paso del Norte. Cholera epidemics were common in the Rio Grande border towns in the late eighteen-fifties; the city had no public water system and the river water was contaminated downstream of the upstream settlements. Hugo Junior was buried in the Catholic cemetery at El Paso del Norte; the burial register is preserved in the diocesan archives. El segundo entierro de los hijos. La familia se preparaba para más, porque la familia era frontera y la frontera era enfermedad.

In the year eighteen hundred and sixty, on a date the parish records of the Concordia chapel preserve but which the chronicler has not yet retrieved, Margarita Stephenson — aged twenty-four, third surviving child of Hugh and Juana — married José María Flores — aged twenty-eight, descendant of the Travieso-Curbelo-Flores line of San Antonio. The wedding was held at the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto. The wedding feast was held at La Casa Grande el Alto. The bride wore — but here again the chronicle stops short of inventing what it has not retrieved from the parish records. The marriage record exists. The dress does not. The marriage was the Segunda Confluencia — the second great convergence — joining the El Paso Stephenson-Ascárate line to the San Antonio Travieso-Curbelo-Flores line, and producing, from the second year of the marriage forward, the line that would in time produce the writer of these chronicles. Si no se hubiesen casado, nada de lo que sigue en esta crónica habría ocurrido. Por eso esta cita, en medio del periodo de la guerra, es la cita de la esperanza.

In the year eighteen hundred and sixty-one, on the first of February, the secession convention of Texas voted to leave the Union. The popular vote on the secession ordinance was held on the twenty-third of February; Texans approved secession by approximately three to one. Texas formally seceded on the second of March. The Confederate States of America claimed Texas as a member state. El Paso del Norte was Mexican territory and continued in Mexican Spanish-language Catholic peace; the El Paso district on the American side became Confederate territory and put Confederate scrip into circulation.

In the same year, in July, Confederate troops under Colonel John R. Baylor occupied the upper Rio Grande region and declared the Confederate Territory of Arizona, which included the southern half of present-day New Mexico and Arizona. Baylor established his headquarters at Mesilla. The Stephenson-Bennett Mine, which was in this territory, continued to produce silver under Confederate ownership, with Confederate authorities purchasing the output and paying in Confederate scrip. Hugh, who had been doing business with Anglo-American merchants from Missouri and Kentucky for decades, found himself nominally in business with the Confederacy. He purchased Confederate bonds — the amount is disputed; the family chart says modest, the Federal authorities later said substantial — and provided supplies to Confederate troops at modest prices. He did not take up arms. He was sixty-three years old.

In the year eighteen hundred and sixty-two, in February, Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley led an army up the Rio Grande from El Paso into New Mexico. The Battle of Valverde, fought near Socorro on the twenty-first of February, was a Confederate tactical victory but a strategic problem; Sibley continued north. In March he reached Albuquerque and then Santa Fe. On the twenty-sixth of March the Battle of Glorieta Pass began. On the twenty-eighth of March the battle ended with a Confederate retreat after the Colorado volunteers under Major John M. Chivington destroyed the Confederate supply train at Apache Canyon, in the rear of the Confederate position. Sin suministros Sibley no podía continuar. La Confederación de Arizona, que había durado nueve meses, terminó en Glorieta Pass. Sibley’s army retreated south down the Rio Grande, abandoning equipment, men, and territorial ambitions as it went. By July the Confederate forces had withdrawn from New Mexico entirely. The Union forces — including the California Column under General James Henry Carleton, marching east from California — reoccupied the territory.

In the years eighteen hundred and sixty-two to eighteen hundred and sixty-five, the Stephenson commercial operations continued under nominal Union authority. The mine at Corralitos — in Mexican Chihuahua — was unaffected by the U.S. war. The mine at Stephenson-Bennett continued production, now selling its output to Union purchasers. The mercantile operations at El Paso and El Paso del Norte continued, supplying both sides of the river. The Confederate scrip Hugh had received between July of eighteen hundred and sixty-one and July of eighteen hundred and sixty-two became, over the next three years, increasingly worthless. By the end of the war the Confederate bonds Hugh had held were worth nothing. The investment had been lost. The investment also became, in the eyes of the Federal authorities after the war, evidence of disloyal collaboration. La pérdida fue doble: el dinero se perdió, y después la tierra.

In the year eighteen hundred and sixty-three, Benancia Stephenson — fourth surviving child of Hugh and Juana, aged twenty-five — married Albert H. French, an Anglo-American merchant resident at El Paso. French was approximately Hugh’s age. He had been a friend of the family for years. The marriage joined the Stephenson family to another Anglo-American commercial family in the district. French would be, four years later, the man who bid one silver dollar for the Concordia property at the federal marshal’s sale.

In the year eighteen hundred and sixty-five, in April, Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. The war ended in the East. The Confederate territories in the West had been Union-occupied for three years. Federal authorities began the process of confiscating Confederate property under the various Confiscation Acts of eighteen hundred and sixty-one and eighteen hundred and sixty-two.

In the year eighteen hundred and sixty-six and through eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, the Federal authorities of the District of Texas prepared the case against Hugh Stephenson and other Confederate-sympathizing landowners of the upper Rio Grande. Hugh’s Confederate bonds were entered as evidence. His provision of supplies to Confederate troops in eighteen hundred and sixty-one and sixty-two was entered. The total of his alleged disloyal acts was tabulated. The judgment was issued. The Concordia property and the Brazito property were ordered confiscated.

In the year eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, on a date in the late summer or early autumn the chronicler has not yet retrieved from the marshal’s records, the Federal marshal’s sale of the Concordia and Brazito properties was held at El Paso. The advertisement of the sale appeared in the local press. A small number of bidders attended. Albert H. French bid one silver dollar for the Concordia property. There were no other serious bids. The marshal accepted the bid. The deed was transferred. French immediately transferred the property to the Stephenson heirs. The Federal authorities had been satisfied by the form of the proceedings. The substance of the property remained in the family. La burocracia federal había hecho su trabajo. La familia había hecho el suyo. Las dos partes salieron contentas.

In the same year, in November, the Rio Grande flooded the lower river valley. The flood was unusually severe; the Magoffinsville garrison of Fort Bliss, which had been the U.S. Army post at the upper El Paso district since eighteen hundred and forty-eight, was unsalvageable. The Army negotiated with the Stephenson heirs to relocate Fort Bliss to the Concordia property, paying rent for the use of the land. The post was relocated and renamed Camp Concordia in late November of eighteen hundred and sixty-seven. The post would remain at Concordia until March of eighteen hundred and sixty-nine. The Federal government paid rent for sixteen months. El gobierno federal había confiscado la tierra; el gobierno federal pagaba renta por la tierra. La familia recibía el oro federal en la mano izquierda y la deuda federal en la mano derecha. Ambas eran de plata.

In the years eighteen hundred and sixty-eight to eighteen hundred and sixty-nine, Camp Concordia was the operational U.S. Army post on the upper Rio Grande. Federal troops were quartered in the outbuildings of the Stephenson ranch. The chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto continued to serve as the parish chapel; Federal officers attended mass there on Sundays alongside the Mexican families of the district. Camp Concordia, in its brief existence, was perhaps the most curious of all U.S. Army posts — a Federal post on land that had been confiscated from the family of the rentier, returned to the family at the marshal’s sale, and now leased back to the federal government at fair market rent. The bureaucracy did not see the irony. The family did. The family kept silent and cashed the rent checks.

In the year eighteen hundred and sixty-nine, in March, the Army relocated Fort Bliss again, to a different site east of the city of El Paso that had been growing on what would become the international border. Camp Concordia was decommissioned. The Stephenson property reverted entirely to family use.

In the year eighteen hundred and seventy, in the spring, Hugh Stephenson, aged seventy-one, moved from Concordia to La Mesa, New Mexico. His eldest son Horace, then forty-one, was farming in the Mesilla Valley and had a farmhouse with a guest wing. Hugh moved with his books, his correspondence, a small chest of personal effects, and the silver dollar Albert French had paid for Concordia. The Concordia property was managed thereafter by Margarita and her husband José María Flores, who had been living there with their growing family since their marriage in eighteen hundred and sixty.

In the same year, on the eleventh of October, Hugh Stephenson died at La Mesa, New Mexico, of pneumonia. He was seventy-two years old. His son Horace was at his bedside. The dollar was in the leather pouch in the inside pocket of his coat. He had not removed it for fourteen years.

Two days later he was buried in the small Methodist cemetery of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The funeral was attended by Horace and Albert Stephenson and the husbands of Margarita and Benancia and Leonora and Adelaida — the four surviving daughters with their families — and by Albert French and various neighbors and business associates of the Mesilla Valley. The chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto held a memorial mass for him the following Sunday. He was not buried at Concordia beside Juana because the chapel was Catholic and Hugh had been Methodist. El cementerio de Las Cruces guarda el cuerpo de Hugh. El cementerio de Concordia guarda el cuerpo de Juana. Catorce años de luto, y al final una frontera más entre los dos. Las fronteras son tenaces.

IV · Los Lugares

Places

Y los lugares de estos catorce años son los lugares que la familia ya conocía y los lugares que la guerra trajo, y de cada uno de ellos hay que decir lo que se sabe.

La Casa Grande el Alto. The main house at Concordia Ranch. After Juana’s death the house lost the center of its daily life. The seven children continued to inhabit it for as long as they were unmarried; after eighteen hundred and sixty, Margarita and José María took the master rooms; Hugh kept the eastern wing where his office and library were located. The kitchen — once the busy heart of the household — was managed by the housekeeper Doña Soledad, who had been with Juana for twenty years and who remained at the house until her own death in the eighteen-seventies. The courtyard where Juana had died was used less and less. The fountain in the courtyard was kept full of water by the servants but Hugh did not sit in the courtyard. Lo que había sido el corazón de la casa se hizo el ausente de la casa.

La Capilla de San José de Concordia el Alto. The chapel Juana had built. The parish chapel of Concordia for the rest of the century. The marriage of Margarita and José María in eighteen hundred and sixty was held there. The funeral of Hugo Junior in eighteen hundred and fifty-nine was held there. The memorial mass for Hugh in eighteen hundred and seventy was held there. The cemetery beside the chapel grew steadily; by the time Hugh died there were several dozen graves there, most of them members of the extended Stephenson-Ascárate family and the laborers of the ranch. El cementerio que Juana había estrenado se hizo poblándose.

La Mina Stephenson-Bennett. The mine in the Organ Mountains east of Las Cruces in the Mesilla Valley. The mine sat at approximately six thousand feet elevation in the foothills of the Organ Peaks. The principal shaft was approximately three hundred feet deep at its peak development in the eighteen-sixties. The mine produced primarily lead with associated silver and small amounts of gold and copper. The lead was used for shot and for piping; the silver was the high-value product, smelted into bars and stamped STEPHENSON. The workforce at the mine was approximately seventy men in its peak years — a mix of Anglo-American miners brought up from Missouri and Kentucky, Mexican miners recruited from Chihuahua, and a small number of Apache and Tigua laborers. The mine continued to operate after Hugh’s death under his sons and son-in-law and remained in family ownership until the early twentieth century. The site of the mine is preserved today; the Stephenson-Bennett Mine ruins can be visited in the Aguirre Spring Recreation Area of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. La montaña sigue. La mina ya no. La memoria del nombre está en la roca todavía.

El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. The road north from Chihuahua through El Paso and through Las Cruces and through Santa Fe. The road by which Hugh’s silver moved north to St. Louis. The road by which the Confederate army moved north in eighteen hundred and sixty-one and retreated south in eighteen hundred and sixty-two. The road by which Hugh’s body would, two days after his death, be taken from La Mesa to Las Cruces for burial. La misma carretera por la cual había venido al oeste en mil ochocientos veinticuatro, cuarenta y seis años antes, casi para acabar exactamente en el mismo lugar.

Magoffinsville and Fort Bliss. The Anglo-American military and commercial settlement at the upper end of El Paso district. Founded by James Wiley Magoffin in the eighteen-forties. Fort Bliss was established there in eighteen hundred and forty-eight. Magoffinsville was flooded by the Rio Grande in November of eighteen hundred and sixty-seven and was effectively abandoned thereafter. Fort Bliss was relocated to Concordia (Camp Concordia, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven to eighteen hundred and sixty-nine) and then to a third site (the present Fort Bliss east of El Paso). Las inundaciones del río decidieron donde estaría el ejército. El ejército no decidía donde estaría el río.

Las Cruces and La Mesa, New Mexico. The principal town of the Mesilla Valley after the Gadsden Purchase. Las Cruces — The Crosses — took its name from a roadside cluster of grave-crosses marking the site of a long-ago massacre by Apache raiders. The town had been a small Mexican settlement before the Gadsden Purchase; after eighteen hundred and fifty-four it grew rapidly as an American territorial settlement. By eighteen hundred and seventy it had perhaps two thousand residents. La Mesa was a small farming village south of Las Cruces. Horace Stephenson farmed there from approximately eighteen hundred and sixty-five. Hugh moved to Horace’s farm in eighteen hundred and seventy and died there in October of the same year.

El Cementerio Metodista de Las Cruces. The small Methodist cemetery on the outskirts of Las Cruces. Where Hugh was buried. The cemetery still exists; Hugh’s grave is preserved and marked. The cemetery is also known historically as the Las Cruces Pioneer Cemetery and now as the Las Cruces Citizens Cemetery. Hugh’s stone is one of the older markers in the cemetery. La piedra dice solamente: HUGH STEPHENSON, BORN KENTUCKY 18 JULY 1798, DIED LA MESA NEW MEXICO 11 OCTOBER 1870. Sin referencia a Juana. Sin referencia a Concordia. Sin referencia a la frontera. Solamente las fechas y los lugares.

El Cementerio de Concordia. The cemetery beside the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto. Where Juana lay, where two infant children lay, where Hugo Junior lay, and where the other Stephenson-Ascárate dead of the period lay. Hugh did not lie there. The chronicle has discussed why. The cemetery would, in the next century, become the central historic cemetery of El Paso, holding sixty-five thousand graves and including such figures as John Wesley Hardin the outlaw, the lawman Pat Garrett, the journalist Dorrance Roderick, the Stephensons, the Ascárates, the Magoffins, and many of the rest of the families this Chronicle has named. The cemetery is administered today by the Concordia Heritage Association. Concordia es donde la familia de Juana está. Hugh está enterrado en otra parte. Pero el cementerio lleva el nombre que él trajo de Misuri.

V · Las Personas

People

Y las personas de estos catorce años son las que ya conocíamos y algunas que no. De todas se ha de decir lo que se sabe.

Hugh Stephenson (18 July 1798 – 11 October 1870). The patriarch in his last fourteen years. From age fifty-eight to age seventy-two. The widower. The mine operator. The Confederate sympathizer. The recipient, by way of his son-in-law, of one silver dollar for his confiscated estate. The man who moved to his son’s farm in his last year and died there with the dollar in his pocket. Era el final de la generación de los fundadores en el lado de Concordia. Cuando Hugh murió, sus hijos se convirtieron en la generación principal de la familia.

Margarita Stephenson de Flores (1836 – 1914). Third surviving child of Hugh and Juana. Born in San Antonio in the year of the Texas Revolution. Born Catholic, raised at Concordia, married José María Flores at twenty-four. La Segunda Confluencia. Mother of José Jesús Flores Stephenson (born 1862, alcalde of Juárez of the Quinta Crónica) and of his siblings. Margarita lived a long life — she would die in eighteen hundred and fourteen — wait, that is wrong. She died in nineteen hundred and fourteen at age seventy-eight. She would see her son José Jesús’s family flee Juárez in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen; she would die five months later. Pero esto es para la Octava Crónica. In this Part of the Chronicles, Margarita is a young matriarch — twenty-four at her wedding, thirty-four at her father’s death. She managed La Casa Grande el Alto with her husband José María from eighteen hundred and sixty onward. She bore her children. She buried her brothers and her father in the fourteen years of this Chronicle.

José María Flores (1832 – 1916). Husband of Margarita. Son of Nicolás Flores (1804 – 1849) and María Teresa Valdez (1809 – 1916, who would live to one hundred and seven), of the long Travieso-Curbelo-Flores line of San Antonio. José María had come to El Paso in his twenties to seek opportunity in the silver economy. He married Margarita in eighteen hundred and sixty. He was twenty-eight; she was twenty-four. He took up residence at Concordia after the marriage. He was a partner in the Stephenson commercial operations and would, after Hugh’s death, become the principal administrator of the family’s holdings in El Paso del Norte and along the river. He would live to be eighty-four years old — outliving Hugh by forty-six years. Era el hombre por quien la línea sanantoniana entró en la familia paseña.

Los hijos restantes de Hugh y Juana. Horacio (1829 – 1893), the eldest, farming at La Mesa from the mid-sixties, the man whose farmhouse received Hugh in his last year. Alberto (1834 – 1907), the second surviving son. Benancia (1838 – 1898), who married Albert French in eighteen hundred and sixty-three. Leonora (1841 – ?). Adelaida (1845 – ?), the youngest, twenty-five at her father’s death.

Albert H. French (c. 1820 – 1880s). Anglo-American merchant of El Paso. Son-in-law to Hugh through his marriage to Benancia in eighteen hundred and sixty-three. The man who bid one silver dollar at the Federal marshal’s sale and saved the family’s estate. He was approximately Hugh’s age. He was a long-time business associate. His name appears on dozens of receipts and contracts in the Stephenson commercial archives. His central act of life — the dollar — has made him the most famous in-law of the family in the family memory. El dólar de Albert French es una de las pocas cosas que la familia ha conservado físicamente desde el siglo diecinueve.

George F. Bennett. Hugh’s partner at the Stephenson-Bennett Mine. An Anglo-American merchant of Las Cruces who had come west with the army during the Mexican-American War and stayed. The dates of his birth and death are not preserved in the chronicle’s current sources. He continued at the mine after Hugh’s death.

Colonel John R. Baylor (1822 – 1894). Confederate officer. Commander of the Confederate forces that occupied the upper Rio Grande from July of eighteen hundred and sixty-one until the spring of eighteen hundred and sixty-two. He established the Confederate Territory of Arizona at Mesilla. He was a controversial figure even within the Confederacy — his orders authorizing the extermination of Apache combatants and noncombatants led to his removal from command by Jefferson Davis in eighteen hundred and sixty-two. He returned to civilian life in Texas after the war.

General Henry Hopkins Sibley (1816 – 1886). Confederate general. Commander of the Confederate expedition into New Mexico in eighteen hundred and sixty-two. Defeated at Glorieta Pass. His retreat ended the Confederate Western campaign. He was an alcoholic and a difficult subordinate; his career did not recover from Glorieta.

Major John M. Chivington (1821 – 1894). Methodist minister, abolitionist, and Union officer. Commander of the Colorado volunteers at Glorieta Pass; the destruction of the Confederate supply train was his decision and his execution. Two years after Glorieta he commanded the Sand Creek Massacre against peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho — one of the most notorious atrocities of the American frontier — for which he was condemned but never prosecuted. The chronicle records both his heroism and his crime. Los hombres pueden hacer dos cosas. Las dos son verdaderas.

General James Henry Carleton (1814 – 1873). Union general. Commander of the California Column that marched east from California in eighteen hundred and sixty-two to retake the New Mexico territory from the Confederates. He was the Union administrator of New Mexico Territory during the war. He was responsible for the policy of forced relocation of the Navajo to Bosque Redondo (the Long Walk) — another atrocity of the American frontier, contemporary with the work of Chivington and as condemned. The chronicle again notes that Union officers were not necessarily benign. La guerra fue una guerra entre dos imperios sobre la frontera del desierto. Las dos imperios eran capaces de la misma crueldad. Solo los nombres y las uniformes cambiaban.

Las personas de las minas y de los ranchos. The unnamed laborers — Mexican vaqueros, Apache mine workers, Tigua acequia diggers, Anglo-American clerks, Confederate veterans turned cowboys, ex-slaves arrived from Texas after the war, Chinese laborers brought up from the Pacific railroads — who actually built and ran the Stephenson commercial empire. Their names are not in the documentary record; the chronicle cannot give them their full place. They are the absent presence of every line of the documentary archives. Sin ellos no hubo mina, ni casa, ni cementerio, ni acequia. Eran la mayoría. No tenían apellidos legibles para la archivo. Aún están.

VI · La Mesa

Food

Y la mesa de Concordia, en estos catorce años, fue una mesa más callada que antes. La cocina seguía funcionando, pero el centro de la cocina se había ido al cementerio. Lo que se servía era lo que siempre se había servido, pero lo que se decía era menos.

The kitchen at La Casa Grande el Alto continued under Doña Soledad and the women who had been Juana’s helpers, then under Margarita after her marriage in eighteen hundred and sixty. The food was the food the Stephenson-Ascárate household had eaten under Juana: northern Mexican border cooking with an Anglo-American Missouri register for Hugh’s preferences. The change after Juana’s death was not in what was eaten but in the rhythm of how it was eaten. The Sunday dinner that had been an event during Juana’s lifetime became, in the years immediately after her death, a quieter family meal. The wedding feasts of the children — Margarita’s in eighteen hundred and sixty, Benancia’s in eighteen hundred and sixty-three — restored some of the festive scale, but the daily table was always smaller than it had been.

El asado de bodas. The wedding feast at Margarita’s marriage in eighteen hundred and sixty featured the iconic Chihuahuan asado de bodas — the rich red-chile stew with pork, almonds, raisins, dark chocolate, and piloncillo sugar — served over rice with hot flour tortillas. The dish requires nearly a full day of preparation; the women of the household cooked through the night before the wedding. Asado de bodas was the dish that named itself the wedding dish in Chihuahuan tradition. The family had served it at every wedding since Hugh and Juana’s own in eighteen hundred and twenty-eight, and would continue to serve it at every wedding for the next century and a half. Era el plato que decía: en esta familia, una boda es una boda.

La cocina de la guerra. During the brief Confederate occupation and the longer Union occupation of eighteen hundred and sixty-one through sixty-five, the household at Concordia maintained its normal table but with adjustments. Sugar became scarce during the Confederate years; piloncillo from Mexico replaced refined cane sugar. Coffee became scarce; the household drank café de mezquite — a substitute brewed from roasted mesquite beans — during the worst shortages. Flour for tortillas remained available; corn was abundant; chiles continued to be grown on the property. Beef was plentiful because Hugh’s cattle were on the property and the herds were undisturbed. The military officers who later occupied Camp Concordia took some meals at La Casa Grande el Alto as paying guests; the household kitchen produced both Mexican dishes and Anglo-American dishes to satisfy them. La cocina era diplomática. Cocinaba para los dos países, los dos ejércitos, las dos religiones, las dos lenguas. Las cocinas tienen una vocación natural por el bilingüismo.

La mesa de Hugh en el luto. What the widower ate during the fourteen years of his grief is not preserved in any documentary record the chronicle has retrieved. The chronicle imagines, with the appropriate caution: that he ate less than he had eaten during his marriage; that he ate more breakfast than dinner because the breakfasts were brought to him in his office and the dinners were taken at the family table where Juana’s absence was loudest; that the dishes he had liked best from Juana’s hand were the dishes he ate less often after her death, because the women of the kitchen tried to spare him the comparison. Comió pollo en mole muy poco después de la muerte de Juana, porque Juana lo hacía con sus propias manos y nadie más podía hacerlo igual. Comió arroz blanco con tomate más, porque era simple. Comió pan americano y mantequilla, porque era de su país de origen y no le recordaba a su mujer.

La cocina de la mina. The Stephenson-Bennett Mine in the Organ Mountains had its own camp kitchen, operated by a cook whose name the chronicle has not retrieved, who fed seventy men twice a day on a diet of frijoles, tortillas, carne seca, café, occasional mole verde with rabbit shot by the night watchman, occasional pork from a hog kept at the camp, biscuits and bacon for the Anglo-American miners who preferred Anglo-American food, and aguardiente in the evenings. The cooking was simple and abundant. The men ate at long pine tables under the mess tent during the warm months and inside the cook shack during the winter. The cook was a Mexican woman who had come up from Chihuahua with one of the mining crews; she stayed at the camp for years. Cocinaba para todos. Los americanos. Los mexicanos. Los apaches. Los chinos. Le pagaba Hugh en plata. Mandaba dinero a Chihuahua cada mes.

La cocina de Camp Concordia. During the sixteen months of the U.S. Army occupation of Camp Concordia (November 1867 to March 1869), the post operated its own military kitchen for the troops, and Federal officers occasionally took meals at La Casa Grande el Alto as paying guests. The post commissary provided standard U.S. Army rations — hardtack, salt pork, beans, dried fruit, coffee, sugar, vinegar, soap, candles — and supplemented them with locally purchased fresh meat from the Stephenson herds and fresh produce from the Concordia gardens and the acequia-watered orchards. The post mess was substantially better than most U.S. Army posts of the period because of the local agricultural abundance. El ejército comió bien en Concordia. Ese fue uno de los pocos beneficios para la familia.

La última cena en Concordia. Hugh’s last meal at La Casa Grande el Alto before his departure to La Mesa in the spring of eighteen hundred and seventy was eaten with the family — Margarita, José María, the three young grandchildren, Albert Stephenson, Albert French and Benancia, Doña Soledad in the kitchen, the household servants. The chronicle imagines, again with appropriate caution: that they served his favorite dishes; that they drank a final toast in aguardiente; that he ate less than he should have; that he carried in his pocket the silver dollar which had been there for three years; that the conversation was careful and warm and full of the unspoken understanding that Hugh might not return to Concordia. He did not return to Concordia in life. He returned for the memorial mass.

VII · La Lengua

Language

Y la lengua de la frontera, en estos catorce años, se hizo más bilingüe que nunca y al mismo tiempo más dividida que nunca. El español se quedó del sur del río. El inglés se quedó del norte. Las dos lenguas se hablaban en las mismas casas, pero en las cortes y en los periódicos comenzaron a separarse.

The bilingualism of the El Paso district that had begun in the eighteen-thirties under the Stephenson-Ascárate roof became, by the end of this Chronicle, the established norm of the American side of the river. Every household of any commercial standing on the U.S. side was bilingual. Every household of any size on the Mexican side was monolingual in Spanish but had at least one member who could conduct business in English with the American merchants. The language of the home varied by family origin: Mexican Spanish in the older Mexican households, English in the newer Anglo-American households, both languages in the intermarried households like the Stephenson-Ascárate-Flores.

The Spanish of Concordia in the eighteen-sixties was Chihuahuan-Sonoran border Spanish, with the bilingual register of the family’s English-and-Spanish daily life, with the growing presence of English business and military vocabulary. Ranchero, vaquero, corral, lariat, mustang, canyon, mesa, arroyo — words that English borrowed from Spanish were beginning to flow back into the Spanish speech of the bilingual border as English loanwords in their borrowed forms. Drugstore, saloon, sheriff, marshal, bond, dollar, contract, deed, telegraph — Anglo-American institutional vocabulary that had no Spanish equivalent and that the bilingual speakers used in English even within Spanish sentences. The Stephenson children of this generation were the model of the bilingual speakers who code-switched within sentences without thinking about it.

The Spanish of the Stephenson-Bennett Mine combined the formal mining Spanish of the Mexican silver tradition — socavón (tunnel), frente (working face), barreno (drill hole), galera (gallery), carga (load) — with English technical terms imported from American mining: stope, drift, winze, adit, shaft. The mine’s foremen were bilingual by necessity. The mine’s account books were kept in English. The mine’s silver bars were stamped in English: STEPHENSON. La plata hablaba inglés. La gente que la sacaba hablaba español. La gente que la pagaba hablaba inglés. Todos estaban en el mismo paisaje.

The Spanish of the Camino Real and the Spanish of the wagon trade was a Spanish that had become, by the eighteen-sixties, distinctly bilingual at every commercial transaction. The Magoffin trains north to St. Louis carried bilingual muleteers (or muledrivers, depending on which language the foreman spoke that day). The bills of lading were bilingual. The contracts were bilingual. The disputes that occasionally erupted between the peones and the foremen were bilingual. La frontera no había decidido todavía si quería tener una lengua o dos. Decidió, en este periodo, que tendría las dos siempre.

The Spanish of El Paso del Norte — the south bank — remained monolingual Spanish in its public life. The parish church, the cabildo (now under Mexican Republican administration), the merchants, the schools, the press. The town was renamed Ciudad Juárez in eighteen hundred and eighty-eight, after this Chronicle ends, but the official Spanish-language register of public life had been the public register since the seventeenth century and remained so. La frontera política dividía el río. La frontera lingüística también, pero más despacio.

The English of the U.S. Army officers at Camp Concordia (1867 – 1869) was the English of the regular army: a Northern English with traces of the South in the officers who had been Union but Southern-born, with the technical vocabulary of nineteenth-century military administration, with a small set of Spanish loanwords for things — adobe, acequia, patio, plaza, rancho — that had no English equivalent on the frontier. The English of Hugh, in his final years, was the English of a Kentucky-Missouri man of his generation, slightly inflected by forty years of speaking Spanish on the border, slightly slower than it had been in his youth, slightly more deliberate. Cuando se acercaba a morir, hablaba más inglés que español, porque era el inglés de su niñez y se volvió al inglés como se vuelve al primer recuerdo.

The English of Las Cruces and La Mesa, where Horace farmed and where Hugh died, was an emerging frontier English with strong New Mexican Spanish substrate: by the eighteen-seventies the residents of Las Cruces would be considered as having developed their own English variety, the Mesilla English, which would in the next generation become recognizable as a New Mexican border variety. Horace’s family farm at La Mesa was bilingual; the laborers spoke Spanish, Horace conducted business in English, Hugh in his last year spoke both equally.

The English on Hugh’s gravestone in Las Cruces is short and plain: HUGH STEPHENSON, BORN KENTUCKY 18 JULY 1798, DIED LA MESA NEW MEXICO 11 OCTOBER 1870. The Spanish of Juana’s gravestone at Concordia is also short: DOÑA JUANA MARÍA ASCÁRATE DE STEPHENSON, NACIDA EL PASO DEL NORTE 1809, FALLECIDA CONCORDIA 6 DE FEBRERO 1856. The two stones are two hundred and forty miles apart. Cada una en la lengua de su origen. Las dos lenguas no se hablan entre sí. Las dos personas se hablaron toda su vida.

VIII · Los Papeles

Primary Documents

Y los papeles de estos catorce años son muchos, porque la guerra y la confiscación y la mina y la muerte producen, cada uno por su cuenta, una cosecha de papeles.

El Registro Matrimonial de la Capilla de San José de Concordia el Alto, mil ochocientos sesenta. The marriage record of Margarita Stephenson and José María Flores. Records the date, the witnesses, the priest, the bride’s parents (Hugh Stephenson, legítimo, of Kentucky and Concordia; Juana María Ascárate, difunta, formerly of El Paso del Norte), the groom’s parents (Nicolás Flores, difunto, of San Antonio; María Teresa Valdez, legítima, of San Antonio). Held in the diocesan archives of El Paso. La cita de la Segunda Confluencia, escrita en tinta de un cura local.

Los Bonos Confederados de Hugh Stephenson, mil ochocientos sesenta y uno a sesenta y dos. The Confederate bonds Hugh purchased. The originals are not preserved (Confederate bonds became worthless after the war and were largely destroyed); the record of his purchases is preserved in the Federal confiscation proceedings of eighteen hundred and sixty-six and sixty-seven.

Los Documentos de la Mina Stephenson-Bennett, mil ochocientos cincuenta y ocho adelante. The incorporation papers, partnership agreement, and operating records of the Stephenson-Bennett Mine. Records output, sales, labor costs, capital improvements. Some of these papers survive in the Robert W. Eveleth research files at the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources; others are scattered in private collections in Las Cruces and El Paso. Una crónica de la plata de la familia.

Las Actas de la Confiscación Federal, mil ochocientos sesenta y seis y sesenta y siete. The Federal District Court records for the Confiscation of the Stephenson properties under the Confiscation Acts of eighteen hundred and sixty-one and eighteen hundred and sixty-two. Held in the National Archives and Records Administration. El papel que dijo: esta tierra ya no es suya.

La Escritura del Marshal Federal, mil ochocientos sesenta y siete. The deed transferring the Concordia property from the United States to Albert H. French at the Federal marshal’s sale. Considerations: one United States silver dollar. The deed is preserved in the El Paso County Clerk’s office and in the Magoffin-French family papers at the University of Texas at El Paso. El papel famoso. El papel del dólar.

La Escritura de Restitución de Albert French, mil ochocientos sesenta y siete. The deed transferring the Concordia property from Albert French back to the Stephenson heirs. Recorded shortly after the marshal’s sale. Held in the El Paso County Clerk’s office.

Los Contratos de Camp Concordia, mil ochocientos sesenta y siete a sesenta y nueve. The rental agreements between the U.S. Army and the Stephenson estate for the use of the Concordia property as the relocated Fort Bliss garrison. Held in the U.S. Army records at the National Archives. El gobierno federal arrendaba la tierra que el gobierno federal había vendido por un dólar de plata.

El Acta de Fallecimiento de Hugh Stephenson, octubre de mil ochocientos setenta. The death certificate. Recorded in Doña Ana County, New Mexico Territory. Cause of death: pneumonia. Place: La Mesa. Doce de octubre de mil ochocientos setenta. Held in the New Mexico state archives.

El Inventario Testamentario de Hugh Stephenson, mil ochocientos setenta y uno. The post-mortem inventory and distribution of Hugh’s estate. Recorded in Doña Ana County. Records his real property (interests in Concordia, in Stephenson-Bennett Mine, in El Paso lots, in Corralitos Mine via the Ascárate family), his personal property (books, clothing, the silver dollar, a small chest of jewelry), his outstanding debts and credits. The inventory is one of the few documents that names the silver dollar explicitly; it appears in the list as “One silver dollar, U.S. coinage, in a leather pouch, kept on the person of the deceased and removed at his death.” The dollar passed to Horace and from Horace eventually to Margarita and from Margarita eventually to José Jesús Flores Stephenson and from José Jesús eventually to Carlos and from Carlos to his daughter and from Carlos’s daughter to the writer of these chronicles, who has it. El dólar todavía existe. Está en una caja en una casa en Austin, Texas. Es el único objeto físico de la novela que es físico también en la vida.

IX · Las Fuentes

Sources

Chamberlin, Eugene Keith. “Mexican Colonization Versus American Interests in Lower California.” Pacific Historical Review 20, no. 1 (1951): 43–55.

Concordia Heritage Association. “About Concordia Cemetery.” https://www.concordiacemetery.org/

El Paso Community College Borderlands. “Pioneer Ranch Became Concordia Cemetery.” 2000. https://epcc.libguides.com/c.php?g=754275&p=5406137

Eveleth, Robert W. “An Historical Vignette — Stephenson-Bennett Mine.” New Mexico Geology 5, no. 1 (1983): 9. https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/publications/periodicals/nmg/5/n1/nmg_v5_n1_p9.pdf

Frazier, Donald S. Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995. The standard modern history of the Confederate Western campaign.

Gonzalez, Nancy. “Utilizing Concordia Cemetery as a Framework: The Social and Economic Development of El Paso County After the U.S.-Mexico War.” Dissertation, University of Texas at El Paso, 2014.

Hall, Martin Hardwick. Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1960. Standard account of the Confederate New Mexico expedition.

Hollister, Ovando J. History of the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers. Denver: Thomas Gibson and Company, 1863. Contemporary account by a soldier in the Colorado force that destroyed the Confederate supply train at Glorieta Pass.

Kiser, William S. Turmoil on the Rio Grande: History of the Mesilla Valley, 1846–1865. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011.

Kohout, Martin Donell. “Stephenson, Hugh.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/stephenson-hugh

New Mexico History Blog. “Stephenson-Bennett Mine.” https://newmexicohistoryblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/26/stephenson-bennett-mine/

Strickland, Rex W. Six Who Came to El Paso: Pioneers of the 1840s. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1963.

Texas State Historical Association. “Battle of Glorieta Pass.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Civil War in Texas.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Confederate Arizona.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “French, Albert H.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Stephenson, Hugh.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Stephenson, Juana María Ascárate.” Author: Michelle N. Balliet. Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/stephenson-juana-maria-ascarate

Timmons, W. H. El Paso: A Borderlands History. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1990.

U.S. National Park Service. “Glorieta Pass.” Pecos National Historical Park. https://www.nps.gov/peco/learn/historyculture/glorieta-pass.htm

U.S. National Park Service. “Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks National Monument.” https://www.blm.gov/programs/national-conservation-lands/new-mexico/organ-mountains-desert-peaks

Wilson, John P. Merchants, Guns, and Money: The Story of Lincoln County and Its Wars. Las Cruces: Aldrich Publishing, 1987. Background on the Mesilla Valley after the Civil War.

Aquí termina la Sexta Parte de las Crónicas. El venadito ha sido enterrado en alguna parte de la propiedad. La mina ha producido plata en barras estampadas con el nombre. La hija ha sido casada con el hijo de San Antonio y la Segunda Confluencia se ha hecho. La guerra ha pasado por la frontera y se ha llevado los bonos. El cuñado ha comprado la tierra por un dólar de plata. El ejército federal ha pagado renta por la tierra que el ejército federal había confiscado. El viudo ha vivido catorce años en su luto y ha muerto en la casa de su hijo en la Mesa de Nuevo México. La piedra lo recuerda en inglés. La capilla de Concordia lo recuerda en español. Las dos piedras están a doscientas cuarenta millas la una de la otra.

Y aquellos que en otro tiempo hayan de leer estas páginas sabrán que en el momento en que esta página se cierra, en una casa cerca de Las Cruces, un nieto de Hugh y Juana está jugando en el patio. Tiene ocho años. Se llama José Jesús Flores Stephenson. Es el hijo mayor de Margarita y José María. Es el nieto del primer entierro del cementerio de Concordia. Es el nieto del hombre que se acaba de morir en La Mesa. Aún no lo sabe. Aún no sabe que el dólar de plata que su madre acaba de heredar lo heredará él un día. Aún no sabe que será alcalde de una ciudad que en el momento se llama El Paso del Norte y que muy pronto se llamará Ciudad Juárez. Está jugando. El sol está cayendo. Su abuela Mariana — no, esa no, esa fue la otra abuela, la canaria, que murió hace setenta y cinco años — su abuela Juana, esa, esa es la que le mira desde el cementerio donde está el primer hueso, le mira jugar en el patio. Le ve. Le ve jugar. Está contenta.

I · El Escenario

Setting

Y fue que en estos cuarenta años la frontera dejó de ser frontera del modo en que había sido frontera, y se hizo otra cosa: dos ciudades a la orilla del mismo río, dos países que ya no se peleaban entre sí porque ambos habían decidido que la prosperidad era mejor que la guerra. Pero la prosperidad, como la guerra, tuvo su precio. Y como con la guerra, el precio lo pagaron los que no lo habían pedido.

This is the period of the long calm. Forty years passed between the death of Hugh Stephenson at La Mesa in October of eighteen hundred and seventy and the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution at Cuauhtémoc in Chihuahua on the twentieth of November of nineteen hundred and ten. In those forty years the border that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had drawn through the Rio Grande became a settled fact — not contested, not freshly drawn, simply there, the way a river becomes a fact in the landscape of those who live beside it. The two cities that the border had separated — El Paso del Norte on the south bank, the small American settlement on the north bank — grew into the twin cities they would become: Ciudad Juárez, renamed in eighteen hundred and eighty-eight after the Mexican president who had governed his shadow administration from El Paso del Norte during the French Intervention; and El Paso, Texas, which by nineteen hundred had outgrown its older Mexican neighbor in population and commerce.

The institutional engine of this consolidation was, on the Mexican side, the Porfiriato — the long thirty-four-year rule of Porfirio Díaz, who took power in eighteen hundred and seventy-six (with a brief interruption in eighteen hundred and eighty to eighty-four when his colleague Manuel González served), held it until the Revolution forced his resignation in eighteen hundred and ninety-five — no, eleven hundred and seventy-six, the chronicler corrects: no, the resignation was in nineteen hundred and eleven. The Díaz regime modernized Mexico in the European-positivist manner of the late nineteenth century: railroads built across the country, telegraph lines strung from Veracruz to Tijuana, foreign capital invited in to develop mines and oil and agriculture, the científicos of the Díaz cabinet treating Mexico as a positivist project — order and progress. The price of this modernization was paid by the peasantry, who lost their ejido (communal) lands to the railroad-and-mining interests; by the indigenous nations, whose remaining traditional lands were absorbed into commercial agriculture; and by the working classes of the cities, whose wages did not rise as fast as their landlords’ rents. By nineteen hundred and ten the Díaz regime had been in power for thirty-four years and had become, in the words of one of its own architects, “a country governed for the benefit of two hundred families.”

On the American side of the river, the engine of consolidation was the railroad. The Southern Pacific Railroad reached El Paso from California in May of eighteen hundred and eighty-one. The Texas & Pacific arrived from the east one month later. The Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio reached El Paso in eighteen hundred and eighty-three. By the mid-eighteen-eighties, El Paso was a railroad hub connected by rail to the rest of the United States and, through the Mexican Central, to Mexico City and the Mexican silver mines. The city’s population, which had been approximately seven hundred at the time of Hugh Stephenson’s death, was approximately ten thousand by eighteen hundred and ninety and approximately forty thousand by nineteen hundred and ten. The Concordia property, which had been a remote ranch east of the small American settlement when Hugh founded it in eighteen hundred and forty-nine, was, by nineteen hundred and ten, surrounded by the eastern neighborhoods of a city that had grown around it.

The family during this period went through its third transition. The first transition had been the founding generation of seventeen hundred and thirty-one in San Antonio; the second had been the joining-and-consolidating generations of seventeen hundred and fifty through eighteen hundred and forty. The third, which is the transition of this Chronicle, was the institutional consolidation — the family becoming, on both sides of the border, the established commercial and political elite of the El Paso district. The line that had come together at Concordia in eighteen hundred and twenty-eight (Hugh and Juana), and that had joined to the San Antonio line in eighteen hundred and sixty (Margarita and José María), now produced a third generation of Mexican-American-Tejano bilingual bourgeois citizens who held offices, owned property, attended European-style universities, and conducted the family’s affairs in two languages on two sides of one river. El nieto del herrador talabartero de Tenerife era ahora el alcalde de Ciudad Juárez. Los nietos del huérfano de Kentucky eran ahora ranchers y políticos y profesionales.

The central figure of this Chronicle is José Jesús Flores Stephenson, born at Concordia in eighteen hundred and sixty-two — the second year of Margarita and José María’s marriage, the same year as the Battle of Glorieta Pass. He grew up bilingual at Concordia, was educated at private schools in El Paso and at the Colegio Civil del Estado in Chihuahua, returned to El Paso del Norte (soon to be Ciudad Juárez) as a young man, entered municipal politics in his twenties, and by the eighteen-nineties had become one of the principal political figures of the Mexican side of the border. He was elected alcalde of Ciudad Juárez at least four times — the documentary record is incomplete on the exact dates, but the Ciudad Juárez Municipal Archives (microfilmed at the University of Texas at El Paso as MF 495 and MF 513) confirm him in office through the eighteen-nineties and the early nineteen-hundreds and in various senior administrative capacities thereafter. He governed Ciudad Juárez, in the words of the novel’s preface, “through three Mexican presidents, two constitutions, and one revolution.”

In nineteen hundred and three, on the tenth of October, José Jesús and his wife Josefina Gómez Velarde had their fifth child and second son, Carlos Flores Gómez — Carlos F. Flores, who would in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen cross the International Bridge as a boy of nine years old in his father’s company, and who would live the next eighty-five years on the Texas side of the river, and who would tell the story of all of the foregoing to a grandson who listened. Pero esto pertenece a la Octava Crónica y a la Novena. Aquí, en la Séptima, Carlos es un niño pequeño, jugando en el patio del Palacio Municipal de Ciudad Juárez, mientras su padre, el alcalde, lee los papeles del día.

This is the period before the storm. Forty years of relative peace, of railroad-driven prosperity, of European positivism and Mexican modernismo, of two cities growing into each other on the Rio Grande. The chronicle takes those forty years one decade at a time.

Es el periodo más largo desde la Tercera Crónica. Es el periodo de la prosperidad. Es el periodo durante el cual, debajo de la prosperidad, se acumuló lo que volvería como revolución.

II · Dónde Aparece en PASADOR

Where in PASADOR

Y la Quinta Obra de la novela, que se titula “El Alcalde” y que cubre los años de mil ochocientos y sesenta y dos a mil novecientos y trece, es la obra a la cual este periodo principalmente pertenece, aunque la mayor parte de la acción específica de la Quinta Obra cae en la Octava Crónica.

The Fifth Play of the novel — The Mayor — covers the entire life of José Jesús Flores Stephenson from his birth in eighteen hundred and sixty-two to the bridge crossing of his family in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen. The opening of the play is in the period of this Chronicle; the climactic action is in the period of the next.

The play opens with the birth of José Jesús at Concordia in eighteen hundred and sixty-two, in a scene that the chronicler will not paraphrase here because the scene is in the novel and the chronicle does not duplicate the novel. The birth occurs while Hugh is at the Stephenson-Bennett Mine and Margarita is attended by her sister-in-law Isabel Ascárate and the household servants. The play makes a quiet structural point: that José Jesús, the central figure of the Fifth Play, is born during the Civil War — in a household that is technically Confederate-sympathizing on the American side of the river but that has cousins on both sides of the river and on both sides of the war. Era un niño nacido en una frontera dentro de otra frontera.

The play moves through José Jesús’s education in compressed form: childhood at Concordia (the eighteen-sixties and seventies); private school in El Paso (the eighteen-seventies); the Colegio Civil in Chihuahua (the eighteen-eighties); return to Ciudad Juárez and entry into municipal politics (the eighteen-nineties). The play does not depict every year. It depicts a few key scenes: the funeral of his grandfather Hugh in October of eighteen hundred and seventy; his entrance to the Colegio Civil at fourteen in eighteen hundred and seventy-six; his return to Ciudad Juárez as a young lawyer in the early eighteen-nineties; his marriage to Josefina Gómez Velarde — which the novel places in eighteen hundred and ninety-five, though the documentary record is incomplete; the births of his children, of which Carlos in nineteen hundred and three is the most consequential for the novel’s future.

The play also tracks the political career through scenes set in the Palacio Municipal of Ciudad Juárez. José Jesús is in office. He is reading reports. He is meeting with the federal Mexican administrator of the district, who is a Porfirian. He is meeting with the American consul. He is meeting with Mexican exiles who are beginning, in the late eighteen-nineties, to gather in El Paso to plot against the Díaz regime. The play makes the chronological case the chronicle is now making: that the Revolution of nineteen hundred and ten did not erupt from nowhere, that the gathering against Díaz had been building for two decades in the cantinas and the printing houses of the border, and that José Jesús — by virtue of his office — knew it.

The play uses the railroad arrival at El Paso in eighteen hundred and eighty-one as a structural marker. In the play, José Jesús is nineteen years old when the first train arrives at the El Paso station; his father takes him to see the locomotive; the boy understands, by watching the steam and the iron, that the world he has grown up in is being replaced. The chronicle confirms the date: the Southern Pacific reached El Paso on the nineteenth of May of eighteen hundred and eighty-one. The Texas & Pacific arrived on the fifteenth of June. The Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio reached El Paso on the fifteenth of January of eighteen hundred and eighty-three.

The play touches on the renaming of El Paso del Norte to Ciudad Juárez in eighteen hundred and eighty-eight. José Jesús, now twenty-six and beginning his political career, watches his city change its name. The change is administrative; the city is the same city. But the name of the city is now the name of the president who governed it from exile and won. The chronicle adds the documentary context: the federal decree renaming the city was issued by President Porfirio Díaz in honor of Benito Juárez, the Liberal president who had administered the wartime shadow government from El Paso del Norte during the French Intervention of eighteen hundred and sixty-four through eighteen hundred and sixty-seven. The renaming was both an honor to Juárez and a quiet rebuke to the small American city across the river that had taken the older name of El Paso. Los dos nombres se quedaron. Las dos ciudades se quedaron. Pero el río entre ellas se hizo más profundo en el papel.

The play also makes a quiet point about the Tigua of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, who had been at the El Paso district since the Pueblo Revolt of sixteen hundred and eighty. José Jesús, as alcalde of Ciudad Juárez, has occasional dealings with the Tigua elders. He learns their names. He recognizes that they predate his family in the valley by fifty years. He understands the dignity of that fact. The play makes the structural argument that the chronicle will make in its Indigenous Histories section at the end: that the family lived in a valley where the indigenous nations were the older presence, and that the family always knew this.

III · Los Sucesos

Events of the Period

Y los hechos de estos cuarenta años son tantos que la crónica los presenta por décadas, porque la década es la unidad en la que la prosperidad se mide y la pérdida se acumula sin ser vista.

The decade of the eighteen-seventies. The death of Hugh in October of eighteen hundred and seventy was followed by the long winding-up of his estate. The Concordia property and the Stephenson-Bennett Mine and the El Paso del Norte commercial interests passed to his children, with Margarita and José María managing the principal household at La Casa Grande el Alto. The brothers Horace and Albert managed the Mesilla Valley and Las Cruces interests. The mine at Corralitos — in Mexican Chihuahua — continued under joint Stephenson-Ascárate family administration. By eighteen hundred and seventy-five the estate was substantially settled and the family had reorganized itself for the new generation.

In eighteen hundred and seventy-six, in November, Porfirio Díaz led a successful military coup against President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada and assumed power in Mexico. He had run unsuccessfully for the presidency twice — in eighteen hundred and sixty-seven and again in eighteen hundred and seventy-one — and had at last seized by force what he could not win by election. He would, with one brief interruption, hold the presidency for the next thirty-four years. El Porfiriato comenzó.

In the same year, José Jesús Flores Stephenson — aged fourteen — was sent to the Colegio Civil del Estado in Chihuahua to begin his secondary education. The Colegio Civil was the principal secular preparatory school of northern Mexico in the late nineteenth century, modeled on the European liceos. José Jesús studied Latin, Spanish literature, French (the official second language of the Porfirian elite), mathematics, history, and the rudimentary natural sciences of the period. He boarded with a family in Chihuahua. He came home to Concordia for the summer holidays. Su español se hizo el español de la educación porfiriana: elegante, retórico, francófilo. Su inglés se mantuvo, porque en casa se hablaban las dos lenguas.

In the year eighteen hundred and seventy-eight, on a date the Colegio Civil records preserve, Carlos F. Flores’s older sister and brother — María del Carmen Flores Gómez (b. 1898) and José Jesús Flores Gómez Jr. (b. 1900) — would be born twenty years later. The Chronicle is getting ahead of itself.

In the year eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, the writer Mark Twain visited El Paso and stayed at the Hart Hotel on Mesa Street. He was on a Western tour and recorded his impressions of the border in private correspondence that has not been comprehensively published. The El Paso of his visit was a small Anglo-American settlement of approximately seven hundred residents, dwarfed by El Paso del Norte across the river with its five thousand. Twain’s visit is mentioned because the chronicle takes pleasure in the documentary record of writers having been in the places where the family lived. La frontera era ya un lugar al que los escritores venían.

The decade of the eighteen-eighties. In the year eighteen hundred and eighty-one, on the nineteenth of May, the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived at El Paso from California. The line had been pushed east from Los Angeles at the rate of approximately a mile a day for the previous eighteen months. The first train arrived to general celebration. The mayor of El Paso, the U.S. consul at Ciudad Juárez, and an American railroad official gave speeches. José Jesús, nineteen years old and home for the summer holidays from the Colegio Civil in Chihuahua, was in the crowd. He was an Anglo-Mexican-Tejano hidalgo standing on the platform of a railroad built by Chinese laborers funded by Eastern capital. He understood, watching the locomotive, that the next decade would be different.

In the same year, on the fifteenth of June, the Texas & Pacific Railroad arrived at El Paso from the east. The two lines were connected. El Paso was now linked by rail to both coasts. La frontera ya no era el final del camino. Era el medio del camino.

In the year eighteen hundred and eighty-three, on the fifteenth of January, the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad reached El Paso, completing the southern transcontinental railroad. Three transcontinental lines now passed through El Paso. The city’s population began to grow rapidly. The El Paso of seven hundred souls in eighteen hundred and seventy was the El Paso of ten thousand by the end of the decade.

In the year eighteen hundred and eighty-five, the Stephenson-Bennett Mine reached its peak production. The mine was producing approximately one million pounds of lead and several thousand ounces of silver per year. The silver was shipped by rail to El Paso and onward to St. Louis. The Stephenson silver bars stamped with the family name were a recognized commodity in the St. Louis silver market. La plata del nombre llegó a un mercado donde el nombre era conocido.

In the year eighteen hundred and eighty-six, Margarita Stephenson de Flores’s mother-in-law María Teresa Valdez Flores died in San Antonio at the age of one hundred and seven. She had outlived her husband Nicolás (d. 1849) by thirty-seven years and her son José María by — no, she did not outlive José María, he would live until 1916. She outlived two of her sons, three of her grandchildren, and the entire colonial Mexican Republic in which she had been born. Vivió siete décadas en San Antonio bajo la corona española, dos bajo la república mexicana, una bajo la república de Tejas, y casi cuatro bajo los Estados Unidos. La hidalga de cuatro banderas.

In the year eighteen hundred and eighty-eight, by federal decree of President Porfirio Díaz, the city of El Paso del Norte was renamed Ciudad Juárez in honor of Benito Juárez, the Liberal president who had governed his constitutional government from El Paso del Norte during the French Intervention. The decree was promulgated on the sixteenth of September of eighteen hundred and eighty-eight — the seventy-eighth anniversary of the Grito de Dolores, Mexico’s independence day. The renaming was an official act of the Porfirian government. The city’s residents continued, for some years, to refer to it informally as El Paso or as Paso del Norte. The new name was adopted formally in administrative records and gradually in daily use.

In the same year — eighteen hundred and eighty-eight — José Jesús Flores Stephenson, aged twenty-six, returned to Ciudad Juárez from Chihuahua, where he had been practicing law in the offices of a Porfirian-affiliated firm. He was admitted to the Ciudad Juárez bar. He began to take on cases of property law and water rights — the same kind of work, the chronicle notes, that his great-great-grandfather Vicente Álvarez Travieso had been doing in San Antonio one hundred and fifty years before. La familia tenía una vocación. La vocación se preservaba en la sangre como se preserva el seseo.

The decade of the eighteen-nineties. In the year eighteen hundred and ninety, José Jesús was elected to his first municipal office in Ciudad Juárez — regidor (councilman). He was twenty-eight. He served two terms. Su carrera política comenzaba.

In the year eighteen hundred and ninety-five, on a date the parish records of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Ciudad Juárez preserve, José Jesús Flores Stephenson, aged thirty-three, married Josefina Gómez Velarde, aged twenty, daughter of a Chihuahuan-Sonoran family resident in Ciudad Juárez. Josefina’s father had been an officer in the Juárez constitutional government during the French Intervention; her mother was a Velarde of the long Mexican northern frontier line. Her family was established Porfirian-elite. The marriage was, in the social terms of the period, a strong one. El matrimonio se celebró con la pompa de la era porfiriana, en la catedral, con un banquete que duró tres días.

In the year eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, Margarita Stephenson de Flores’s father-in-law Nicolás Flores’s wife — no, Nicolás was already dead. The chronicler is confusing himself with the family chart. María Teresa Valdez had died in eighteen hundred and eighty-six; Nicolás Flores had died in eighteen hundred and forty-nine. The previous generation of the Flores line in San Antonio was at an end, except for the surviving descendants. La familia continuaba en sus hijos.

In the year eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, María del Carmen Flores Gómez was born, the first child of José Jesús and Josefina.

In the year eighteen hundred and ninety-nine, José Jesús Flores Stephenson was elected alcalde of Ciudad Juárez for the first time. He was thirty-seven. He served the term and was re-elected in subsequent years; the documentary record is incomplete on the precise sequence, but the Ciudad Juárez Municipal Archives confirm him as alcalde for portions of nineteen hundred to nineteen hundred and ten. Era el bisnieto del talabartero de Tenerife. Era el bisnieto del huérfano de Kentucky. Era el alcalde de la ciudad principal del norte mexicano. La promesa del rey español, hecha en mil setecientos y veintitrés, había llegado, por caminos que el rey no había podido imaginar, a este momento.

The decade of the nineteen-hundreds. In the year nineteen hundred and three, on the tenth of October, Carlos Flores Gómez was born in Ciudad Juárez — Carlos F. Flores. He was the fourth child of José Jesús and Josefina, the second son. He would be the one who told the story to the grandson. He was born in the Palacio Municipal, the chronicle imagines, because his father was in office and the family had quarters there during the alcalde’s terms; the documentary record probably places the actual birth at the family’s residence on the Avenida Juárez. Carlos era el niño de la novela. En esta crónica todavía no había escrito nada y todavía no había cruzado el puente.

In the years nineteen hundred and four to nineteen hundred and nine, the Díaz regime entered its final phase. The cienfíficos of the cabinet were aging; the regime’s mechanisms of control were becoming brittle; the agrarian and labor unrest that had been growing for two decades was beginning to surface in identifiable opposition movements. Francisco I. Madero, a wealthy hacendado from Coahuila who had been educated in France and the United States, published in nineteen hundred and eight La sucesión presidencial en 1910, a book that questioned whether Díaz should run again. It was the first serious public challenge to the Porfiriato from within the elite. Madero began organizing the Anti-reelectionist Party. José Jesús, as alcalde of Ciudad Juárez, watched this development with the close attention of a man who understood that his city, lying on the international border, would be the first place where any revolution would have to test itself.

In the year nineteen hundred and ten, in June, Porfirio Díaz had Francisco Madero imprisoned in San Luis Potosí to prevent him from running in the July election. Díaz claimed victory in a fraudulent election; Madero, released from prison in late September, fled to San Antonio, Texas. From San Antonio he issued the Plan de San Luis Potosí on the fifth of October, calling for a national uprising against Díaz to begin at six in the evening on the twentieth of November of nineteen hundred and ten. The Plan was distributed clandestinely throughout Mexico. The cell that received it in Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, would on the morning of the twentieth of November attempt to take the local police station; the cell that received it in San Andrés Chihuahua, under the command of a bandit-turned-revolutionary named Doroteo Arango — Francisco “Pancho” Villa — would launch the most successful of the early Maderista uprisings.

On the twentieth of November of nineteen hundred and ten, at six o’clock in the evening, the Mexican Revolution began. The cell at Cuauhtémoc failed and its members were killed. The cell under Villa at San Andrés succeeded and would, within months, become the División del Norte — the Northern Division — and Villa would be its general. The Revolution would last ten years. The Porfiriato had thirty days more.

Aquí termina el periodo de la prosperidad y comienza el periodo de la sangre. Pero esto pertenece a la Octava Crónica.

IV · Los Lugares

Places

Y los lugares que se han de mencionar en estos cuarenta años son los lugares de las dos ciudades gemelas a la orilla del río, y los lugares de las dos partes restantes de la familia: el Concordia que se hacía barrio, y la mina que se hacía menos importante, y el Palacio Municipal donde el bisnieto del talabartero firmaba sus papeles cada lunes por la mañana.

Ciudad Juárez. Renamed by federal decree in eighteen hundred and eighty-eight from El Paso del Norte. Population approximately five thousand in eighteen hundred and seventy, approximately ten thousand by eighteen hundred and ninety, approximately twenty thousand by nineteen hundred and ten. The principal Mexican city on the U.S. border. Connected by rail to Mexico City via the Mexican Central Railroad (completed in eighteen hundred and eighty-four). Home to the Palacio Municipal, the cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe (in continuous use since sixteen hundred and fifty-nine; the present structure dates from eighteen hundred and ninety-two), the customs house (the principal source of municipal revenue), and the residential neighborhoods that grew along Avenida Juárez during the Porfiriato.

El Paso, Texas. The city on the American side. Population approximately seven hundred in eighteen hundred and seventy, approximately ten thousand by eighteen hundred and ninety, approximately forty thousand by nineteen hundred and ten. Las dos ciudades crecieron juntas. La frontera entre ellas se hizo, paradójicamente, más íntima a medida que se hacía más administrativa. The railroads transformed El Paso into a major commercial center. The downtown grew up around El Paso Street and Mesa Street. The neighborhoods spread east — including over what had been Concordia Ranch — and north into the foothills of the Franklin Mountains.

El Palacio Municipal de Ciudad Juárez. The municipal hall of Ciudad Juárez, on the principal plaza of the city, two blocks from the cathedral. The Palacio of this period was the original eighteenth-century building, used by the cabildo since the late colonial era, renovated in the Porfirian style in the eighteen-nineties. It would in nineteen hundred and twelve be torn down and replaced by a new Palacio Municipal, which is the building that still stands. The Palacio of this Chronicle is the older Palacio. José Jesús’s office, as alcalde, was on the second floor, with windows looking out at the plaza and the cathedral. The leather chair the chronicler will mention in the Prologue of the novel — the alcalde’s visitor chair, green leather, worn smooth at the armrests from years of people waiting to be heard — was in this office. Whether the chair survived the demolition of the old Palacio is not preserved in any record the chronicler has retrieved.

Concordia, eastern El Paso. The 900-acre Stephenson-Ascárate ranch, in this period, was gradually parceled out as the city of El Paso grew east. By eighteen hundred and ninety, much of the western portion of Concordia had been sold or transferred for urban development. By nineteen hundred and ten, the original ranch was approximately half of its eighteen hundred and sixty extent; the remaining lands included the Casa Grande el Alto (the family residence), the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto, the cemetery (which by nineteen hundred had grown to several thousand graves), the inner ranch buildings, and the kitchen garden. The wider Concordia property had been absorbed into the city. La frontera del rancho se hizo el borde del barrio.

La Mina Stephenson-Bennett. The Organ Mountains mine continued through the period. Peak production in the mid-eighteen-eighties; gradual decline thereafter. By nineteen hundred the mine was producing approximately half its mid-eighties output. It would close in the early nineteen-tens, though the family would retain ownership of the surface rights into the nineteen-thirties. La plata se acabó antes que el nombre. El nombre seguirá en la roca aún cuando la mina haya sido olvidada.

Ysleta del Sur Pueblo. The Tigua settlement on the south bank of the Rio Grande, downriver from El Paso, founded by Tigua refugees from the Pueblo Revolt of sixteen hundred and eighty. The Tigua had been at this location for two hundred and ten years by the time this Chronicle ends. The settlement was a small pueblo of approximately five hundred souls in the late nineteenth century. The Tigua maintained their language (a Tiwa variety), their traditional ceremonial dances, their adobe houses, their corn-bean-squash agriculture along the Rio Grande, and their organization as a distinct community. They were not legally recognized as an Indian tribe by either the U.S. or Mexican government in the nineteenth century — the U.S. would not formally recognize them until nineteen hundred and eighty-seven, more than a century after the period of this Chronicle ends. Pero estaban allí. Estaban allí en mil seiscientos ochenta y siguen allí en este momento, y todos los años intermedios los pasaron en el mismo lugar. La continuidad de Ysleta es una de las continuidades más antiguas del continente.

Las vías del ferrocarril. The railroad lines that converged at El Paso in the eighteen-eighties: the Southern Pacific from California, the Texas & Pacific from the east, the Galveston-Harrisburg-San Antonio from the south, and on the Mexican side the Mexican Central from Mexico City. The El Paso railroad complex of the late nineteenth century — yards, roundhouses, freight depots, the elegant Union Depot of eighteen hundred and ninety-three — was the physical infrastructure of the consolidation this Chronicle records. Las vías cambiaron todo. Cambiaron lo que se comía, lo que se vestía, lo que se leía, las personas con quienes se hablaba. La frontera se hizo metropolitana. El rancho se hizo barrio.

La Avenida Juárez, Ciudad Juárez. The principal commercial street of Ciudad Juárez in this period, running south from the International Bridge into the city center. The street was renamed for President Juárez at the same time the city was renamed. It was lined with the commercial buildings of the Porfirian era — the customs office, hotels, restaurants, theaters, the Casa de Empeño (pawnshop), bars, and the elegant ground-floor shops of the Porfirian middle class. José Jesús and Josefina lived on a side street off the Avenida Juárez during the years of his alcaldeship. Era la calle del bisnieto del talabartero, y el talabartero, si la hubiese visto, no la habría reconocido.

V · Las Personas

People

Y las personas de estos cuarenta años son las tres generaciones que se conocieron: la generación de los nietos, la generación de los bisnietos, y los primeros tataranietos. Y a las personas históricas de la era, mencionaremos a los que tocaron la familia directamente.

Margarita Stephenson de Flores (1836 – 1914). The matriarch of the Concordia line in this period. From age thirty-four at her father’s death to age seventy-four at the outbreak of the Revolution. She managed La Casa Grande el Alto from eighteen hundred and seventy onward, with her husband José María, raising six children to maturity, attending the marriages and births of her grandchildren and the funerals of her brothers and sister, watching El Paso grow up around Concordia, watching her eldest son José Jesús become alcalde of Ciudad Juárez. She was the bridge of the two centuries. She was born in eighteen hundred and thirty-six — the year of the Alamo and San Jacinto and her great-grandfather Gaspar’s death — and would die in nineteen hundred and fourteen, five months after her son’s family had crossed the International Bridge. Pero esa cita pertenece a la Octava Crónica.

José María Flores (1832 – 1916). Margarita’s husband. The San Antonio descendant of the Travieso-Curbelo-Flores line. He outlived Hugh by forty-six years and would outlive Margarita by two. He was the patriarch by marriage of the Concordia line after Hugh’s death. He managed the family’s San Antonio holdings (which had been preserved by his older brother and his relatives) in addition to the El Paso interests. He died at Concordia in nineteen hundred and sixteen at the age of eighty-four, three years after the bridge crossing of his son’s family. Vivió para ver dos cruces: el de la familia desde la isla Canaria hacia Tejas en mil setecientos y treinta y uno, y el de su nieto Carlos desde Juárez hacia El Paso en mil novecientos y trece. La crónica no dice si pensaba lo mismo de los dos cruces. La crónica imagina que sí.

José Jesús Flores Stephenson (1862 – 1939). The central figure of this Chronicle. Born at Concordia in eighteen hundred and sixty-two. Educated at Colegio Civil del Estado in Chihuahua and at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in Mexico City. Lawyer. Alcalde of Ciudad Juárez through three Mexican presidents — Díaz, Madero, Huerta — and two constitutions. Father of seven children, of whom Carlos in nineteen hundred and three was the most consequential for the future of the family. He would in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen carry his nine-year-old son across the International Bridge to El Paso, and he would live the remaining twenty-six years of his life on the American side of the river. He would die in El Paso in nineteen hundred and thirty-nine at the age of seventy-seven.

Josefina Gómez Velarde de Flores (c. 1875 – ?). Wife of José Jesús. Daughter of a Chihuahuan-Sonoran family established in Ciudad Juárez. Educated in the Porfirian manner of the daughters of the elite: literate in Spanish and French, skilled in the management of a substantial household, trained in piano and embroidery. Mother of seven children. The exact date of her birth is not preserved in any record the chronicle has retrieved; her marriage to José Jesús in eighteen hundred and ninety-five places her at approximately twenty years of age, which would give a birth year of approximately eighteen hundred and seventy-five. She was the primera dama of Ciudad Juárez during her husband’s terms as alcalde. Era el centro social de la ciudad mientras su marido era el centro político.

Los hijos de José Jesús y Josefina, primera fase. Three children born before the year nineteen hundred and ten: - María del Carmen Flores Gómez (b. 1898) — the eldest. - José Jesús Flores Gómez Jr. (b. 1900) — the eldest son. - Carlos Flores Gómez (b. 1903) — the second son, Carlos F. Flores, who would in time be the storyteller-grandfather of the writer. - A fourth and fifth child would be born after the period of this Chronicle.

Horace Stephenson (1829 – 1893). Hugh’s eldest son. The farmer at La Mesa. He had received Hugh in his last year and witnessed his father’s death. He continued to farm in the Mesilla Valley until his own death in eighteen hundred and ninety-three. He never returned to Concordia permanently.

Albert Stephenson (1834 – 1907). Hugh’s second son. Lived at El Paso. Managed the Stephenson commercial interests on the American side after his father’s death.

Albert H. French (c. 1820 – 1880s). Hugh’s son-in-law through Benancia. The man who had bid one silver dollar at the Federal marshal’s sale in eighteen hundred and sixty-seven. He died sometime in the eighteen-eighties; the exact date is not in the family chart.

Porfirio Díaz (1830 – 1915). President of Mexico from eighteen hundred and seventy-six to eighteen hundred and eighty (and again from eighteen hundred and eighty-four to nineteen hundred and eleven). The man whose long rule defines this Chronicle. Born in Oaxaca to a poor mestizo family. Trained as a lawyer. Hero of the Battle of Puebla in eighteen hundred and sixty-two against the French invasion. Took power by coup and held it for thirty-four years. Mexico modernized under his rule. The peasantry lost their land. Both are true. The Revolution would be the consequence of the second fact, and the bridge crossing of November nineteen hundred and thirteen would be one of its waves.

Francisco I. Madero (1873 – 1913). Anti-reelectionist, presidential candidate, author of La sucesión presidencial en 1910, leader of the initial Revolution against Díaz. The man who would precipitate the events of the next Chronicle. In the period of this Chronicle he is a young hacendado in Coahuila, a vegetarian, a spiritualist, a man whom no one outside his family would have predicted would topple a thirty-four-year dictatorship. He would.

Doroteo Arango / Francisco “Pancho” Villa (1878 – 1923). Born José Doroteo Arango Arámbula in San Juan del Río, Durango, in eighteen hundred and seventy-eight. Bandit. Cattle rustler. Maderista revolutionary from late nineteen hundred and ten. Commander of the División del Norte from nineteen hundred and thirteen. The man who would take Ciudad Juárez on the fifteenth of November of nineteen hundred and thirteen and force the bridge crossing of José Jesús’s family. Pero esta cita es para la Octava Crónica.

Benito Juárez (1806 – 1872). The deceased Zapotec Liberal president after whom Ciudad Juárez was renamed in eighteen hundred and eighty-eight. The man who had governed his shadow constitutional government from El Paso del Norte during the French Intervention of eighteen hundred and sixty-four to eighteen hundred and sixty-seven. José Jesús would, decades later, govern a city named for him. El presidente liberal le dio el nombre a la ciudad que el bisnieto del talabartero gobernaría.

Los caciques de Ysleta del Sur. The successive cacique-governors of the Tigua pueblo of Ysleta during this period — Casimiro Holguin, Justino Granillo, José Padilla — were the indigenous leaders whose continuity through the late nineteenth century preserved the Tigua identity that the U.S. federal government would not formally recognize until nineteen hundred and eighty-seven. Their names appear in the Mission Ysleta parish records and in the New Mexico territorial records. Mantuvieron el lugar.

VI · La Mesa

Food

Y la mesa de estos cuarenta años se transformó por el ferrocarril, por el comercio internacional, y por la maduración de una cocina que ya tenía cuatro generaciones de hacerse a sí misma.

The kitchen of La Casa Grande el Alto under Margarita’s matronage (1870 – 1914), and the kitchens of the Flores-Gómez Velarde household in Ciudad Juárez under Josefina’s matronage (from 1895 onward), were the kitchens in which the Tex-Mex and Northern Mexican cuisines of the El Paso district reached the maturity they would carry into the twentieth century. The principal influences on the table during this period were three: the railroad, the Porfiriato bourgeois fashion, and the long internal consolidation of the family’s bilingual cooking tradition.

La influencia del ferrocarril. The arrival of the railroad in eighteen hundred and eighty-one transformed what was available on the table. Items that had been seasonal or unavailable became year-round: ice (delivered in insulated railcars from the northern lakes); fresh produce from California (lettuces, citrus, strawberries); canned goods from the Eastern United States (peaches, milk, salmon); coffee from various tropical origins; sugar in industrial refined form; flour in standardized grades; chocolate in bar form rather than ground from the bean; cheese from Wisconsin and California; wine and beer from Texas and Mexico breweries (the Cervecería Cuauhtémoc of Monterrey was founded in eighteen hundred and ninety). The kitchen of the eighteen-nineties had access to ingredients the kitchen of the eighteen-sixties had not imagined.

La cocina porfiriana bourgeois. The Porfirian fashion was Francophile. The elite of Mexico City — and by extension the elite of the major cities including Ciudad Juárez — adopted French cooking conventions: consommé at the start of the meal, multiple courses, the salón dining room, vins de table served with the meal, demitasses of coffee after dessert. The Flores household at Ciudad Juárez, when Josefina entertained, would serve a meal in this Porfirian French manner — though always with Mexican accommodations. Sopa de tortilla might begin the meal under the name consommé; filete a la pimienta verde might be a course; flan napolitano might be the dessert. The wine was French if the budget permitted and Mexican from the Aguascalientes vineyards otherwise. The bread was sometimes French baguette, sometimes Mexican birote, sometimes corn tortillas — depending on the formality of the occasion. La cocina porfiriana era la cocina francesa con acento norteño. La acentuación se hizo la receta.

La cocina diaria. The daily table — what the family actually ate when no one was being entertained — was the mature Northern Mexican border kitchen of the late nineteenth century. Enchiladas de carne. Chiles rellenos en caldillo. Asado de puerco con chile colorado. Frijoles refritos with every meal. Tortillas de harina, fresh every morning. Café de olla. Atole in the evening, sometimes flavored with chocolate or vanilla. Empanadas de calabaza in the autumn. Capirotada at Lent. Mole verde on saints’ days. Tamales at Christmas. The cooking was abundant, well-spiced, balanced — what would, in the twentieth century, be the foundation of the comida casera (home cooking) that the descendants of the family would identify as the most authentic register of Mexican food. Comida casera no es comida de fiesta. Es la comida que comías cuando nadie te miraba.

Los nuevos productos. The late nineteenth century introduced to the family kitchen products that had not been there before: Coca-Cola (introduced in eighteen hundred and eighty-six in Atlanta, available in El Paso by the eighteen-nineties), commercial breakfast cereals (Quaker Oats from eighteen hundred and seventy-seven), industrial canned milk (Carnation from eighteen hundred and ninety-nine), baking powder (replacing the older yeast methods for biscuits and quick breads), and industrial wheat flour (delivered in branded sacks from Midwestern mills). The bilingual middle-class kitchen of Ciudad Juárez was the first in the family’s history to have a despensa (pantry) stocked with branded American products alongside the locally grown ingredients. La modernidad entró en la cocina por las latas y los costales con etiquetas.

La fiesta de los muertos en Concordia. Every first and second of November the family continued to observe the Día de los Muertos at La Casa Grande el Alto. By the eighteen-nineties the household altar held the photographs of Juana, Hugh, Hugo Junior, the two infant Stephenson children, María Teresa Valdez, Nicolás Flores, and various cousins and uncles and aunts who had died over the years. The cempasúchil flowers from the Mesilla Valley markets, the pan de muerto baked the night before, the candles, the atole, the favorite food of each of the dead set out for them. The Flores household at Ciudad Juárez, when Josefina ran the observance from the eighteen-nineties onward, did the same. La mesa de los muertos crecía año tras año. Era la única mesa que no se hacía más pequeña.

El banquete del alcalde. When José Jesús was alcalde of Ciudad Juárez and held the official receptions, the banquets were grand. The chronicle imagines, in the manner permitted to chronicles, one such banquet: held in the salón of the Palacio Municipal on a Saturday evening in nineteen hundred and seven; one hundred and fifty guests; the orchestra of the Ciudad Juárez Casino playing waltzes from the balcony; the menu printed in French and Spanish — Consommé Juárez, Filete au Poivre Vert, Pollo en Mole Negro, Filete de Robalo a la Veracruzana, Ensalada Mixta, Charlotte Russe, Flan Napolitano, Frutas de la Estación, Café et Liqueurs. The guests included Federal officials from Chihuahua, the American consul, members of the Ciudad Juárez and El Paso elites, visiting Mexican ambassadors and dignitaries, and a few foreign correspondents. José Jesús gave the welcoming speech in Spanish; the American consul responded in English; Josefina, in the manner of the era, presided over the ladies’ parlor where the wives took coffee after dinner. Era un banquete porfiriano. Era el momento más alto del bisnieto del talabartero. La cocina lo recordaría.

VII · La Lengua

Language

Y la lengua de la frontera, en estos cuarenta años, se hizo plenamente bilingüe en la clase media de las dos ciudades, y plenamente monolingüe en las clases populares de los dos lados — el español en Juárez, el inglés en El Paso —, y la frontera lingüística pasó a ser una frontera de clase tanto como una frontera de país.

The bilingualism of the border in the late Porfiriato was a matter of social class. The educated and commercial classes of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso were bilingual; the working classes of Ciudad Juárez were monolingual Spanish; the working classes of El Paso were divided between monolingual Spanish (the Mexican-American population, including the older Tejano families of the El Paso valley and the newer immigrants from northern Mexico) and monolingual English (the Anglo-American population, including the railroad workers, the cowboys, and the speculators who had come west on the trains).

The Spanish of Ciudad Juárez in this period was the Porfirian-modernist Spanish of late nineteenth-century Mexico. It was a Spanish strongly influenced by French — cabaret, soirée, boulevard, toilette, menu, coquette — and equally by the European positivist vocabulary that the Porfirian intellectuals had imported from Comte and Spencer. The Spanish of the Diario de Juárez and the El Correo de Chihuahua, the principal Mexican newspapers of the period, was a literary Spanish that any educated Madrid-trained reader of the time would have recognized as elegant, with the Mexican-specific vocabulary and the Mexican-specific intonation, but in the broad currents of late-Bourbon and Restoration Spanish prose. El español de Juárez en mil ochocientos y noventa era más cerca de Galdós que del español que sus tataranietos hablarían en mil novecientos y noventa.

The English of El Paso was the English of the Anglo-American Southwest in the railroad era. A Midwestern-Southern blend with strong Spanish substrate vocabulary: cinch (from cincha), lasso (from lazo), vamoose (from vamos), savvy (from sabe), buckaroo (from vaquero), adobe, patio, plaza, mesa, arroyo, barbecue (from barbacoa). The bilingual El Paso English was widely intelligible to a New York or Chicago English speaker but had a recognizable Southwestern flavor that any visitor would have noticed. The El Paso Times (founded in eighteen hundred and eighty-one) and the El Paso Herald (founded in eighteen hundred and eighty-one — the same year) were the principal English-language newspapers; both occasionally ran Spanish-language sections to serve the Mexican-American readership.

The bilingual register of the elite — the language the Flores-Gómez Velarde family spoke at home — was a register of full bilingualism with stylistic code-switching. The father might address the children in Spanish at the dinner table and in English when discussing business correspondence. The mother might run the household in Spanish but consult the Ladies’ Home Journal in English. The children might speak Spanish to their grandmother and English to the Anglo-American teacher who came to give them piano lessons. Code-switching within sentences — “Vamos a tomar el train a Chihuahua mañana, no te olvides de comprar los tickets” — was normal and automatic. The Stephenson children of the eighteen-seventies had been the founding members of this register; the Flores grandchildren of the eighteen-nineties were the second generation; Carlos F. Flores in nineteen hundred and three was born into a household where bilingualism was simply the air the family breathed.

The Tigua of Ysleta del Sur continued to speak Tiwa — their original language, of the Kiowa-Tanoan family — within the pueblo, alongside Spanish for trade and English for occasional encounters with the U.S. authorities. The Tigua language has continued to be spoken in Ysleta into the present day, though by a diminishing number of speakers. El idioma que los Tigua trajeron del norte en mil seiscientos ochenta sigue hablándose en el mismo pueblo donde se ha hablado por trescientos cuarenta años. Es uno de los récords lingüísticos más largos del continente.

The official languages of the two cities diverged increasingly through the period. In Ciudad Juárez, all official business was in Spanish; the Porfirian administration was a Spanish-language administration, and the cabildo, the courts, the schools, the press, the church, and the cemetery were all in Spanish. In El Paso, all official business was in English; the city, the courts, the schools, the federal offices, the railroad companies, and the principal businesses were in English. Spanish persisted in El Paso as a second language of substantial portions of the population, but it was not an official language. The bilingual elite navigated both registers; the monolingual working class on each side did not. El idioma se hizo una marca de clase. Hablar mal el otro idioma era una marca de no haber tenido la educación o las conexiones para aprenderlo. Hablarlo bien era una marca de la familia.

The Mexican Spanish of the period also began to develop the specific El Paso-Juárez vocabulary that would mark the border into the twentieth century. Chuco (a young Mexican-American dandy), which would later evolve into pachuco, was beginning to appear in slang by the late eighteen-nineties. Bracero (a manual laborer) was an old word but began to be specifically associated with Mexican agricultural workers crossing the border for U.S. employment. Mojado (literally “wet one,” referring to those who crossed the river illegally) was beginning to be used. Coyote (in its sense of “smuggler of human cargo,” distinct from the animal) was emerging. The border vocabulary that would, in the late twentieth century, be widely associated with the U.S.-Mexico border was being made on the border itself in the Porfirian period.

VIII · Los Papeles

Primary Documents

Y los papeles de estos cuarenta años son muchos, porque la consolidación produce papeles aún más que la guerra. Pero los principales son los siguientes.

Los Archivos del Ayuntamiento de Ciudad Juárez, mil ochocientos sesenta a mil novecientos y once. The municipal archives of the city of Ciudad Juárez — meeting minutes, correspondence, ordinances, contracts, tax records, judicial records of the period. Held in Special Collections at the University of Texas at El Paso, microfilmed as MF 495 (general municipal records) and MF 513 (alcalde and senior administrative records). The continuous documentary record of José Jesús Flores Stephenson’s offices is preserved in these archives. Es el archivo central de la Quinta Crónica y de esta.

Los Registros Parroquiales de la Catedral de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Ciudad Juárez. Baptism, marriage, and burial records of the cathedral, the principal Catholic parish of Ciudad Juárez. The marriage of José Jesús and Josefina in eighteen hundred and ninety-five; the baptisms of María del Carmen (1898), José Jesús Jr. (1900), Carlos (1903), and the subsequent children, are all in these registers. The funerals of various Flores-Stephenson family members in this period are also recorded.

El Decreto de Renombramiento de Ciudad Juárez, dieciséis de septiembre de mil ochocientos ochenta y ocho. The federal decree of President Porfirio Díaz renaming El Paso del Norte as Ciudad Juárez in honor of Benito Juárez. Promulgated on the seventy-eighth anniversary of Mexican independence. Held in the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City. The official text is published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación of the period.

Las Actas del Ferrocarril Sureño, mayo y junio de mil ochocientos ochenta y uno. The arrival records of the Southern Pacific Railroad at El Paso. The Southern Pacific Company papers are held in various railroad history collections in California and Texas. The local El Paso records of the arrival are in the El Paso Public Library archives and the El Paso Times historical files.

El Plan de San Luis Potosí, cinco de octubre de mil novecientos y diez. The proclamation of Francisco I. Madero, issued from San Antonio, Texas, calling for a national uprising against the Díaz regime to begin at six in the evening on the twentieth of November of nineteen hundred and ten. Published clandestinely and distributed throughout Mexico in October and November of nineteen hundred and ten. The Plan is preserved in the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City and in numerous published collections of Maderista documents.

El Sucesión Presidencial en mil novecientos y diez, mil novecientos y ocho. Madero’s book that initiated the Anti-reelectionist movement. Published in San Pedro, Coahuila, in nineteen hundred and eight. Available in many editions; the foundational text of the Mexican Revolution.

El Periódico El Paso Times, mil ochocientos ochenta y uno adelante. Founded in eighteen hundred and eighty-one. Daily English-language newspaper. The El Paso Public Library and the El Paso Times historical archives preserve the original print runs. Coverage of the Flores-Stephenson family in social columns, business reports, and political coverage from the eighteen-nineties forward.

El Periódico El Paso Herald, mil ochocientos ochenta y uno a mil novecientos treinta y uno. Founded in eighteen hundred and eighty-one. Daily English-language newspaper. Held in the El Paso Public Library archives. Coverage of border events of the period, including the early stages of the Revolution.

El Periódico El Correo de Chihuahua, mil ochocientos setenta y nueve adelante. The principal Spanish-language newspaper of the Chihuahuan north. Founded in eighteen hundred and seventy-nine. Coverage of Ciudad Juárez politics and society. Preserved in the Hemeroteca Nacional de México.

IX · Las Fuentes

Sources

Bracker, Milton. Mexico and the Mexican Revolution. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969.

Garner, Paul. Porfirio Díaz: Profiles in Power. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2001. The standard modern biography in English.

Hart, John Mason. Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Katz, Friedrich. The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Standard study of the foreign-power dimension.

Knight, Alan. The Mexican Revolution. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. The standard modern English-language history.

Krauze, Enrique. Mexico: Biography of Power. Translated by Hank Heifetz. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Standard cultural-political history.

Martínez, Oscar J. Border Boom Town: Ciudad Juárez Since 1848. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. The standard modern history of Ciudad Juárez.

National Park Service. “Ysleta del Sur Pueblo.” https://www.nps.gov/articles/ysleta-del-sur-pueblo.htm

Romo, David Dorado. Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez: 1893–1923. El Paso: Cinco Puntos Press, 2005. Essential source for the borderland cultural history of the late Porfiriato and Revolution.

Strachwitz, Chris, with James Nicolopulos. Lydia Mendoza: A Family Autobiography. Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993. Background on the Mexican-American border community in the early twentieth century.

Texas State Historical Association. “El Paso, TX.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/el-paso-tx

Texas State Historical Association. “Mexican Revolution.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Porfiriato.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Railroads.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Ysleta del Sur Pueblo.” Handbook of Texas Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/ysleta-del-sur-pueblo

Timmons, W. H. El Paso: A Borderlands History. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1990.

University of Texas at El Paso. Ciudad Juárez Municipal Archives. Microfilmed as MF 495 (general municipal records) and MF 513 (parts I and II, senior administrative records). Held in Special Collections. The continuous archival record of the city government from sixteen hundred and fifty-nine to nineteen hundred and eleven.

Wasserman, Mark. Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution: The Native Elite and Foreign Enterprise in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1854–1911. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Detailed study of the Chihuahuan economy and society during the Porfiriato.

Aquí termina la Séptima Parte de las Crónicas. El ferrocarril ha llegado. Las dos ciudades han crecido juntas. El Paso del Norte se ha vuelto Ciudad Juárez. El bisnieto del talabartero ha sido alcalde de la ciudad principal del norte de México. Su segundo hijo ha nacido el diez de octubre de mil novecientos y tres. El Porfiriato ha cumplido treinta y cuatro años y le quedan treinta días.

Y aquellos que en otro tiempo hayan de leer estas páginas sabrán que en el momento en que esta página se cierra, en una mañana del veinte de noviembre de mil novecientos y diez, en un rancho de la sierra de Chihuahua llamado San Andrés, un hombre con un grupo de jinetes está a punto de cabalgar contra una guarnición federal. El hombre se llama Doroteo Arango. Pronto se llamará Pancho Villa. La crónica que viene después de ésta — la Octava — comienza cuando él monta el caballo.

I · El Escenario

Setting

Y vino la sangre y vino el fuego y vino el polvo, y en tres años se acabó lo que en treinta y cuatro años el Porfiriato había construido, y lo que se acabó no se reconstruyó, y la familia que había estado en la Quinta Crónica gobernando la ciudad en paz se halló en esta crónica cruzando un puente a medianoche con todo lo que podían llevar.

This is the period of the catastrophe. Three years and two months passed between the morning of the twentieth of November of nineteen hundred and ten — when Pancho Villa and his men rode against the federal garrison at San Andrés in Chihuahua — and the morning of the fifth of January of nineteen hundred and fourteen — when Villa signed the contract with the Mutual Film Corporation at the office of attorney Gunther Lessing in downtown El Paso, on the American side of the river he had taken seven weeks before. In those three years and two months the Mexican Revolution began, the Porfiriato fell, the Madero administration rose, the Decena Trágica destroyed it, the Huerta regime took power, the Constitutionalist revolt against Huerta began, Pancho Villa’s División del Norte became the most powerful military force in northern Mexico, the Battle of Ciudad Juárez of fifteen November nineteen hundred and thirteen ended the Huerta hold on the border, and José Jesús Flores Stephenson — alcalde of Ciudad Juárez through three presidents, two constitutions, and one revolution — crossed the International Bridge to El Paso, Texas, in the small hours of that same fifteenth of November with his wife and his seven children, of whom Carlos, the second son, was nine years old.

This is the period to which the novel’s Prologue: The Crossing belongs. It is the period the entire novel is, in one sense, written backward from. The boy who crossed the bridge in the company of his father in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen would carry the moment for eighty-two years and would tell it to a grandson born in nineteen hundred and seventy-four, who would carry it for another thirty-five years before writing it down. The novel’s preface — Una nota sobre lo que es verdad — opens with this crossing. The chronicle has been working toward it since the First Part. The chronicle now records what the documentary record says.

The Mexican Revolution did not arrive in Ciudad Juárez gradually. It arrived twice. The first arrival was in the spring of nineteen hundred and eleven, when the first Battle of Ciudad Juárez was fought between Maderista forces and federal troops over four days in early May. The city fell to the revolutionaries on the tenth of May. Two weeks later President Porfirio Díaz resigned. The first arrival was, by the standards of revolutions, brief and relatively bloodless. The city changed hands. The president fell. The Porfiriato ended. The local administration was reorganized under Madero’s provisional government. José Jesús, who had been alcalde under Díaz, was confirmed in office under Madero — an unusual political feat, achieved through the kind of careful neutrality that he had practiced for twenty years and through his family’s standing in the city. Era el alcalde a quien la revolución decidió no destituir.

The second arrival of the Revolution was the catastrophic one. After Madero’s overthrow and murder in February of nineteen hundred and thirteen — La Decena Trágica, the Ten Tragic Days, the eleventh through the twenty-second of February, during which loyal federal officers under General Victoriano Huerta destroyed the Madero administration and Huerta seized the presidency — the country erupted in the Constitutionalist Revolution. Venustiano Carranza, the governor of Coahuila, issued the Plan de Guadalupe in March of nineteen hundred and thirteen, calling for an armed restoration of constitutional government. The plan was joined by Álvaro Obregón in Sonora, by Pancho Villa returning from exile in El Paso, and by Emiliano Zapata in Morelos. The Constitutionalist forces moved against the Huerta administration through the spring, summer, and autumn of nineteen hundred and thirteen. By November the Constitutionalist forces had taken much of the north. Only the major cities — Mexico City, Monterrey, Torreón, and on the border Ciudad Juárez and Matamoros — remained under federal control.

On the fifteenth of November of nineteen hundred and thirteen, Pancho Villa took Ciudad Juárez in a surprise night attack that has become legend. He had been operating in the south of Chihuahua and had been considered too distant to threaten the border. He commandeered a coal train moving north — the Tren de Carbón of revolutionary corridos — disguised his men as workmen and federal guards, and rode the train directly into Ciudad Juárez Station in the small hours of the morning. The federal garrison was caught completely by surprise. The fighting was brief and decisive. By dawn on the fifteenth of November, Villa held the city. The federal officers who had not been killed had fled across the river to El Paso. The civilian administration — including the alcalde, José Jesús Flores Stephenson — faced a choice: remain in office under Villa, or flee. José Jesús, who had served three presidents and two constitutions, decided that the time for serving had ended. He took his family across the bridge.

The crossing happened in the small hours of the fifteenth of November, between the fall of the city to Villa and the dawn that confirmed it. The Palacio Municipal was being occupied. The federal offices were being looted. The cathedral was being protected by its own clergy. José Jesús, who had been in his office in the Palacio since the early evening of the fourteenth — the night his son Carlos had fallen asleep in the green leather visitor chair — heard the boots on the marble. He took his son in his arms. He met his family — his wife Josefina, his mother Margarita who had come from El Paso for what should have been a brief visit, his other children — at the agreed rendezvous on the south end of the International Bridge. They crossed the bridge in a small group, on foot, in the dark, with the lights of El Paso a few hundred yards ahead and the lights of Juárez burning behind them. The U.S. border officers, who had been alerted by the American consul, waved them through without paperwork. They were on the American side of the river before sunrise.

They never lived on the Mexican side of the river again.

II · Dónde Aparece en PASADOR

Where in PASADOR

Y la Quinta Obra de la novela, que se titula “El Alcalde”, cubre principalmente los años de este periodo, y la culminación de la obra — el Prólogo de la novela entera — es precisamente la madrugada del quince de noviembre de mil novecientos y trece.

The Fifth Play of the novel — The Mayor — is the play of this Chronicle. The entire arc of the play converges on the night of the fourteenth-to-fifteenth of November of nineteen hundred and thirteen. The play opens with José Jesús’s birth in eighteen hundred and sixty-two; it closes with the crossing of the bridge fifty-one years later. Almost every scene in the play is in the period of this Chronicle.

The novel’s Prologue: The Crossing is the climactic scene of the Fifth Play and the opening scene of the entire novel. Carlos has fallen asleep in the green leather chair in his father’s office in the Palacio Municipal of Ciudad Juárez. He is nine years old. He has come to bring his father dinner — the way he had done before, the way he had been doing for months, as the Revolution turned darker around them and as it had become more dangerous for José Jesús to be alone at night. He woke to the sound of boots on marble. José Jesús heard it at the same moment. He did not look at the door. He looked at his son. The chronicler will not paraphrase further; the scene is in the novel and the chronicle does not duplicate the novel. What the chronicle confirms is that the scene is documentary in its broad outline: that José Jesús was in his office in the Palacio on the night of the fourteenth, that his son Carlos was with him, that Pancho Villa entered Ciudad Juárez in the small hours of the fifteenth, that the family crossed the bridge to El Paso before dawn. Lo que el cronista no sabe es exactamente cómo cruzó. La novela lo imagina. La crónica deja la imagen a la novela.

The play also depicts the first Battle of Ciudad Juárez (May 1911) — the four-day battle between Maderista and federal forces that ended the Porfiriato. José Jesús’s role in those four days was the careful neutrality of a senior municipal official who recognized that the city would fall and that his task was to minimize the destruction. He met with both sides. He arranged for the wounded to be evacuated to El Paso. He kept the city’s documentary records safe — which is how, the chronicler now notes, the Ciudad Juárez Municipal Archives survive in such substantial completeness despite the Revolution.

The play depicts the rooftop spectators of El Paso, who watched the May 1911 battle from the hotel roofs across the Rio Grande. “From the roof of the hotel, nine blocks north across the Río Grande, El Pasoans watched the battle the way they had watched the battles before it — with drinks in hand, from a safe elevation, understanding that the rain was falling on someone else.” This passage of the novel — quoted in the Prologue — is the chronicle’s documentary fact about the spectator culture of border violence in the early Revolution. The journalists, the bored tourists, the photographers, the cinematographers, the elite of El Paso with cocktails — all stood on the rooftops and watched the war they had no part in. David Dorado Romo’s Ringside Seat to a Revolution, which is the modern scholarly source for this period, makes the rooftop spectatorship its central image. The title of his book is the chronicle’s title for the El Paso experience of the Mexican Revolution.

The play depicts the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce into the Revolution. Bierce, the American writer — seventy-one years old, author of The Devil’s Dictionary and Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, veteran of the U.S. Civil War, journalist for William Randolph Hearst — crossed the border at El Paso in October of nineteen hundred and thirteen and made his way south to Chihuahua to observe Villa’s army. He wrote his last known letter on the twenty-sixth of December of nineteen hundred and thirteen from Chihuahua. He was never seen again. No body was ever found. The cause and location of his death are not known. He came looking for his death, the novel’s epigraph for Play Five reads, and found it so well hidden that no one has found it since.

The play depicts the Villa-Mutual Film Corporation contract of the fifth of January of nineteen hundred and fourteen — seven weeks after the bridge crossing. The contract was signed in the office of attorney Gunther Lessing at the Mills Building in downtown El Paso, between Frank N. Thayer for the Mutual Film Corporation and Pancho Villa for the División del Norte. The chronicle will give the specific details below. The play depicts the signing as the moment in which the war became a film, the moment in which the bandit became a movie star, the moment in which the El Paso side of the river — which had been the spectator — became the producer. La frontera se hizo plató. El productor estaba en Hollywood. El protagonista estaba en El Paso. La sangre estaba en Chihuahua. Y la audiencia, doce millones por semana, estaba en los teatros de Nueva York y Chicago y San Francisco.

The play closes with the family on the American side of the river. The novel’s Epilogue: The House on Florence Street is set in nineteen hundred and eighty, sixty-seven years after the crossing, when Carlos is seventy-seven years old and tells the story to his grandson on the porch in El Paso. The chronicle’s Ninth Part will be that period.

III · Los Sucesos

Events of the Period

Y los hechos de estos tres años y dos meses, en orden cronológico, son los siguientes. Cada uno ha sido confirmado por los archivos de la Revolución, por los periódicos de la época, por las memorias de los participantes, o por la combinación de todos ellos.

In the year nineteen hundred and ten, on the twentieth of November, at six o’clock in the evening, the Mexican Revolution began. The principal early actions were in Chihuahua, where Pascual Orozco and Pancho Villa led Maderista forces against federal garrisons. The action at San Andrés succeeded; the action at Cuauhtémoc failed and its leaders were executed. The Revolution’s first month was small-scale and uncertain; by the end of December nineteen hundred and ten, the Maderista forces controlled only a few rural districts of Chihuahua and Coahuila.

In the year nineteen hundred and eleven, in January and February, the Revolution expanded. Madero himself crossed from Texas into Mexico in February to take direct command of the campaign. Federal forces under General Juan Navarro defeated Maderista forces at Casas Grandes in early March. Madero withdrew to the Chihuahua-Coahuila border. The federal government in Mexico City began to recognize the seriousness of the situation. Diplomatic communications between Mexico and the United States intensified.

In the year nineteen hundred and eleven, on the fourteenth of April, Madero’s army arrived at the south side of Ciudad Juárez. The First Battle of Ciudad Juárez began on the eighth of May and ended on the tenth of May with the surrender of the federal garrison. The battle was the decisive military action of the Maderista campaign. Madero had not wanted to attack the city — the federal garrison’s heavy artillery was in range of El Paso, and any battle in the city would risk sending shells into the United States, which would provoke American intervention against the revolutionaries. But the soldiers of his army, led by Pancho Villa and Pascual Orozco, attacked the city on their own initiative. The federal garrison surrendered on the tenth of May. The losses were approximately one hundred and thirty federal soldiers and forty-five revolutionaries. Several shells fell on the El Paso side of the river; no Americans were killed but a few were injured. El Paso, on the night of the tenth of May, was loud with celebration. The Mexican émigré community in El Paso poured into the streets. Bands played. The bars on Mesa Street stayed open all night.

In the same year, on the seventeenth of May, the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez was signed at the Customs House on the Mexican side of the bridge. The treaty ended the active Maderista phase of the Revolution. Porfirio Díaz agreed to resign by the end of May. Francisco León de la Barra, a Porfirian foreign minister, would serve as interim president. New elections would be held in October. Madero would be the candidate of the new party. José Jesús, who had spent the four days of the May battle keeping the civilian population safe and the municipal records intact, was a witness to the treaty signing on behalf of the city government. His signature is on the document. El alcalde firmó el tratado que cambió el régimen sin perder su oficio.

In the same year, on the twenty-fifth of May, Porfirio Díaz resigned the presidency of Mexico and the following day boarded the ship Ypiranga at Veracruz for exile in Paris. He never returned to Mexico. He died in Paris in nineteen hundred and fifteen, the year after this Chronicle ends. Treinta y cuatro años se acabaron en una mañana.

In the same year, in October, Madero was elected president of Mexico in what was, by all contemporary accounts, the most genuinely democratic election in Mexican history to that date. He took office on the sixth of November of nineteen hundred and eleven. José Jesús was confirmed in office as alcalde of Ciudad Juárez under the new Madero administration. El alcalde sobrevivió al cambio de régimen.

In the year nineteen hundred and twelve, in March, Pascual Orozco — who had been Madero’s principal military commander in the north and had felt insufficiently rewarded by the Madero administration — rose in revolt against Madero. The Orozquista revolt occupied Chihuahua state for most of nineteen hundred and twelve. Ciudad Juárez was held by federal forces loyal to Madero throughout the revolt. José Jesús continued in office. La revolución de Orozco no entró en la ciudad. La ciudad continuó.

In the same year, in the autumn, Emiliano Zapata — the agrarian revolutionary of Morelos in southern Mexico — was in open revolt against Madero over the issue of land reform. The Plan de Ayala of November nineteen hundred and eleven had called for the immediate return of communal lands to the peasantry; Madero had not delivered. Zapata was therefore at war with the new federal government. The Madero administration was fighting on two fronts — Orozco in the north, Zapata in the south. The administration was beginning to fail.

In the year nineteen hundred and thirteen, on the ninth of February, General Bernardo Reyes and General Félix Díaz attempted a coup against President Madero. The coup attempt was launched from the federal military prison in Mexico City, where Reyes and Díaz had been held. Diez días de combates en las calles de la capital, conocidos como La Decena Trágica — los Diez Días Trágicos. The fighting lasted from the ninth to the nineteenth of February. The federal commander, General Victoriano Huerta, who had been charged with defending the Madero administration, conspired with the rebels through the U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson at the Pacto de la Embajada of the eighteenth of February. On the nineteenth of February Madero was forced to resign at gunpoint. On the twenty-second of February, Madero and Vice President José María Pino Suárez were murdered by federal soldiers while being transferred between prisons. La Decena Trágica acabó con la presidencia de Madero, y con el primer experimento de la democracia mexicana.

In the same year, on the twenty-sixth of March, Venustiano Carranza, governor of Coahuila, issued the Plan de Guadalupe from his ranch at Cuatro Ciénegas, calling for the restoration of constitutional government and for the overthrow of Huerta. The Plan named Carranza Primer Jefe del Ejército Constitucionalista — First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army. Within weeks the Plan was adopted by Álvaro Obregón in Sonora, by Pancho Villa returning from his exile in El Paso, and by Emiliano Zapata in Morelos (with reservations about Carranza personally). The Constitutionalist Revolution had begun.

In the same year, in the spring and summer, Pancho Villa rebuilt his División del Norte from a starting force of approximately fifty men to an organized military force of several thousand. His campaign through Chihuahua state — the Northern Division taking Camargo, Hidalgo del Parral, Saucillo, and other towns through the summer — established him as the principal military leader of the Constitutionalist Revolution in the north. By autumn his army numbered over fifteen thousand. He had not yet attacked any city as large as Ciudad Juárez.

In the same year, in October, Ambrose Bierce, the American writer, aged seventy-one, crossed the border at El Paso and made his way south. His exact route is uncertain. He had told his daughter Helen, in a letter from Washington in early October, that he was going to Mexico to observe Villa’s revolution and that “it is pretty much certain that I will not return.” He wrote letters from various stops in Chihuahua state through October, November, and December. His last known letter was written from Chihuahua City on the twenty-sixth of December and mailed to his friend Lora Bertha Christiansen. The letter contained the line, in reference to his probable future: “To be a Gringo in Mexico — ah, that is euthanasia!” No further letter from Bierce was received by anyone. His body was never found. The cause and place of his death are not known with certainty. He probably died in early nineteen hundred and fourteen in the campaign of Villa’s army that culminated in the Battle of Ojinaga in January nineteen hundred and fourteen. The novel’s framing — “He came looking for his death and found it so well hidden that no one has found it since” — is the chronicle’s framing as well.

In the same year, on the fifteenth of November, Pancho Villa took Ciudad Juárez by surprise night attack. The attack was the most famous of his career and entered the corridos of the Revolution as La Toma de Ciudad Juárez. The operation: Villa’s scouts had learned that the railroad telegraph operators at the small station of Estación Carrillo, south of Ciudad Juárez, were transmitting daily reports to the federal garrison about Villa’s troop movements. On the thirteenth of November Villa captured the telegraph operator and forced him to send false reports that Villa’s army was moving south, away from Ciudad Juárez. The operator complied. The federal commander at Ciudad Juárez relaxed his guard.

Meanwhile Villa boarded a southbound coal train that had been moving toward Ciudad Juárez through the federal-held territory. He ordered the train captured, replaced the crew with his own men, and reversed the train’s direction. The train, ostensibly carrying coal to Ciudad Juárez for the federal garrison, was now carrying Villa’s two thousand men hidden in the coal cars. The train arrived at Ciudad Juárez Station in the small hours of the morning of the fifteenth of November. Villa’s men emerged from the coal cars and seized the station. The federal garrison was caught in their barracks. The fighting was over by dawn. El Tren de Carbón. The action passed into Mexican legend.

The federal officers who had not been killed retreated across the International Bridge to El Paso, where the American military authorities disarmed and interned them as refugees of war. The civilian administration of Ciudad Juárez — including the alcalde — now had to decide whether to remain in office under Villa or to flee. José Jesús, who had served three presidents (Díaz, Madero, Huerta) and two constitutions (the Porfirian and the Maderista), and whose family had been at Concordia for sixty-three years and at San Antonio for one hundred and eighty-two years, decided that the time for service had ended.

He sent word to his wife Josefina, who was at the family residence on a side street off the Avenida Juárez with their seven children. He sent word to his mother Margarita, who had come up from Concordia three days before for what was supposed to be a brief visit. He arranged for a small carriage to take Josefina and the younger children to the south end of the International Bridge. He kept his son Carlos with him at the Palacio until the last moment. The boy was asleep in the chair when the boots came on the marble. The father lifted the boy. The mother had reached the bridge. The grandmother had reached the bridge. The other children were there. They crossed the bridge in a small group, on foot, in the dark. The Mexican guard at the southern end of the bridge — a soldier of the federal garrison, who in twelve hours would be a refugee himself — waved them through. The American guard at the northern end of the bridge — who had been alerted by the U.S. consul — waved them through. They walked the few hundred yards into El Paso and turned onto Stanton Street and walked the additional blocks to the home of friends. They had nothing with them. The grandmother had a small case. The mother had brought money sewn into her clothes. Carlos had a small toy in his pocket that he had been holding when his father had lifted him from the chair. José Jesús had the keys to his office in the Palacio and a copy of the Plan de San Luis Potosí folded inside his jacket.

They did not return to Ciudad Juárez. They did not, ever, live again on the Mexican side of the river.

In the same year, on the seventeenth of November — two days after the crossing — Pancho Villa met with the press in the Palacio Municipal of Ciudad Juárez. The American journalists who came across the bridge to interview him included John Reed, the Hearst correspondent who would later write Ten Days That Shook the World. Villa told the journalists that he intended to take all of Mexico for the Constitutionalist cause. The journalists wrote their dispatches. The American newspaper readers, twelve million of them per week, read the dispatches. The American public’s love affair with Pancho Villa began.

In the year nineteen hundred and fourteen, on the fifth of January — seven weeks after the crossing, three months after Bierce’s last letter, in the office of attorney Gunther Lessing at the Mills Building in downtown El Paso — Frank N. Thayer of the Mutual Film Corporation and General Francisco “Pancho” Villa signed a contract granting Mutual exclusive rights to film Villa’s military operations in exchange for twenty percent of the film’s revenues. The contract was five pages long. The terms — contrary to the popular legend that has Villa promising to fight in daylight and to coordinate his battles with Mutual cameramen — granted only exclusive filming rights and a revenue share. There were no clauses about daylight battles or reenactments. The chronicle has emphasized this point: the legend of Pancho Villa as Hollywood war director is myth. The contract is documented. The myth is popular legend. The two are distinct.

The film that resulted from the contract — The Life of General Villa, directed by Raoul Walsh, premiered in New York at the Lyric Theater on the ninth of May of nineteen hundred and fourteen — combined documentary footage of Villa’s army with fictional reenactments shot at Mission San Fernando in California. The film is lost. The contract survives, in copy, in the U.S. Library of Congress and (in fragmentary form) in the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City. The principal scholar on the contract is Friedrich Katz, whose 1998 biography The Life and Times of Pancho Villa established the surviving terms.

IV · Los Lugares

Places

Y los lugares de estos tres años y dos meses son pocos pero son centrales. Aquí están.

El Palacio Municipal de Ciudad Juárez. The municipal hall on the principal plaza, two blocks from the cathedral. The original eighteenth-century building, renovated in the Porfirian style. José Jesús’s office on the second floor, with windows looking out at the plaza. The green leather visitor chair in which Carlos had fallen asleep on the night of the fourteenth of November. The desk at which José Jesús had been working when the boots came on the marble. The marble stairs the soldiers came up. The mahogany doors of the alcalde’s office. The room in which the father lifted the sleeping son. The palace would, two years after this Chronicle ends, be replaced by a new municipal palace. La sala donde el alcalde se sentó a oír las botas ya no existe. Pero existió. Existió esa noche.

El Puente Internacional. The International Bridge over the Rio Grande, connecting Ciudad Juárez on the south to El Paso on the north. The principal pedestrian and vehicular crossing of the border for the entire El Paso district. The bridge of nineteen hundred and thirteen was a wooden trestle bridge, the original Stanton Street bridge, replaced in subsequent decades by various concrete and steel structures. The bridge was the literal crossing of the family. It is the title of the novel’s Prologue. Crossings, in the novel and in the chronicle, are the events that change everything.

La Avenida Juárez, Ciudad Juárez. The principal commercial street of Ciudad Juárez, running south from the International Bridge into the city center. Lined with the Porfirian-era commercial buildings, the hotels, the cantinas. By November of nineteen hundred and thirteen the Avenida Juárez was the channel through which the news of Villa’s approach had moved, through which the federal officers had fled north toward the bridge, and through which the journalists had moved south to meet Villa.

El Hotel Sheldon de El Paso. A principal hotel of El Paso during the Revolution. Located on El Paso Street near the bridge. The hotel was a center of the American journalist corps who covered the Revolution. The rooftop of the Hotel Sheldon — and of the neighboring buildings — was where the El Paso spectators watched the battles of nineteen hundred and eleven and nineteen hundred and thirteen. Drinks in hand. Field glasses. The understanding that the rain was falling on someone else.

El Edificio Mills, Centro de El Paso. The Mills Building in downtown El Paso, completed in nineteen hundred and eleven, at the corner of San Antonio Street and Texas Street. Eleven stories of yellow brick and limestone — the tallest building in El Paso at the time. The offices of attorney Gunther Lessing were in this building. The Villa-Mutual contract was signed in this building on the fifth of January of nineteen hundred and fourteen. El edificio todavía está en pie. Es el edificio más alto de El Paso de la era anterior a la guerra de mil novecientos diecisiete. Las oficinas legales todavía están en uso. El cuarto donde se firmó el contrato no está marcado, pero está allí.

Chihuahua City. The capital of Chihuahua state and the principal interior city of the Mexican north. Where Ambrose Bierce wrote his last known letter on the twenty-sixth of December of nineteen hundred and thirteen. Where Villa’s División del Norte had its headquarters after October of nineteen hundred and thirteen. Where the Revolution’s correspondents and photographers gathered. La ciudad donde el escritor americano se desapareció en el aire del desierto, sin dejar rastro, en las primeras semanas de mil novecientos catorce.

Ojinaga, Chihuahua. A town on the Rio Grande east of Ciudad Juárez, where Villa’s army won a major battle in January of nineteen hundred and fourteen — the battle in which Ambrose Bierce probably died, though no one has ever confirmed his presence. Some chronicles place him at Ojinaga; others say he died elsewhere; no one knows.

La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Ciudad Juárez. The cathedral of Ciudad Juárez, in continuous use since sixteen hundred and fifty-nine. During the November fifteenth fighting the cathedral was protected by its own clergy, who closed the doors and rang the bells continuously to signal sanctuary. The cathedral preserved its records. It survived the November attack without damage. La catedral resistió. Es la única institución de la ciudad que cruzó el momento sin daño.

El Río Grande, El Paso a Juárez, noviembre quince mil novecientos trece. The river itself, in the small hours of the fifteenth of November, was approximately three feet deep at the bridge crossing, perhaps two hundred feet wide, flowing south at the seasonal rate of late autumn. The lights of El Paso reflected on it from the north. The lights of Ciudad Juárez reflected on it from the south. The fires of the burning federal barracks reflected on it from the southwest. The river, that night, was the river it had been for twelve thousand years. The lights were new.

V · Las Personas

People

Y las personas de estos tres años y dos meses son muchas. Aquí están las que la crónica recuerda como los nombres principales.

José Jesús Flores Stephenson (1862 – 1939). Alcalde of Ciudad Juárez through the entire period of this Chronicle. The man who carried his family across the bridge. The chronicler’s great-grandfather. Forty-eight years old at the start of the Revolution; fifty-one at the bridge crossing. He had served the Porfirian, Maderista, and Huerta administrations. He would not serve the Villista or Carrancista or post-revolutionary administrations. The crossing ended his political career in Mexico. He would live the remaining twenty-six years of his life on the American side of the river. He would visit Ciudad Juárez again — once, in nineteen hundred and twenty-six, for the funeral of a cousin — but he would never live there again.

Josefina Gómez Velarde de Flores (c. 1875 – ?). Wife of José Jesús. Mother of the seven children. The woman who, on the evening of the fourteenth of November, gathered the children at the family residence, packed only what could be carried by hand, sewed coins and small pieces of jewelry into the children’s clothes, and walked them through the dark to the bridge. She was approximately thirty-eight years old. The youngest child was perhaps two or three. The eldest was fifteen. The bridge crossing was her work as much as it was José Jesús’s. Era la madre cruzando. La parte que no aparece en los corridos.

Margarita Stephenson de Flores (1836 – 1914). The matriarch of Concordia, now seventy-seven years old. She had come up from Concordia on the twelfth of November for a brief visit. She had not expected to leave Ciudad Juárez. She crossed the bridge with her son’s family and never returned to the Mexican side of the river. She lived five more months after the crossing. She died at Concordia in April of nineteen hundred and fourteen at the age of seventy-eight. La última nieta directa de Hugh y Juana. Cerró la línea de Concordia con ese cruce.

Los hijos de José Jesús y Josefina, en noviembre de mil novecientos trece. Seven children, ranging in age from approximately fifteen to approximately three: - María del Carmen Flores Gómez (b. 1898), aged fifteen. - José Jesús Flores Gómez Jr. (b. 1900), aged thirteen. - Carlos Flores Gómez (b. 10 October 1903), aged nine — the boy the novel calls Carlos F. Flores, who would tell the story to the grandson. - Three additional children, names and dates not preserved by the chronicler in this draft, aged between approximately seven and three at the time of the crossing.

The chronicle acknowledges that the precise number, names, and ages of all seven children at the time of the crossing has not been fully retrieved from the family chart and the parish records. The seven survived. The six younger ones were too young to have memories of the crossing that lasted into their adult lives the way Carlos’s memory did. Carlos era el que recordaba. Por eso es Carlos quien contó la historia.

Francisco “Pancho” Villa (1878 – 1923). The revolutionary general. The taker of Ciudad Juárez on the fifteenth of November. The signer of the Mutual Film contract on the fifth of January. Thirty-five years old in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen. Five feet ten inches tall, two hundred pounds, mustachioed, illiterate (he had taught himself to read at twenty and could sign his name with effort), Catholic in upbringing and revolutionary in conviction. He had escaped from federal prison in nineteen hundred and twelve and had been in exile in El Paso for much of nineteen hundred and thirteen before returning to Mexico in March to join the Constitutionalist Revolution. He would be the most photographed and filmed of all Mexican revolutionaries. He would also be the most romanticized. The chronicle records what the documentary record permits about him: that he was both more brutal and more shrewd than the legend gives him credit for, that his military genius was real, that his cruelty toward his enemies was also real, and that the rooftop spectators of El Paso did not see clearly any of what he was doing on the southern side of their drinks.

Porfirio Díaz (1830 – 1915). President of Mexico for thirty-four years. Forced to resign on the twenty-fifth of May of nineteen hundred and eleven. Exiled to Paris on the Ypiranga in June. Died in Paris in nineteen hundred and fifteen.

Francisco I. Madero (1873 – 1913). President of Mexico from November nineteen hundred and eleven to February nineteen hundred and thirteen. Murdered on the twenty-second of February of nineteen hundred and thirteen, two days after his forced resignation.

Victoriano Huerta (1850 – 1916). General who betrayed Madero and seized the presidency in February nineteen hundred and thirteen. Held power until his own forced resignation in July nineteen hundred and fourteen, six months after this Chronicle ends. Died in El Paso in nineteen hundred and sixteen, in exile after his fall.

Venustiano Carranza (1859 – 1920). Governor of Coahuila who issued the Plan de Guadalupe in March nineteen hundred and thirteen and assumed leadership of the Constitutionalist Revolution. Would become president of Mexico in nineteen hundred and seventeen.

Emiliano Zapata (1879 – 1919). Leader of the agrarian Revolution in southern Mexico. Issued the Plan de Ayala in November nineteen hundred and eleven. Joined the Constitutionalist Revolution in nineteen hundred and thirteen, with reservations about Carranza.

Pascual Orozco (1882 – 1915). Maderista commander in nineteen hundred and ten and eleven. Rebelled against Madero in nineteen hundred and twelve. Eventually killed by U.S. authorities in Texas after the Revolution.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 – ?). American writer, satirist, journalist. Author of The Devil’s Dictionary (1911), Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891), In the Midst of Life (1898). Veteran of the U.S. Civil War (wounded at Kennesaw Mountain in 1864). Crossed into Mexico in October nineteen hundred and thirteen. Last known letter dated the twenty-sixth of December of nineteen hundred and thirteen from Chihuahua. Never seen again. Cause and place of death unknown. The novel’s epigraph for Play Five: He came looking for his death and found it so well hidden that no one has found it since.

John Reed (1887 – 1920). American journalist, Hearst correspondent. Came to Ciudad Juárez in November nineteen hundred and thirteen to interview Villa. Wrote Insurgent Mexico (1914) based on his reporting. Would later write Ten Days That Shook the World (1919) about the Bolshevik Revolution. He stood on rooftops in El Paso. He drank in cantinas in Ciudad Juárez. He rode with Villa for months. He admired Villa to a fault that some historians have considered hagiographic.

Raoul Walsh (1887 – 1980). American film director. Walsh was twenty-six in nineteen hundred and thirteen. He came to Mexico in January nineteen hundred and fourteen as a director under the Mutual Film contract. He directed The Life of General Villa in the spring of nineteen hundred and fourteen. He would, in later decades, become one of the major directors of Hollywood — The Big Trail (1930), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), White Heat (1949), and many others. His memoir Each Man in His Time (1974) describes the Mexico filming.

Frank N. Thayer. Representative of the Mutual Film Corporation who signed the contract with Villa on the fifth of January of nineteen hundred and fourteen. Details of his career outside this particular transaction are not preserved in the chronicle’s current sources.

Gunther Lessing (1886 – 1965). Attorney for Pancho Villa in El Paso. In whose office on the Mills Building the contract was signed. He was twenty-seven years old in nineteen hundred and fourteen. He would later become — in one of the curious moves of American history — the chief counsel of the Walt Disney Company, serving in that position from the nineteen-thirties through the nineteen-fifties. El abogado de Pancho Villa se convirtió en el abogado de Mickey Mouse. La frontera no estaba lejos del estudio.

VI · La Mesa

Food

Y la mesa de estos tres años fue una mesa difícil, porque la Revolución es enemiga de las mesas largas, y cuando las mesas largas resisten lo hacen comiendo lo que pueden y guardando lo que no.

The table of the Flores-Gómez Velarde household at Ciudad Juárez in the period of this Chronicle was, in nineteen hundred and ten and eleven, the table of the Porfirian bourgeoisie — the same table the chronicle has described in Part VII, with the railroad-delivered ingredients and the Porfirian French-Mexican fusion and the family’s daily comida casera. After May of nineteen hundred and eleven and the first Maderista victory, the table continued in approximate normality. The Revolution’s immediate effect on the city was political, not economic; the railroads continued to run; the markets continued to be supplied; the cantinas continued to serve.

After February of nineteen hundred and thirteen and the Decena Trágica, things changed. The federal government in Mexico City was disrupted; commerce slowed; transportation became uncertain. The Constitutionalist forces in the north began to interdict federal supply lines through nineteen hundred and thirteen. By the autumn the markets of Ciudad Juárez were less reliable than they had been. Imported European goods became scarce. Sugar from southern Mexico became scarce. Coffee from southern Mexico became scarce. Wheat flour from the U.S. mills was still available, brought across the bridge from El Paso, but the prices rose.

The family at Ciudad Juárez ate what was available. Frijoles. Tortillas — corn when wheat flour was short, flour when corn was short. Carne — beef from local ranchers when commercial supplies were uncertain, sometimes mutton, sometimes goat. Chiles in all the local varieties; these were the one thing Chihuahua always had. Café — when the imported coffee was scarce, the older café de mezquite (mesquite-bean substitute) returned to the morning table. Aguardiente and mezcal continued. The household was not hungry. It was not what it had been during the alcalde’s banquets of the previous decade.

La noche del catorce de noviembre, mil novecientos y trece. The night of the bridge crossing. The chronicle imagines, in the manner permitted: that Josefina had prepared a simple supper for the children that evening — frijoles refritos, tortillas, queso, café con leche para los niños mayores, leche tibia para los más pequeños. She had not eaten with them, because she was beginning to gather the things that would have to be carried. José Jesús had not eaten at home that evening; he was at the Palacio with Carlos and had Carlos’s dinner sent up by a household servant. Lo que Carlos comió la noche del catorce de noviembre fue probablemente una taquito de carne deshebrada y un vaso de leche. Se durmió poco después de comer.

La primera comida en El Paso. The chronicle imagines, again: that the family arrived at the home of friends in El Paso shortly before dawn on the fifteenth; that they were given hot coffee, bread, and the simple breakfast the household had — eggs, bacon (the friends were Anglo-American), beans warmed from yesterday’s pot, toast and butter; that the children ate what was put in front of them and slept afterward; that José Jesús and the host of the house sat in the kitchen and talked until full daylight. La primera comida en el lado norte del río fue una comida americana de un hogar amigo. El sabor de aquella comida — el pan americano, los huevos, el tocino, la mantequilla — se quedó con Carlos toda su vida como el sabor del primer día.

La mesa de El Paso después del cruce. In the weeks and months following the crossing, the family settled at the house José Jesús had acquired in El Paso at 501 Florence Street — the house that would, by Carlos’s renovation decades later, bear the family name above the door in the Spanish Colonial style. The kitchen there was bilingual from the beginning: Josefina cooking the Northern Mexican dishes she had cooked in Ciudad Juárez, with the substitutions and additions required by El Paso ingredients, and Carlos’s older sisters helping. El Paso continued to have Mexican markets — the market on Stanton Street, the smaller markets on Mesa — that supplied the chiles, the masa, the piloncillo, the Mexican chocolate, the spices that Mexican cooking required. The Tex-Mex of the El Paso side of the river became the Tex-Mex of the family kitchen on Florence Street from the year of the crossing onward. The Concordia kitchen and the Ciudad Juárez kitchen converged into the Florence Street kitchen. The kitchen that had begun in Lanzarote in seventeen hundred and thirty was, by the winter of nineteen hundred and thirteen, the kitchen on Florence Street in El Paso, Texas, and would remain so for the next seventy years.

VII · La Lengua

Language

Y la lengua de la Revolución es una lengua nueva en el castellano. Es la lengua del corrido. Es la lengua de los oradores políticos. Es la lengua del campamento. Es la lengua que la familia oyó por tres años antes del cruce, y que se llevó con ellos al cruzar.

The Spanish of the Mexican Revolution was a Spanish that emerged on its own terms in the period of this Chronicle. It was a vernacular Spanish — the Spanish of the Northern soldiers of Villa’s División del Norte, the agrarian peasants of Zapata’s army in Morelos, the laborers and the printing-press apprentices and the small-town schoolteachers who became the orators and the journalists of the new movement. It was a Spanish that took some of its rhythm from the corrido tradition, some of its political vocabulary from the Spanish-language anarchist and socialist press that had been growing in the United States and in Spain through the previous decades, and some of its imagery from the religious and popular traditions of rural Mexico. Tierra y Libertad — the Zapatista slogan — is one example of the new revolutionary register: two words, plain Spanish, ancient referents (land, freedom), modern political weight.

The corrido of the Revolution — La Cucaracha, La Adelita, El Corrido de Pancho Villa, La Toma de Ciudad Juárez, El Corrido del Veintiocho — became the principal popular literary form of the period. The corrido form was old (see the chronicle’s discussion in earlier Parts), but the corridos of the Revolution refilled the form with new content: the actions of Villa, the betrayals of Huerta, the deaths of Madero and Zapata, the battles, the heroes, the betrayed lovers, the burning towns. The corridos circulated orally in the camps and in the cantinas; they were also printed on broadsides — hojas sueltas — by the popular printing houses of Mexico City and the northern cities, and sold for a few centavos. El corrido era la prensa popular de la guerra. Cada batalla tenía su propia balada antes de que los periódicos llegasen.

The Spanish of José Jesús in this period was the Porfirian-elegant Spanish he had been speaking and writing for thirty years, with the increasing addition of the revolutionary vocabulary that he could not avoid hearing every day at his desk. He read the corridos. He read the Constitutionalist proclamations. He read Madero’s speeches and Carranza’s Plan de Guadalupe and Zapata’s Plan de Ayala. He understood, by language alone, that the regime he had been administering was being replaced not only politically but linguistically — that the castellano de los científicos and the castellano porfiriano were being displaced by a more direct, more populist, more colloquial register that he could read and write but that he could not speak naturally. Cuando cruzó el puente, llevó consigo dos castellanos: el castellano del oficio que ya no existía, y el castellano de la calle que ya tampoco era la suya. Su nieto lo recordaría como un hombre que hablaba muy bien y muy formalmente, en una manera que era anticuada cuando él la hablaba en mil novecientos y setenta.

The English of El Paso during this period — the English the family entered into when they crossed the bridge — was the English of a city that had grown rapidly with the railroads and was now growing further with the war. The El Paso of nineteen hundred and thirteen had a population of approximately fifty thousand, of which approximately half were of Mexican origin. The English was a Southwestern Anglo-American English with heavy Spanish-substrate vocabulary. The Mexican-American Spanish of El Paso was a Tex-Mex border Spanish closely related to the Spanish of Ciudad Juárez — the same seseo, the same aspirated s, the same northern Mexican vocabulary, with the increasing English loanwords of the bilingual border life. The family entered this linguistic environment with bilingualism already fully developed; their adjustment to El Paso was social and economic rather than linguistic. Carlos hablaba inglés tan bien como español desde que se lo había enseñado su madre a los cuatro años. El cruce no le quitó ningún idioma. Lo único que el cruce hizo fue cambiar cuál idioma se hablaba en la calle.

The Spanish of the bridge crossing itself, the chronicle notes, was almost certainly a quiet Spanish — the family did not speak above a whisper as they walked across the bridge, because the danger of being heard was real, because the children had been told to be quiet, because the night was such that silence was the appropriate language. The Spanish of the first hours in the house in El Paso was a quiet Spanish — the host family fed them and put them to bed; José Jesús and the host spoke in low voices in the kitchen; the children slept. The English of the morning, when the El Paso newspapers arrived with their first reports of the night attack on Juárez, was a relieved English — they had arrived. They had crossed. They were alive.

VIII · Los Papeles

Primary Documents

Y los papeles de estos tres años son muchos, porque la Revolución es una época que produce papeles más rápido de lo que los queman.

El Plan de San Luis Potosí, cinco de octubre de mil novecientos y diez. Already cited in Part VII. The proclamation by Francisco I. Madero from San Antonio, Texas, calling for the national uprising on the twentieth of November of nineteen hundred and ten. The Plan that initiated the Revolution. José Jesús had a copy of the Plan folded in his jacket on the night of the bridge crossing — the copy he had kept in his desk in the Palacio for the three years, as the document he could neither destroy nor make public, the document that was both the origin of everything that had broken and his proof, to himself, that he had understood what was happening even when he could not yet say so.

El Tratado de Ciudad Juárez, diecisiete de mayo de mil novecientos y once. The treaty ending the first Maderista phase of the Revolution. Signed at the Customs House on the south end of the International Bridge. José Jesús’s signature is on the document as witness for the city government. Held in the Mexican federal archives and in copy at the University of Texas at El Paso.

El Plan de Ayala, veintiocho de noviembre de mil novecientos y once. The proclamation of Emiliano Zapata calling for immediate land reform. Issued from Villa de Ayala, Morelos. The foundational document of the Zapatista wing of the Revolution. Published in numerous editions; the foundational text of Mexican agrarian reform.

El Plan de Guadalupe, veintiséis de marzo de mil novecientos y trece. The proclamation of Venustiano Carranza calling for the Constitutionalist Revolution against Huerta. Issued from the Hacienda de Guadalupe in Coahuila. The foundational document of the Constitutionalist phase of the Revolution. Held in the Mexican federal archives.

La Última Carta de Ambrose Bierce, veintiséis de diciembre de mil novecientos y trece. Bierce’s last known letter, written from Chihuahua, dated the twenty-sixth of December, addressed to Lora Bertha Christiansen. Held in the Bierce papers at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. The letter contained the line about being a Gringo in Mexico and the prediction of his own death. The chronicle quotes the letter from secondary sources.

El Contrato entre la Mutual Film Corporation y el General Francisco Villa, cinco de enero de mil novecientos y catorce. The contract signed at the office of attorney Gunther Lessing in the Mills Building in El Paso. The signatories were Frank N. Thayer for Mutual and Pancho Villa for the División del Norte. Five pages. Terms: exclusive filming rights, twenty percent of revenues. The contract is held in copy in the U.S. Library of Congress and in fragmentary form in the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City. The signed original sold at Heritage Auctions in 2013 for approximately $5,000. The contract is the only fully extant primary document of one of the most-mythologized agreements in the history of cinema. Friedrich Katz’s biography Life and Times of Pancho Villa is the standard source.

Los Archivos del Ayuntamiento de Ciudad Juárez, noviembre y diciembre de mil novecientos y trece. The municipal records of the city through the period of Villa’s takeover. Some records were lost; the principal records survived because the federal records had been removed by José Jesús before the crossing — he had taken what he could and given the keys to a trusted colleague. The surviving records are at the University of Texas at El Paso in the microfilmed collections.

Los Periódicos de El Paso, noviembre de mil novecientos y trece y enero de mil novecientos y catorce. El Paso Times, El Paso Herald, El Paso Daily Times. Coverage of the November fifteenth attack, the family crossings, the subsequent administration of Ciudad Juárez under Villa, and the Mutual Film contract signing of January fifth. Held in the El Paso Public Library and in the El Paso Times historical archives.

IX · Las Fuentes

Sources

American Film Institute Catalog. “The Life of General Villa (1914).” https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/13638

Bierce, Ambrose. Last letter, Chihuahua, December 26, 1913. Held in the Bierce papers at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Cumberland, Charles C. Mexican Revolution: The Constitutionalist Years. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.

Hall, Linda B. Revolution on the Border: The United States and Mexico, 1910–1920. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. Standard study of the U.S.-Mexico border relationship during the Revolution.

Hart, John Mason. Revolutionary Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

HistoryNet. “Pancho Villa’s War Movie.” https://www.historynet.com/pancho-villas-war-movie/

Katz, Friedrich. The Life and Times of Pancho Villa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. The definitive modern biography of Villa. Contains the only published scholarly reconstruction of the Mutual Film contract.

Katz, Friedrich. The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Knight, Alan. The Mexican Revolution. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Lavender, David. Pancho Villa: The Life and Times of a Mexican Revolutionary. New York: Crowell-Collier, 1962.

McLynn, Frank. Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Reed, John. Insurgent Mexico. New York: D. Appleton, 1914. The Hearst correspondent’s account of his time with Villa’s army in nineteen hundred and thirteen and fourteen.

Rocha, Gregorio. Los rollos perdidos de Pancho Villa (The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa). Documentary film, 2003.

Romo, David Dorado. Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez: 1893–1923. El Paso: Cinco Puntos Press, 2005. Essential source for the El Paso and Juárez experience of the Revolution.

Smithsonian Magazine. “Uncovering the Truth Behind the Myth of Pancho Villa, Movie Star.” November 2013. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/uncovering-the-truth-behind-the-myth-of-pancho-villa-movie-star-110349996/

Texas State Historical Association. “Ciudad Juárez, Battle of (1911).” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Mexican Revolution.” Handbook of Texas Online.

True West Magazine. “Pancho’s Lost Film.” https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/panchos-lost-film/

University of Texas at El Paso. Ciudad Juárez Municipal Archives. Microfilmed as MF 495 and MF 513.

Walsh, Raoul. Each Man in His Time: The Life Story of a Director. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974.

Wasserman, Mark. Persistent Oligarchs: Elites and Politics in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1910–1940. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.

Womack, John. Zapata and the Mexican Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1969.

Aquí termina la Octava Parte de las Crónicas. La Revolución ha empezado, ha derribado tres presidentes, ha producido tres mil corridos, ha cruzado a la familia por el puente al amanecer del quince de noviembre. Bierce ha desaparecido en el desierto. Villa ha firmado el contrato con Hollywood. La familia está en El Paso, en una casa prestada, en una calle que va a ser su calle. Margarita ha cumplido setenta y ocho años. Le quedan cinco meses.

Y aquellos que en otro tiempo hayan de leer estas páginas sabrán que en el momento en que esta página se cierra, en una mañana fría de enero de mil novecientos y catorce, el padre y el hijo están caminando por una calle de El Paso. El padre va de la mano del hijo. El hijo tiene nueve años. La calle se llama Florence. Los dos van a ver una casa. La casa tiene un porche y una palmera enfrente. El padre se va a comprar esta casa. El hijo va a vivir en esta casa por los próximos setenta y cinco años. La crónica que viene después de ésta — la Novena — es la crónica de esta casa.

I · El Escenario

Setting

Y fue que el niño que cruzó el puente vivió en la otra orilla por setenta y cinco años, y de aquellos setenta y cinco años, los últimos veinte fueron los años en que contó la historia. Y la historia, por haber sido contada, sobrevivió. Y por haber sobrevivido, llegó a esta página.

This is the period of Carlos F. Flores on the American side of the river. It opens on the morning of the fifteenth of November of nineteen hundred and thirteen, when the family stepped off the International Bridge into El Paso, and it closes in October of nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, when Carlos died on the porch of his house on Florence Street at the age of eighty-five.

The seventy-five years are not, by the standards of the earlier Chronicles, full of public history. The family that had administered the cabildo of San Antonio for ninety years and the Palacio Municipal of Ciudad Juárez for twenty became, after the bridge crossing, a private family on the Texas side of the river. No descendant of the line was an alcalde of a Mexican city again. No descendant of the line argued water rights before three colonial governments. The family that had been officeholders for one hundred and eighty-three years became, in the year of the crossing, citizens. They voted. They paid taxes. They sent their children to school. They worked. They prospered modestly. They raised the next generation. They held the family meals. They told the stories at the table on the porch. Lo que la familia había hecho públicamente durante seis generaciones, lo hizo privadamente durante cuatro más.

The documentary record of these seventy-five years is, therefore, the family record more than the public archive — the parish registers at the Cathedral of San Patricio and at St. Matthew Catholic Church, the diocesan papers, the El Paso Times and El Paso Herald social columns and obituaries, the high school yearbooks of Cathedral High and El Paso High, the records of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army in which several of the sons served, the property deeds in the El Paso County Clerk’s office, and — most centrally — the fifty-year genealogical compilation of Alfredo Cruz Flores, who would over half a century reassemble the family chart on which all of this Chronicle ultimately rests. The chronicle, in this Part, leans more on memory and on Alfredo’s chart than on the public archive. This is the long-standing condition of all family chronicles: the most private periods are the periods least served by the archive.

The principal location of this Chronicle is the house on Florence Street. The house was acquired by José Jesús in the first weeks of nineteen hundred and fourteen and would remain in family ownership and occupation through the rest of the period — a single-story Spanish Colonial Revival bungalow in the central El Paso neighborhood of Sunset Heights, terra cotta roof, white stucco walls, an arched front porch with a palm tree on the lot. The family lived there. Carlos lived there from age nine to age eighty-five. He died there.

The principal figure of this Chronicle is Carlos himself: born tenth of October of nineteen hundred and three in Ciudad Juárez, second son of José Jesús Flores Stephenson and Josefina Gómez Velarde, crossed the bridge at nine years old, lived seventy-five more years on the American side, married María Manuela Gómez Velarde in the early nineteen-thirties, fathered seven children, became in his last twenty years the family storyteller, and died on his porch in October of nineteen hundred and eighty-eight in the middle of a sentence. The chronicle has been working toward Carlos since Part I; the chronicle now records what the documentary record and the family memory permit. Carlos era el centro callado de todo lo que esta crónica ha venido a contar.

The Part of these Chronicles that comes after this one — the Tenth — is the chronicle of the grandson who heard the stories. Aquí en la Novena se cuenta el cuento. Aquí en la Décima se cuenta cómo se contó el cuento.

II · Dónde Aparece en PASADOR

Where in PASADOR

Y el Epílogo de la novela, que se titula “La Casa en la Calle Florence” y que se sitúa en mil novecientos y ochenta, es el pasaje principal al cual este periodo pertenece.

The novel’s Epilogue: The House on Florence Street is the bridge between this Part of the Chronicles and the novel itself. The Epilogue is set in nineteen hundred and eighty — when Carlos is seventy-seven years old, the writer-grandson is six years old, and the porch of the house on Florence Street is the place where the story is told. Carlos sits in his chair. The boy sits on the front step. There is iced tea. The light is the El Paso light of the late afternoon, when the western sun comes off the Franklin Mountains and turns the white stucco of the house gold. The boy listens. The grandfather speaks. The chronicle confirms the documentary core: the porch existed, the chair existed, Carlos sat in it through the nineteen-seventies and eighties, the grandson visited from his parents’ house and from school holidays, and the stories were told.

The Epilogue tells one specific story-from-the-porch in extended form: Carlos’s account of the night of the bridge crossing in nineteen hundred and thirteen, told to the grandson in nineteen hundred and eighty, sixty-seven years after the event. The chronicle confirms what the novel renders: that this story was told repeatedly through the years; that the grandson heard it multiple times; that the details accumulated over the tellings; that by nineteen hundred and eighty Carlos had been telling the story for most of his adult life, polishing the form of it each year until the form had become a small literary work in its own right. The chronicle further confirms: that the writing of the novel three decades after Carlos’s death was based on this oral form, preserved in the grandson’s memory and recovered in the long writing of the manuscript.

The Epilogue also evokes the figure of Carmen — the schoolteacher of the El Paso schools who taught the boy and his classmates in both Spanish and English despite the 1925 Texas law that made Spanish-language instruction a criminal offense. Carmen is presented in the Epilogue as a composite — a representative figure of the bilingual El Paso teachers of the twentieth century who, working class by class, child by child, defied the institutional suppression of Spanish through their own personal practice. The chronicle’s documentary footnote: the principal real figure who corresponds to Carmen in the writer’s life is Carmen Josefina “Josie” Flores Delgado — the writer’s own mother — who taught for the better part of three decades in the El Paso schools, and who taught in both languages despite the law for the entire span of her career. The Epilogue’s Carmen carries her first name openly. The dedication to the novel — Para mi Madre, Josie — names her by the name she has used since girlhood. The chronicle keeps both: Carmen Josefina on the page, Josie on the tongue.

The Epilogue closes the novel with a brief coda set in twenty hundred and twenty-six, when the writer is at his desk in Austin, Texas, completing the manuscript. The chronicle’s Tenth Part will be that period.

III · Los Sucesos

Events of the Period

Y los hechos de estos setenta y cinco años son más difíciles de contar porque son menos públicos. Aquí están los principales que la memoria de la familia y el archivo de El Paso conservan.

In the year nineteen hundred and fourteen, in the first weeks after the bridge crossing, José Jesús Flores Stephenson acquired the house on Florence Street for the family. The price was approximately two thousand dollars — substantial for an El Paso house in nineteen hundred and fourteen but within the reach of a family that had brought money across the bridge in the form of jewelry, bonds, and coin. The house had been built around nineteen hundred and ten in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. José Jesús had it furnished within a month with what could be acquired locally and what could be brought from family stores at Concordia. By Christmas of nineteen hundred and fourteen the family was settled in the house. Era la casa donde ya nadie se iría más allá de la última vez.

In the same year, in April, Margarita Stephenson de Flores died at Concordia at the age of seventy-eight. She had returned to the ranch from El Paso in February in failing health. She died at La Casa Grande el Alto in the same house where her mother Juana had died fifty-eight years before. She was buried at Concordia Cemetery beside her mother. La última nieta directa de Hugh y Juana. La última que había vivido en el rancho que su madre había hecho. Cerró la línea de Concordia con el mismo gesto con el que su madre la había abierto: muriendo en la casa que ella había construido.

In the year nineteen hundred and sixteen, José María Flores died at Concordia at the age of eighty-four. He had outlived Hugh by forty-six years and Margarita by two. He was buried beside Margarita at Concordia. Pero la línea sanantoniana, por su matrimonio con Margarita, se había transferido para entonces a Florence Street. La línea no estaba en el suelo del rancho. La línea estaba en la casa del nieto.

In the year nineteen hundred and seventeen and nineteen hundred and eighteen, the United States entered the First World War. El Paso, as the principal U.S. Army post on the Mexican border, had Fort Bliss as a major training facility for the American Expeditionary Forces. Thousands of soldiers passed through Fort Bliss on their way to France. The Spanish Influenza pandemic of October and November nineteen hundred and eighteen struck El Paso and killed approximately five hundred residents. The Flores family on Florence Street weathered the pandemic with the household in quarantine for most of October and November; the schools were closed; Carlos was fifteen years old. The family was not severely affected.

In the year nineteen hundred and twenty-one, Carlos F. Flores graduated from El Paso High School at the age of eighteen, having attended the city’s principal English-language secondary school. His education had been bilingual at home and monolingual English at school, in the manner of the El Paso middle class of the period. He did not attend university. He worked, after graduation, in the small import-export operation his father was running from a Stanton Street office, learning the trade of cross-border commerce that he would practice for most of his working life.

In the year nineteen hundred and twenty-five, the Texas state legislature passed a law making Spanish-language instruction in public schools a criminal offense. The law was an explicit attempt to suppress the bilingual identity of the Mexican-American population, particularly in the border regions. Children who spoke Spanish in the schoolyard were punished — sometimes by paddling, sometimes by being made to write I will not speak Spanish hundreds of times. The law remained on the Texas books in some form until the nineteen-sixties. The institutional culture of English-only persisted in many districts into the nineteen-seventies. Carlos was twenty-two in nineteen hundred and twenty-five, already out of school, and the law affected him personally only in that the law affected his younger siblings and would, decades later, affect his children. La ley de mil novecientos veinticinco fue la cosa que la familia más recordaría del periodo entre las dos guerras. El cruce había sido una vez. La ley fue cada día.

In the year nineteen hundred and twenty-nine, on the twenty-fourth of October, the Great Depression began with the New York Stock Exchange crash. El Paso, like all U.S. cities, was severely affected. The Stephenson-Bennett Mine, which had been declining for two decades, closed permanently. The Corralitos mine in Chihuahua continued at much-reduced output. The family’s import-export business contracted. The household lived on diminished income through the nineteen-thirties. Tuvieron lo suficiente. No tuvieron más.

In the years nineteen hundred and thirty-one or thirty-two — the chronicler does not have the exact year of the wedding — Carlos F. Flores married María Manuela Gómez Velarde at one of the El Paso Catholic parishes. María Manuela was a distant cousin of his mother Josefina — both lines descended from the Gómez Velarde family of Chihuahua. The marriage was approved by the families in the older Spanish-Mexican tradition of cousin alliance. The marriage was performed in Spanish. Carlos was approximately twenty-eight; María Manuela was a few years younger.

In the years nineteen hundred and thirty-two to nineteen hundred and forty-two, Carlos and María Manuela had seven children. The chronicler now lists them in approximate order of birth:

• Manuel Flores — born approximately nineteen hundred and thirty-one or thirty-two. Died before the age of five, sometime in the late nineteen-thirties. The cause is not preserved in the family memory the chronicler has access to. He was buried at Concordia Cemetery in El Paso. María Manuela visited his grave for the rest of her life. Decades later — in the nineteen-seventies and nineteen-eighties — she would take her young grandchildren to that grave on the All Souls’ Day visits. The boy who would write these Chronicles was one of those grandchildren. He stood at the small headstone of an uncle he had never met. The grandmother held flowers. The grandmother said nothing about how Manuel had died. The grandmother said his name. The chronicle records the grave-tending as the central act of the long grief that follows the death of a small child. Por sesenta años, hasta el día de su muerte, María Manuela cuidó la tumba de su hijo en Concordia.

• Carlos Flores Jr. — born early nineteen-thirties. He would, in his adult years, work in the family commercial line. He died before nineteen hundred and ninety. The specific burial location is not in the chronicler’s current records.

• Ramón Flores — born early-to-mid nineteen-thirties. Lived in El Paso. Died before nineteen hundred and ninety. Buried at Memory Gardens of the Valley in El Paso.

• Antonio Ernesto Flores — born twenty-second of November of nineteen hundred and thirty-three. Attended Cathedral High School. Served in the United States Navy and traveled the world. Returned to El Paso, married María Guadalupe “Lupita” Guevara, and had four sons: Tony, Albert, Alex, and Art. He lived in El Paso for the rest of his life and died on the eleventh of May of two thousand and twenty-four at age ninety. The chronicle takes the date and the basic outline from the obituary published at his death.

• Alfredo Cruz Flores — born third of May of nineteen hundred and thirty-six. Attended Cathedral High School. Studied at the Catholic seminary in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Served as a U.S. Naval Reservist. Traveled the country in his young manhood before returning to El Paso. Married first Estella Garcia, with whom he had three children: Robbie, Tricia, and Mike. After Estella’s death he married Sherleen Lockhart Hervey, his wife of more than forty years. He was the family genealogist. For fifty years he gathered the documents and reassembled the chart that became the documentary spine of this Chronicle and of the novel that rests upon it. Without Alfredo, there would be no chart. Without the chart, there would be no novel. Without the novel, there would be no Chronicle. He nominated his ancestors successfully into the El Paso County Historical Society’s Hall of Honor, an act for which the family will always honor him. He died on the seventh of August of two thousand and twenty-one at the age of eighty-five.

• Carmen Josefina Flores — born in nineteen hundred and thirty-nine. Known to family and friends and students throughout her life as Josie — the diminutive of Josefina, in tribute to her grandmother Josefina Gómez Velarde. Attended El Paso schools and the Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso). Became a teacher. Taught for the better part of three decades in the El Paso public schools — teaching in both Spanish and English despite the Texas law that still nominally prohibited Spanish-language instruction. She was a principal mother of the bilingual El Paso of the twentieth century, one of the many teachers of her generation who, working class by class, child by child, kept Spanish alive in El Paso by personal practice. Pero más importante que su labor profesional, fue la madre del cronista. Es a ella a quien la novela está dedicada. Es por ella que la historia llegó al nieto. Carmen Josefina is alive at the time this Chronicle is being written. The chronicle records of her only what she has consented to record.

• Albert Flores — born approximately nineteen hundred and forty-one or forty-two, a little younger than Josie, the youngest of the seven. Has lived in El Paso. Survived his siblings Manuel, Carlos Jr., Ramón, Antonio, and Alfredo. Alive at the time of writing.

The chronicle has named the seven children. The chronicle will not biographize them individually beyond what the public record and the family record permit. The chronicle’s purpose is to record the line. The line is, in this generation, principally the line of Carmen Josefina, through whom it continues to the chronicler. The other six branches of the line — through Manuel’s small grave, through Carlos Jr., through Ramón, through Antonio’s four sons and nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, through Alfredo’s three children and the Estella and Sherleen marriages, through Albert — are entire family worlds in themselves, each one deserving its own chronicle, and the present chronicle does not pretend to cover them. The chronicler honors his uncles and his aunt by naming them and by acknowledging that their lives were as full as the line they all carry.

In the year nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, José Jesús Flores Stephenson died at El Paso at the age of seventy-seven. He was buried in El Paso; the specific cemetery is not preserved in the chronicler’s current sources. The man who had been alcalde of Ciudad Juárez through three presidents and two constitutions died as a private citizen of a country to which his family had been residents for two hundred and eight years. He had crossed the bridge twenty-six years before. He had not returned to Mexico to live, though he had visited once. He had told the story of the crossing to his children many times. They told it to their children. El cuento se hizo familia.

His widow Josefina Gómez Velarde de Flores lived in the house on Florence Street with Carlos and María Manuela and their growing children. She died in the early nineteen-fifties — the precise year not preserved in the chronicler’s current sources. The specific burial location is not in the chronicler’s current records.

In the years nineteen hundred and forty-one to nineteen hundred and forty-five, the Second World War dominated the United States. Fort Bliss was a major training facility; hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were in El Paso through the war. The Flores brothers were of military age. Antonio, born nineteen hundred and thirty-three, was too young for the Second World War and would serve in the U.S. Navy in the postwar years. Carlos Jr. and Ramón, born earlier, may have served in some capacity — the chronicler does not have the records of their service. Carlos Sr., aged thirty-eight at Pearl Harbor, was not drafted; he continued in his civilian work. The household economy improved during the war as El Paso boomed.

In the years nineteen hundred and fifty to nineteen hundred and sixty, the family entered the postwar phase. The older brothers served in the Navy and the Naval Reserves. The younger children completed their schooling. Josie graduated from El Paso High School and enrolled at Texas Western College, studying education. The Stephenson-Bennett mine was closed; the Corralitos mine continued at reduced output under Mexican administration; the family’s commercial interests in El Paso were modest but stable. The house on Florence Street was renovated by Carlos and María Manuela — a small library off the dining room, a second bathroom, an updated kitchen. The household routine became the long routine of a settled bilingual middle-class El Paso family. Sunday dinners after Mass at St. Patrick’s or later at St. Matthew’s. School year and summer. Día de los Muertos every November first and second, with the household altar holding photographs of José Jesús, of Josefina, of Margarita, of José María, of Hugh and Juana, of Manuel, of the older brothers who had begun to predecease their parents. La mesa de los muertos crecía año tras año, como había crecido en cada generación de la familia desde Concordia en mil ochocientos cincuenta y seis.

In the mid-nineteen-fifties, Carmen Josefina “Josie” began her teaching career in the El Paso public schools. She would teach for approximately three decades. Her classrooms were principally elementary; her students were principally Mexican-American children, with the typical El Paso classroom mix of Spanish-dominant, English-dominant, and bilingual students. The 1925 Texas law was still on the books for the first part of her career. She taught in both languages anyway, every day, until the law was effectively dead and the bilingual reality of El Paso was finally permitted to enter the public schools officially. Era una de las maestras a las que la ley no había podido. Hay muchas como ella en El Paso. Pero la novela honra a esta porque esta es la madre del que escribe.

In the years nineteen hundred and sixty-five and following, Josie met and married Albert Delgado, descendant of the Samaniego-Delgado line of El Paso. The Samaniego family had been one of the documented founding families of the El Paso district in the colonial period; the Delgado line had married into the Samaniego in the late nineteenth century. Albert had grown up in El Paso, attended El Paso schools, served in the United States Army in Vietnam. The marriage was held in El Paso. El segundo cruce de líneas en El Paso —después del de mil ochocientos sesenta entre los Stephenson y los Flores— se hizo entre los Flores y los Samaniego-Delgado en los años sesenta. La frontera lingüística entre las dos familias era casi inexistente, porque las dos familias eran bilingües desde hacía generaciones.

In the years nineteen hundred and sixty-seven and nineteen hundred and sixty-nine, Albert Delgado served in Vietnam. He earned the Silver Star for valor under fire — one of the highest military decorations the United States awards, given for gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States. He earned the Bronze Star for distinguished service in the action that the family has long remembered as Bunker Hill — a hill battle in the Vietnamese central highlands in nineteen hundred and sixty-eight, the precise location and unit of which the chronicler has not retrieved from the official military records. Albert Delgado returned to El Paso in nineteen hundred and sixty-nine. The chronicle records what the family records: that he served, that he was decorated for valor, that he came home. The chronicle does not detail what he carried home, because that detail is his own.

In the year nineteen hundred and seventy-four, Gabriel Salcedo was born to Carmen Josefina “Josie” Flores in Austin, Texas. He was raised in the household of his mother and his stepfather Albert Delgado from his earliest years. He would in time become a writer. He would in time adopt the pen name Vicente Gabriel Flores — Vicente in tribute to the founder of the family in San Antonio in seventeen hundred and thirty-one, Gabriel his given name, Flores the family name of his mother and of the line that this Chronicle records — for the literary work he would do. El nombre que él escogió para escribir es el nombre que esta crónica también lleva. Es el nombre que la línea había estado esperando que alguien escogiese.

In the years nineteen hundred and seventy-four to nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, Carlos F. Flores was the grandfather of the boy. He was at this point in his seventies and early eighties. He lived in the house on Florence Street. He sat on the porch in the late afternoons. The boy was brought to visit by his mother and his stepfather on weekends and during school holidays. Sometimes the visits were brief — an afternoon, a Sunday dinner. Sometimes the visits were longer — a summer week, a holiday stay. The boy slept in the back bedroom. He had a cot. He had his own drawer. The stories were told. Carlos told them as he had been telling them since he was a young man — for sixty years he had been polishing the form. The boy listened. The boy remembered. The boy was the grandchild who heard the stories in the form Carlos had perfected. The other grandchildren heard pieces. The boy heard the whole. The chronicler now believes that Carlos knew — by the end of the seventies, by the time the boy was old enough to listen — that the boy was the one who would carry the stories forward.

In the year nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, in October — the chronicler does not have the precise day in his current sources — Carlos F. Flores died on the porch of his house on Florence Street. He was eighty-five years old. The light was the late-afternoon El Paso light. He was telling a story to no one in particular, in the manner of all old men in late summer light, when his heart stopped. He was found by María Manuela, who had brought him his evening tea. He was buried at Memory Gardens of the Valley in El Paso.

The boy was fourteen years old. He had heard the stories for ten of his fourteen years. He would carry them for the next thirty-eight years before sitting down to write them.

Aquí termina la vida de Carlos. Aquí comienza la espera del cronista.

IV · Los Lugares

Places

Y los lugares de estos setenta y cinco años son menos que los lugares de las crónicas anteriores, porque la familia, después del cruce, se quedó en un solo lugar.

La casa en la calle Florence, El Paso, Texas. The principal place of this Chronicle. A single-story Spanish Colonial Revival bungalow on the south side of Florence Street, between Mesa Street and Stanton Street, in the central El Paso neighborhood of Sunset Heights. Terra cotta tile roof. White stucco walls. An arched front porch supported by two simple stucco columns. A courtyard at the rear. Four bedrooms, kitchen with a wood-burning stove (later gas), a small dining room with the long table that would, by the nineteen-fifties, regularly have ten chairs around it for Sunday dinners. A library off the dining room, added in the nineteen-forties renovation. The house was acquired by José Jesús in early nineteen hundred and fourteen. It remained in the family until the nineteen-nineties. La casa todavía está en la calle Florence. Tiene otro dueño. La palmera todavía está enfrente.

El porche. The front porch of the house. South-facing. Three concrete steps from the sidewalk. Two stucco columns. Two wooden chairs — Carlos’s chair on the left, María Manuela’s on the right — with a small table between them. A pot of jade plant on the railing. Era el porche donde Carlos se sentaba a oír las noticias del día y a contar las historias del pasado. La luz era ideal para hablar. La luz era ideal para que el nieto oyese.

Cathedral High School. The principal Catholic boys’ secondary school of El Paso, founded in nineteen hundred and twenty-five by the Christian Brothers on Hague Road. The school attended by Antonio, Alfredo, and likely the other Flores brothers. Cathedral High remains in operation today and is the family’s principal alma mater of the twentieth century.

El Paso High School. The principal public secondary school of El Paso. Attended by Carlos Sr. (graduated 1921). Attended later by Carmen Josefina/Josie (graduated mid-nineteen-fifties). The “El Paso High Tigers.” A central El Paso institution.

The University of Texas at El Paso / Texas Western College. The university where Josie studied for her teaching degree in the late nineteen-fifties. Then called Texas Western College, renamed the University of Texas at El Paso in nineteen hundred and sixty-seven. Famous in El Paso for the nineteen hundred and sixty-six NCAA basketball championship — the first national title won by a team starting five Black players, which the school’s coach, Don Haskins, defended for the rest of his career and which has since been recognized as one of the watershed moments of American sports. Josie’s connection to the university predates the basketball championship; she had completed her degree by the early nineteen-sixties.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, El Paso. The principal Catholic cathedral of the diocese of El Paso, founded in eighteen hundred and ninety-six, completed in nineteen hundred and seventeen. Where Carlos and María Manuela may have been married in the early nineteen-thirties. Where many of the family baptisms and marriages of the period were performed.

St. Matthew Catholic Church, El Paso. The parish church where the Flores family of the twentieth century settled into a more local parish life, particularly in the postwar period. Located at 400 W. Sunset Drive. Where Alfredo’s funeral was held in September of two thousand and twenty-one. Where Antonio’s funeral was held in May of two thousand and twenty-four. The chronicle imagines that Carlos’s funeral in October of nineteen hundred and eighty-eight was also at St. Matthew’s, in the long parochial continuity of the family.

Memory Gardens of the Valley, El Paso. The cemetery where Carlos F. Flores was buried in October of nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, where María Manuela was buried in the nineteen-nineties, and where Tío Ramón is buried. These three burials are the principal confirmed family burials in this cemetery. Other family burials of the period are at El Paso cemeteries the chronicler has not yet confirmed by record. El cementerio de los abuelos del cronista. Donde Carlos descansa, donde María Manuela descansa después de sesenta años de cuidar la tumba de Manuel, donde Tío Ramón descansa.

El Concordia Cemetery, El Paso. The historic cemetery beside the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto. Where Juana lay since eighteen hundred and fifty-six; where Margarita Stephenson de Flores was buried in April of nineteen hundred and fourteen; where José María Flores was buried in nineteen hundred and sixteen; where Manuel Flores — the chronicler’s great-uncle, dead before age five in the late nineteen-thirties — is buried, the small grave that the grandmother María Manuela tended for the next sixty years; where many of the extended family of the nineteenth century lie. The cemetery grew through the twentieth century to include sixty-five thousand graves and became the principal historic cemetery of El Paso. Concordia es donde están los abuelos del siglo diecinueve y donde está el niño Manuel.

Las Misiones de San Antonio. During his adult life Carlos made several trips back to San Antonio to visit the old colonial sites of the family — the Cathedral of San Fernando where his five-times-great-grandfather Vicente Álvarez Travieso lies buried, the Plaza de las Armas where the family’s first house had stood, the Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo where members of the family had been baptized in the colonial period. Carlos llevó a Josie a San Antonio cuando ella tenía doce años, y le enseñó dónde había estado la familia en mil setecientos treinta y uno. Josie llevó al niño a San Antonio cuando él tenía ocho años, y le enseñó lo mismo. El círculo se cerró.

El Centro de El Paso. Downtown El Paso during the twentieth century. The Mills Building, where Pancho Villa had signed his contract in nineteen hundred and fourteen, was still in operation throughout the period and remains in operation today. The Stanton Street bridge to Ciudad Juárez — the bridge Carlos had crossed in nineteen hundred and thirteen — was rebuilt in concrete in nineteen hundred and twenty-six and remained the principal pedestrian crossing of the border. Carlos crossed the bridge to Juárez on occasional shopping trips and family visits for the rest of his life. He never lived again on the south side.

V · Las Personas

People

Y de las personas de estos setenta y cinco años, son menos los nombres históricos y más los nombres de la familia. Aquí están los principales.

Carlos F. Flores Sr. (10 October 1903 – October 1988). The principal figure of this Chronicle. From nine years old at the crossing to eighty-five at his death. The son of José Jesús and Josefina; the grandson of Margarita and José María; the great-grandson of Juana María Ascárate and Hugh Stephenson on his paternal grandmother’s side, and of Nicolás Flores and María Teresa Valdez on his paternal grandfather’s side. The husband of María Manuela Gómez Velarde. The father of seven children. The grandfather of the boy who would write these Chronicles. Lo que más se decía de él, en la familia, era esto: que tenía paciencia. Era paciente con los niños. Era paciente con los problemas. Era paciente con el tiempo. La paciencia era su sello.

María Manuela Gómez Velarde de Flores (c. 1910 – c. 1995). Wife of Carlos. A distant cousin of his mother Josefina, of the same Gómez Velarde family of Chihuahua. The marriage was a marriage of cousins in the older Spanish-Mexican tradition. Mother of seven children. The household manager of Florence Street for sixty years. The grandmother who carried the long grief of her son Manuel’s early death for the rest of her life and tended his small grave faithfully for six decades. La abuela del cronista. La que cuidaba la tumba. La que llevaba al niño con ella, los domingos de Todos los Santos, a las tumbas de los muertos. La que decía sus nombres.

José Jesús Flores Stephenson (1862 – 1939). Carlos’s father. The man who had carried the family across the bridge. Lived twenty-six more years in El Paso. Died in nineteen hundred and thirty-nine at age seventy-seven. Buried in El Paso; the specific cemetery is not preserved in the chronicler’s current sources.

Josefina Gómez Velarde de Flores (c. 1875 – early 1950s). Carlos’s mother. Lived in the house on Florence Street with Carlos and María Manuela and their growing children after José Jesús’s death. La abuela paterna del cronista — bisabuela en realidad. Murió antes de que el cronista naciera. Aparece en las fotografías en blanco y negro de la sala de la casa de Florence.

Los siete hijos de Carlos y María Manuela. Named in approximate birth order:

• Manuel Flores (b. early 1930s, d. before age 5). The chronicle returns to him below.
• Carlos Flores Jr. (b. early 1930s).
• Ramón Flores (b. early-to-mid 1930s).
• Antonio Ernesto Flores (22 November 1933 – 11 May 2024). Cathedral High School. U.S. Navy. Husband of María Guadalupe “Lupita” Guevara. Father of Tony, Albert, Alex, and Art. Grandfather of nine. Great-grandfather of eight. Survived Alfredo. Outlived all his brothers except Albert.
• Alfredo Cruz Flores (3 May 1936 – 7 August 2021). Cathedral High School. Catholic seminary in Santa Fe. U.S. Naval Reserves. Husband first to Estella Garcia, second to Sherleen Lockhart Hervey. Father of Robbie, Tricia, and Mike. The family genealogist. The Hall of Honor nominator. The man without whom this Chronicle would not exist.
• Carmen Josefina “Josie” Flores (b. 1939). The teacher. The mother of the chronicler. Married Albert Delgado. Pasador’s dedication: Para mi Madre, Josie.
• Albert Flores (b. c. 1941). The youngest.

Albert Delgado. Husband of Carmen Josefina “Josie” Flores. Stepfather of the chronicler. Descended from the Samaniego-Delgado line of El Paso — one of the founding families of the El Paso district, named by C.L. Sonnichsen in his standard history The Pass of the North. Veteran of the Vietnam War. Recipient of the Silver Star for valor and the Bronze Star for distinguished service. The man who raised the chronicler. El hombre que crió al niño. El padre que la crónica reconoce.

Manuel Flores. Treated separately because his life is treated separately. Born in the early nineteen-thirties to Carlos and María Manuela Flores in El Paso. The eldest or near-eldest of the seven. Died before the age of five — the chronicler does not know the cause, and the family does not speak of it openly, which is one of the older ways of carrying such a loss. Buried at Concordia Cemetery in El Paso. His mother visited his grave for the next six decades. His nephew the chronicler stood beside the grave as a small boy in the late nineteen-seventies and learned, by being there, what it means for a family to keep someone whose face one has never seen. The grave is one of the small markers of the family that the long memory holds.

The descendants of Albert H. French and Benancia Stephenson — the French line of the family. The chronicle has noted in earlier Parts that Albert H. French, husband of Hugh and Juana’s daughter Benancia, was the man who bid one silver dollar at the Federal marshal’s sale of Concordia in 1867 and saved the family estate. The chronicler had treated French as adjacent to the family. He is not adjacent. He is family. His descendants — the French line that appears in Alfredo’s and Antonio’s obituaries as one of the extended families of the chronicler — are the chronicler’s distant cousins. The dollar that bought Concordia back was bid by a man who was already related to the family through marriage and whose descendants are related to the chronicler through blood. The chronicle revises its earlier treatment of French to record this kinship. The French descendants in El Paso through the twentieth century are part of the wider Flores-Stephenson-Ascárate family network, gathering for weddings and funerals and Christmas dinners across the generations.

VI · La Mesa

Food

Y la mesa de Florence Street, en estos setenta y cinco años, se hizo la mesa donde la cocina del cruce —la cocina norteña-canaria-tejana-mexicana — se consolidó en su forma del siglo veinte, y donde el niño que aprendió las historias también aprendió los sabores.

The kitchen at Florence Street was managed by Josefina Gómez Velarde de Flores from nineteen hundred and fourteen until her death in the early nineteen-fifties, and by María Manuela Gómez Velarde de Flores from her marriage to Carlos in the early nineteen-thirties for the rest of her long life. Dos cocineras a la vez por veinte años. Tres décadas de María Manuela sola. Ninguna receta escrita. Toda la cocina en la memoria de las manos.

La cocina diaria. The everyday table at Florence Street was the mature Tex-Mex-Northern-Mexican kitchen that the family had been making since the bridge crossing and that, by the nineteen-fifties, was unmistakably the El Paso Tex-Mex of the twentieth century. Frijoles refritos. Tortillas de harina, fresh every morning from the comal — flour tortillas were the Sunday-dinner standard, the Northern Mexican specialty that El Paso adopted as its bread. Carne guisada. Enchiladas — almost always the flat enchiladas with red chile sauce, served stacked with a fried egg on top, in the El Paso style (distinct from the rolled enchiladas of central Mexico). Chiles rellenos en caldillo. Carne asada on the weekends, grilled over mesquite in the courtyard at the rear of the house, served with guacamole and salsa fresca and frijoles charros (cowboy beans, with bacon and onion and chiles cooked into the broth). Café de olla at breakfast. Atole in the evening when one of the children was sick. Champurrado at Christmas. Mole rojo on saints’ days. Tamales at Christmas Eve, made by the women of the household over two days, with the children helping wrap the corn husks. The kitchen of Florence Street was comida casera — home cooking — in the El Paso register that would, in the twentieth century, become the most widely loved registry of Mexican-American cooking.

Los productos comerciales. The mid-twentieth century introduced to the family kitchen products that had not been there in the early years: commercial flour tortillas (though María Manuela made fresh ones until her old age), Knox gelatin, Velveeta cheese (for the queso fundido that the family adopted with American cheese and chiles), Wonder Bread (which Carlos preferred for his morning toast with butter), Folger’s coffee (alongside the café de olla), Coca-Cola and 7-Up (the iconic American soft drinks of the bilingual border household), Spam (which became a quick lunch with eggs and salsa), Jello (in the elaborate molded forms popular in the nineteen-fifties American kitchen, adopted by the family for special occasions). The pantry at Florence Street had Mexican products on one shelf and American products on the other, and the family ate from both shelves at every meal. La cocina bilingüe se hizo plenamente bilingüe en la despensa también.

La cena del domingo. The Sunday family dinner at Florence Street, every week for sixty years, was the central ritual of the household. The family gathered after the eleven-o’clock Mass — sometimes at St. Patrick’s, more often at St. Matthew’s in the postwar period — and reassembled at Florence Street in the early afternoon. The long dining-room table seated ten when the seven children were home. By the nineteen-sixties the seven children were no longer all home; by the nineteen-seventies the table was reset for whichever of them had come. The menu varied — mole on certain Sundays, asado de bodas on certain others, menudo on the Sundays after a wedding or a long party, fideo in the cold months, caldo de res in the warm months, tortillas de harina always. The dessert was usually a flan or capirotada or a tray of galletas. Coffee afterward, in the living room, while Carlos retired to the porch to begin the storytelling.

La cocina de los muertos. Every first and second of November the family observed the Día de los Muertos. The household altar was set up in the dining room. The photographs of the dead were arranged in three tiers: the grandparents (José Jesús and Josefina, José María and Margarita), the great-grandparents in old photographs (Juana, Hugh, Nicolás, María Teresa), and the more recent dead as they accumulated (Manuel, the older brothers as they predeceased their parents, the aunts and uncles and cousins). The cempasúchil flowers were brought in from the El Paso markets. The candles were lit. The pan de muerto was baked the night before. The favorite foods of each of the dead were set out. The family ate the pan de muerto on the second of November after the dead had been honored. La mesa de los muertos creció año tras año. María Manuela ponía siempre algo en el lugar de Manuel.

La mesa después de mil novecientos ochenta y ocho. After Carlos’s death in October of nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, the household at Florence Street was reduced to María Manuela, who lived another seven or so years. The Sunday dinners continued, smaller. The children and grandchildren rotated through. María Manuela maintained the kitchen with the routine she had practiced for sixty years. Cuando ella murió, en los noventa, la casa se vendió. Las recetas se distribuyeron entre las hijas y las nueras. La mesa del cuento se acabó.

VII · La Lengua

Language

Y la lengua de El Paso, en estos setenta y cinco años, fue la lengua del bilingüismo defendido. La ley dijo que no se hablara el español. La familia lo habló. Las maestras lo enseñaron. La frontera no oyó la ley. La frontera siguió hablando.

The language of the household at Florence Street through the period of this Chronicle was the steady bilingualism of the El Paso Mexican-American middle class. Spanish at home. English at school. Spanish to the grandparents. English with the Anglo neighbors. Spanish at Mass (the Latin of the pre-Vatican II liturgy with Spanish sermons in the parishes the family attended, then Spanish after Vatican II as the vernacular). English on the radio. English on television. Spanish on the Mexican radio that came in from Ciudad Juárez. Spanish at the Sunday dinner table. English at the El Paso High classroom. La lengua que se hablaba dependía de la habitación. La familia se movía entre las habitaciones sin pensar.

The 1925 Texas state law was the principal institutional pressure against Spanish in the period. The law prohibited Spanish-language instruction in public schools and, by extension, was widely interpreted as prohibiting students from speaking Spanish in the schoolyard, in the hallways, in the cafeteria. Many El Paso schools enforced this through corporal punishment of children who spoke Spanish — paddling, the writing of I will not speak Spanish hundreds of times on the chalkboard, the holding back of grades. The law was institutional, but the enforcement was personal — depending on which teacher, which principal, which school. Many teachers ignored the law. Many enforced it. The experience of the Mexican-American child in the El Paso public schools through the nineteen-twenties to the nineteen-sixties was a generational lottery of which teacher one had.

Carmen Josefina “Josie” Flores Delgado was one of the teachers who ignored the law. From her teaching debut in the mid-nineteen-fifties until her retirement in the mid-nineteen-eighties, she taught in both languages. She taught the Mexican-American children of her classrooms how to read in English without making them feel that their Spanish was a thing to be ashamed of. She taught the Anglo children of her classrooms some Spanish as a matter of course, because the children would need it. El bilingüismo formal y el bilingüismo familiar se cruzaron en el aula de Josie todos los días por treinta años. Era el bilingüismo que el cruce había producido. Era la lengua que la novela honra cuando dice Te quiero is not I love you.

The Spanish of the Flores household in this period was a Spanish that retained the seseo, the soft s, the ustedes, the Northern Mexican vocabulary inherited from José Jesús and Josefina, and the increasing presence of English loanwords that the bilingual El Paso life required. Trocas (trucks). Lonchera (lunchbox). Lunche (lunch). Parquear (to park). Yarda (yard). Marqueta (market). Boy (boyfriend). Carro (car, in place of the older coche or auto). Sándwich. Bistec. These borrowings, which the formal academies of the Spanish language treated as corruptions, were the everyday register of the El Paso Spanish that the family spoke and that Carmen Josefina taught her students. El español de Tejas es el español de Tejas. Tiene su propio dialecto. Tiene su propio nombre. Tiene su propia historia.

The English of the household was a regional Southwestern English with Spanish substrate vocabulary and a particular El Paso intonation that any El Pasoan recognizes and any non-El Pasoan can identify within a few sentences. The Tex-Mex English of the family was not the heavily accented English of the Spanish-dominant immigrant; it was the bilingual English of native speakers who were equally at home in either language. Carlos spoke English fluently. María Manuela spoke English with effort but adequately. The seven children spoke English natively. The grandchildren — the chronicler’s generation, born in the nineteen-seventies — spoke English first and Spanish as the language they used at the grandmother’s house.

The chronicler’s own language, by the time he came of age in the nineteen-eighties, was an English-dominant bilingual that retained Spanish for family, for emotional register, for the things that did not translate, and for the music of his grandfather’s stories. The chronicler heard the stories in the form Carlos had perfected — a bilingual form, English carrying the events, Spanish carrying the proper names and the moments of weight. Las historias se contaban en los dos idiomas a la vez. La novela cuenta lo que oyó. La crónica cuenta cómo se contaba.

VIII · Los Papeles

Primary Documents

Y los papeles de estos setenta y cinco años son más los papeles de la familia que los del archivo. Aquí están los principales que la crónica conoce.

El Cuadro Genealógico de Alfredo Cruz Flores, c. 1965 – 2018. The genealogical chart of the family, compiled by Alfredo over half a century. The chart traces the four lines — Travieso-Curbelo on the Canarian side, Flores de Ábrego on the Mexican side, Stephenson on the Anglo side, Ascárate on the Spanish side — and their two convergences at San Antonio in seventeen hundred and fifty and at Concordia in eighteen hundred and sixty. The chart includes dates, places, marriages, and parental linkages for approximately two hundred and fifty named ancestors. Es el documento que reconstruye la familia. Sin él, la novela no existiría. Sin él, esta crónica no existiría. Es el papel del que esta crónica está hecha. The chart is held by the Flores family in El Paso; copies have been deposited with the El Paso County Historical Society and with the University of Texas at El Paso Special Collections.

Las Nominaciones al Salón del Honor del Condado de El Paso. The successful Hall of Honor nominations submitted by Alfredo Cruz Flores to the El Paso County Historical Society, beginning in the nineteen-eighties and continuing through the early two thousands. The nominations placed Hugh Stephenson, Juana María Ascárate de Stephenson, and other family ancestors into the formal historical record of El Paso. The El Paso County Historical Society holds the nomination files. Los papeles que metieron a los antepasados en la historia oficial. El nombre de Alfredo está sobre cada uno.

Los Registros Parroquiales de El Paso, mil novecientos catorce a mil novecientos ochenta y ocho. The baptism, marriage, and burial records of the El Paso Catholic parishes — St. Patrick’s, St. Matthew’s, and the others — recording the family events of the period: the marriage of Carlos and María Manuela in the early nineteen-thirties; the baptisms of the seven children; the funerals of Manuel, Carlos Jr., Ramón, of José Jesús and Josefina, and eventually of Carlos himself. Held by the Diocese of El Paso.

Los Anuarios de la Cathedral High School y de la El Paso High School, mil novecientos a mil novecientos sesenta. The yearbooks of the two principal high schools attended by the Flores children. Cathedral High for the boys; El Paso High for Carlos Sr. and probably for Carmen Josefina. Photographs, class rosters, graduation records. Held by the schools and in copy at the El Paso Public Library.

Los Documentos Militares. Service records of the brothers and of Albert Delgado. Antonio served in the U.S. Navy. Alfredo served in the U.S. Naval Reserves. Albert Delgado served in the U.S. Army (Vietnam, Silver Star, Bronze Star). The records are held by the National Archives, the U.S. Army, and the U.S. Navy.

Los Obituarios. The obituaries of family members published in El Paso Times and El Paso Herald (and the local Spanish-language press) through the twentieth century. Including: the obituary of José Jesús Flores Stephenson (1939); the obituary of Josefina Gómez Velarde de Flores (early 1950s); the obituary of Carlos F. Flores Sr. (October 1988); the obituary of María Manuela Gómez Velarde de Flores (1990s); the obituaries of Manuel (a death notice rather than an obituary, in the late 1930s, when an infant death typically received only the briefest notice); the obituaries of Carlos Jr., Ramón, Alfredo (2021), and Antonio (2024). The obituaries of Alfredo and Antonio are particularly valuable for the chronicle because they preserve in published form the family’s understanding of their lineage — including the ancestral linkages to the Canary Islanders and to the Stephenson-Ascárate founding of Concordia.

La Casa, Florence Street, El Paso. The house itself is a primary document — a physical artifact, dating from approximately nineteen hundred and ten, preserved through the family’s seventy-five-year occupancy. Photographs of the house at various periods are held in the family albums. Es la casa. Es el lugar donde el cuento se cuenta. Es el documento físico de esta crónica.

IX · Las Fuentes

Sources

Flores, Alfredo Cruz. Family genealogical chart of the Flores-Stephenson-Ascárate-Travieso line. Compiled c. 1965 – 2018. Privately held by the Flores family of El Paso. Copies deposited with the El Paso County Historical Society and the University of Texas at El Paso Special Collections.

Obituary of Alfredo Cruz Flores (1936 – 2021). Funeraria Del Angel Hillcrest West, El Paso, August 2021.

Obituary of Antonio Ernesto Flores (1933 – 2024). Funeraria Del Angel Hillcrest West, El Paso, May 2024.

Obituary of José Jesús Flores Stephenson (1862 – 1939). El Paso Herald and El Paso Times, 1939. [Specific dates of obituaries to be retrieved.]

Sonnichsen, C. L. The Pass of the North: Four Centuries on the Rio Grande. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1968. The standard modern history of El Paso, named by Alfredo and Antonio in their respective obituaries as the work that documents the family’s ancestral linkages to the founding families of the district — the Magoffins, the Harts, the Ascarates, the Stephensons, and the Siquieros.

Cathedral High School, El Paso. Yearbooks and records. https://www.cathedral-elpaso.org/

El Paso County Historical Society. Hall of Honor records. https://elpasohistory.org/

El Paso High School. Yearbooks and records. https://www.episd.org/Page/2122

El Paso Times, archived editions, 1881 – 1988. El Paso Public Library archives.

El Paso Herald, archived editions, 1881 – 1931. El Paso Public Library archives.

García, Mario T. Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880 – 1920. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. The standard scholarly history of the El Paso Mexican-American community in the period of the family’s settlement.

García, Mario T. Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930 – 1960. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Background on the Mexican-American community in the period of the children’s lives.

Hunter, Anne. The Tigua of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo: A Continuing Tradition. Standard reference on the federally recognized Tigua community of southern El Paso. The Tigua received federal recognition in nineteen hundred and eighty-seven — one year before Carlos’s death. He read the news in the El Paso Times. He nodded.

Memory Gardens of the Valley, El Paso. Burial records and family plots. Where Carlos F. Flores Sr., María Manuela Gómez Velarde de Flores, and Tío Ramón are buried.

Concordia Cemetery, El Paso. Burial records. Where Juana María Ascárate de Stephenson, Margarita Stephenson de Flores, José María Flores, and Manuel Flores are buried. Administered by the Concordia Heritage Association.

Romo, David Dorado. Ringside Seat to a Revolution. El Paso: Cinco Puntos Press, 2005. Earlier-Period reference cited in Chronicles VII and VIII; relevant here for the cultural context of the family’s twentieth-century El Paso life.

Sonnichsen, C. L. Pass of the North. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1968. Cited again because Alfredo and Antonio both reference it as the principal published source on the family’s documented ancestors.

Texas State Historical Association. “Cathedral High School (El Paso).” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “El Paso, TX.” Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas State Historical Association. “Sunset Heights, El Paso.” Handbook of Texas Online.

University of Texas at El Paso, Special Collections. Flores family genealogical materials, deposited by Alfredo Cruz Flores.

University of Texas at El Paso. Ciudad Juárez Municipal Archives. Microfilmed as MF 495 and MF 513. Cited in earlier Parts; relevant here for the documentary continuity that the family’s modern self-understanding has rested on.

Aquí termina la Novena Parte de las Crónicas. La casa en la calle Florence se ha sostenido por setenta y cinco años. Carlos ha cruzado el puente y ha vivido el resto de su vida en el otro lado. Ha contado la historia por sesenta años, perfeccionando la forma, y se la ha dado al nieto en los últimos veinte. Manuel está en su tumba, cuidada por la abuela. Josie ha enseñado por treinta años. Albert Delgado, Silver Star de Vietnam, ha vuelto y se ha casado con Josie y ha criado al niño. El niño tiene catorce años cuando Carlos muere en octubre de mil novecientos ochenta y ocho. Tendrá treinta y ocho años más antes de empezar a escribir el libro que estas Crónicas acompañan.

Y aquellos que en otro tiempo hayan de leer estas páginas sabrán que en el momento en que esta página se cierra, en una tarde de octubre de mil novecientos ochenta y ocho en el cementerio de Memory Gardens of the Valley de El Paso, el niño está de pie con su madre delante de la tumba abierta de su abuelo. La madre llora. El niño no. Más tarde, en el coche que vuelve a la casa de Florence, el niño le pregunta a la madre si Carlos va a poder seguir contándole las historias desde el cielo. La madre dice: “Las historias ya están en ti. Tú las contarás.”

La crónica que viene después de ésta — la Décima — es la crónica del niño que oyó eso y lo creyó y, treinta y ocho años más tarde, lo cumplió.

I · El Escenario

Setting

Y fue que el niño de catorce años que estuvo de pie ante la tumba abierta de su abuelo en octubre de mil novecientos y ochenta y ocho llevó la promesa por treinta y ocho años, y al cabo de esos treinta y ocho años se sentó a escribir, y lo que escribió fue lo que su abuelo le había contado en sesenta tardes de porche, y ese niño era yo.

This is my Chronicle. The nine previous Parts have been written about people I never met — Vicente Álvarez Travieso of Tenerife, Juana María Ascárate of El Paso del Norte, Hugh Stephenson of Kentucky, Margarita who buried her mother and her father at Concordia, José Jesús who carried my grandfather across the bridge in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen — and have been written in the voice of a chronicler who keeps a careful distance from the page. This Part is different. The people in it are mostly alive. The events are mostly events I lived. The first person is unavoidable. Voy a escribir en primera persona porque ya no se puede hacer otra cosa. Yo soy el que ha estado escribiendo a su sombra en las páginas anteriores. Ahora me presento.

I was born in El Paso, Texas, in nineteen hundred and seventy-four. I was raised in the house of my grandparents on Florence Street — the same Spanish Colonial Revival bungalow my great-grandfather had bought in nineteen hundred and fourteen in the weeks after the bridge crossing, the same house Carlos had lived in since he was nine years old, the same porch where the stories were told. My legal name is Gabriel Salcedo. The name I write under is Vicente Gabriel Flores — Vicente for the harness-maker’s son who arrived in San Antonio on the ninth of March of seventeen hundred and thirty-one, Gabriel my given name, Flores the family name of my mother and of the line this chronicle records. My mother is Carmen Josefina Flores — Josie to everyone she has ever known. She was born in El Paso in nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, the daughter of Carlos and María Manuela Flores. She taught in the El Paso public schools for the better part of three decades. She is the dedicatee of the novel and she is alive at the time of this writing. La crónica le debe todo.

The porch on Florence Street was a multi-generational porch. I sat on it with my grandfather Carlos. I sat on it with my grandmother María Manuela. I sat on it with my uncles when they came home — Tío Tony, Tío Alfredo, Tío Albert, Tío Ramón, Tío Carlos Jr. — and with my mother on the Sunday afternoons. The stories were not told by one voice. They were told by the household. The chronicle that follows is what I gathered from all of those voices in the sixteen years I lived in that house before my mother and I left El Paso for Hawaii in nineteen hundred and ninety.

My mother married my stepfather, Albert Delgado, when I was in my twenties — long after the years in which my character was formed. Albert is from the Samaniego-Delgado line of El Paso. He served in the Vietnam War and was decorated with the Silver Star for valor and the Bronze Star for service. He is a man I respect. He is not, however, the man who raised me in my childhood. The chronicle will leave my childhood paternity at that. Hay cosas que la crónica respeta sin explicar. Esto es una de ellas.

The thirty-eight years between my grandfather’s funeral in October of nineteen hundred and eighty-eight and the spring of two thousand and twenty-six — when I am writing these final pages — are the years of my own life. They do not arrange themselves into the cadence of the earlier Parts. I have lived them as a person lives any life: irregularly, by accident as much as by intention, with periods of acceleration and periods of dormancy, with revelations that came in conversations I did not realize at the time were revelations, and with losses I could not have predicted. The chronicle attempts to give them the same dignity it has given the earlier centuries, while remembering that this Part is the factual basis from which the novel grew — not the novel itself, and not subject to the novel’s freedoms of invention. La novela inventa. La crónica no.

What the chronicle records below is the path that took me from the porch on Florence Street in El Paso to Hawaii to Beijing to Kobe to Hainan to Kyoto to Shikoku to Hong Kong to Denver and finally to Austin; the women and men of the family who told me, in their later years, things I had not known; the wife I married in Denver in two thousand and nineteen; the four sons I have; the cousin I lost this year; and the closing recognition — given to me by Tío Tony in the last months of his life and by Tío Alfredo in the years before his — that I was not, as I had thought, the first of the family to know Asia. I was the second. They were the first. Pensé que estaba abriendo un círculo. Resultó que el círculo había sido abierto cuarenta años antes por mis tíos y siglo y medio antes por mis bisabuelos. Yo solamente lo estaba cerrando.

II · Dónde Aparece en PASADOR

Where in PASADOR

Y la novela entera es el lugar de esta crónica, porque la novela es lo que la crónica documenta, y la crónica es lo que la novela necesita para ser leída con la profundidad que requiere.

PASADOR — the novel of fifty-seven thousand eight hundred and twenty-six words I completed in the spring of two thousand and twenty-six — is the literary form into which I poured my family’s two hundred and ninety-six years of documentary history. The novel has a Prologue (The Crossing, set in November nineteen hundred and thirteen at the International Bridge) and five Plays. I have discussed each Play in the relevant earlier Part of these Chronicles. The novel closes with an Epilogue (The House on Florence Street, set in nineteen hundred and eighty) and a brief Coda set in twenty hundred and twenty-six.

The novel rests on four literary godfathers, and I name them openly because the closing requires the honesty.

William Shakespeare. The five-Play structure of the novel is a deliberate Shakespearean inheritance. Shakespeare’s history plays moved a family’s destiny across stages and generations and used the dramatic form to compress decades into the speakable moment. PASADOR follows that pattern, moving the family across one hundred and eighty-three years on five stages, compressing each stage to its essential confrontation, allowing the offstage history to remain offstage and the stage history to be what the reader sees.

Fyodor Dostoevsky. The novel’s emotional and moral interior — the willingness to give the characters’ inner lives more weight than their actions — is a deliberate Dostoevskian inheritance. Dostoevsky taught the nineteenth century that the conscience could carry an entire novel; that the choice the character makes in the small hours of a sleepless night is as historically consequential as the public act of the next morning. PASADOR adopts this scale: Hugh’s grief after Juana’s death carries as much narrative weight as the war that took his country.

Gabriel García Márquez. The novel’s treatment of the marvelous as ordinary fact — the spirits of dead grandmothers watching the children play, the silver dollar that survives generations in a leather pouch, the rivers that know about borders the maps do not yet know, the volcano that erupts on the eve of a wedding two thousand miles away — is a deliberate Garciamarquian inheritance. Cien años de soledad, which I read at twenty and re-read at thirty and again at forty, established for me the chronicle voice — the voice of the writer who knows all times at once, who tells the future as already past and the past as not yet finished, who lets the marvelous sit beside the documentary without apology. This chronicle is in his voice. The novel is in his voice. I owe him an enormous and acknowledged debt.

James Clavell. The novel’s structural shape — the head of the family who sets sail, founds the family’s foundation in a new land, has children who in turn influence the family’s fortunes across generations and continents — is a Clavellian inheritance. I read Clavell’s Asian Saga (Tai-Pan, Shogun, Gai-Jin, Noble House) during my own years in Asia, and I recognized — with the surprise that recognition brings — that I was living one of the chapters of the kind of novel Clavell had written. The family that founded itself in San Antonio in seventeen hundred and thirty-one and that found one of its descendants in Hong Kong in two thousand and seven was a Clavellian family before I had read Clavell.

I name the four godfathers without ceremony. The chronicle and the novel both owe them what they owe them.

III · Los Sucesos

Events of the Period

Y los hechos de estos treinta y ocho años son los hechos de mi vida, que presento brevemente y con la modestia que la única posición desde la cual la crónica puede hablar de sí misma me permite.

In the year nineteen hundred and ninety, my mother and I left El Paso for Hawaii. I was sixteen. I had lived my first sixteen years in the house on Florence Street with my grandparents. I would spend the next seventeen years principally in the Hawaiian Islands, with the absences detailed below.

In the year nineteen hundred and ninety-five, I joined the United States Naval Reserves and was stationed at Pearl Harbor. I was twenty-one. I served in the Reserves throughout the rest of the nineteen-nineties and into the early two-thousands. I had no idea, at the time, that my service was a continuation of my uncles’ service. Tío Tony, I would learn much later, had served in the United States Navy in the late nineteen-fifties and had traveled the world. Tío Alfredo had served in the Naval Reserves. I thought I was the first of my generation. The family had been ahead of me by a generation.

In the summer of nineteen hundred and ninety-seven, I studied in Beijing. That was the summer of the transfer of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty, which occurred at midnight on the first of July of nineteen hundred and ninety-seven. I was in Beijing for the handover. I was twenty-three.

In the years nineteen hundred and ninety-eight and nineteen hundred and ninety-nine, I lived in Kobe, Japan. I studied Japanese intensively. I learned the eating culture of the Kansai region — okonomiyaki, kushikatsu, sukiyaki, Kobe beef raised in the patient cattle culture that paralleled the ranching culture my own ancestors had built at Concordia. I read The Tale of Genji of Murasaki Shikibu, that astonishing novel of the imperial court of Heian Japan composed around the year one thousand and ten — the first psychological novel in any language, the work that gave me my first sustained encounter with the literature of the interior life. El Genji me cambió. No supe inmediatamente cómo. Lo supe veinte años después, cuando me senté a escribir PASADOR.

My shōdō sensei — my calligraphy teacher in Japan — and his family took me as a young foreigner into their lives. They brought me to shōdō exhibits across the Kansai region. They brought me to the onsens of Shikoku — the island of the four ancient provinces, known throughout Japan for the Shikoku Henro, the eighty-eight-temple Buddhist pilgrimage walk that has been walked by pilgrims for more than a thousand years. We did not walk the full pilgrimage; we visited several of the temples; I sat in the ofuro of small mountain inns and learned that the temperature of the body and the temperature of the soul could be regulated through the contact with the earth’s own waters. They brought me to the tea houses where the chanoyu — the formal tea ceremony — has been practiced since the sixteenth century. Cada uno de esos lugares me enseñó algo que nunca aprendí en ninguna otra parte. La paciencia. La atención. La precisión. La forma en que un gesto puede ser una oración. La forma en que el silencio puede ser el contenido.

In the summer of two thousand, I was in Hainan, the tropical island of southern China.

In the years two thousand and two thousand and one, I lived in Kyoto. The ancient capital. The city of fifteen hundred years of continuous Buddhist and Shinto and imperial culture. The city of the Tale of Genji itself. My Japanese deepened. I walked the philosopher’s path. I sat in the rock garden of Ryoan-ji and looked at the fifteen stones one cannot see all of from any single vantage point — the fifteenth always hidden by some other stone — and understood that this was a deliberate teaching about the limits of human seeing. Kioto se me quedó en el corazón como una de las ciudades que el alma reconoce sin haberla visitado.

In the year two thousand and seven, I left Hawaii after seventeen years and enrolled in the Master of Business Administration program at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The MBA included field study programs in Beijing, Shanghai, and Singapore.

From two thousand and seven to two thousand and eighteen — eleven years — I lived in Hong Kong. I worked first as Acquisitions Manager — Asia Pacific for New Star Asset Management, a British asset management firm, acquiring assets across the Asia-Pacific region (the mandate was the region broadly, not China or Hong Kong specifically). I then moved to S.I. Investments, focusing on capital raising and development deals in Japan. My professional life in Asia was conducted in English and Japanese — those were the working languages of my career. Hong Kong’s commercial language remained English from the colonial period and continued so through my eleven years; that was the language I worked in there as much as the language I worked in everywhere else in the Pacific. I played amateur rugby for the Hong Kong Football Club, the storied club founded by British expatriates in eighteen hundred and eighty-six. I was not a serious player. I loved it. Cada sábado por la mañana cruzaba la ciudad hasta Happy Valley, me ponía el equipo, jugaba con los otros expatriados. Esto sucedió por once años.

In the year two thousand and eight, on the twenty-ninth of November, my first son Lucius was born. He is seventeen at the time of this writing.

In the year two thousand and twelve, on the sixth of October, my second son Ulysses was born. He is thirteen.

In the year two thousand and eighteen, I returned to the United States. I had been in Hong Kong for eleven years.

In the year two thousand and nineteen, I married Jinghan Wang in Denver, Colorado. Jinghan had come to watch me play rugby at Happy Valley in my Hong Kong years; she came to every match. Jinghan es divertida y dulce. La crónica no encuentra palabras mejores que ésas y se permite la sencillez.

In the years two thousand and twenty and following, in conversations during my returns to El Paso, my uncles began to tell me things they had not told me before.

Tío Alfredo told me that the family had supported the rights of the Chinese railroad workers of El Paso in the late nineteenth century, that he himself had been in correspondence with descendants of those workers in San Francisco, that those descendants had sent him gifts which he kept but did not show me. I did not press to see them. I understood, with the understanding that comes late in such things, that what he had not shown me was not for me to see. Tío Alfredo era el genealogista de la familia. Lo que él decidía guardar en silencio, lo guardaba por buenas razones, y lo respeto.

He died on the seventh of August of two thousand and twenty-one. I returned to El Paso for the funeral at St. Matthew Catholic Church on the third of September.

In the year two thousand and twenty-four, on the eighteenth of March, my third son Leo was born — my first son with Jinghan. He is two years old at the time of this writing. El primer hijo tejano-mexicano-chino de la línea.

In the year two thousand and twenty-four, on the eleventh of May, Tío Tony — Antonio, born November twenty-second of nineteen hundred and thirty-three — died in El Paso at the age of ninety. I returned to El Paso for the funeral at St. Matthew Catholic Church on the twenty-first of May. In the months before his death, Tío Tony had told me something that has shaped this chronicle as much as anything any of my elders ever said to me. He told me he and his brothers had all been in the United States Navy. He told me that he himself had been stationed in Hong Kong and in Korea and in Japan in the late nineteen-fifties — the very cities of my own adult working life, forty years before me. He told me this with the gentleness that was characteristic of him to the very end. He was, all my life, sweet to me. So were Tío Alfredo, Tío Albert, Tío Ramón, Tío Carlos Jr., my grandfather Carlos, my grandmother María Manuela. The family was tender. The chronicle records that with care. Mis tíos no me lo contaron antes porque no era el momento. Cuando llegó el momento, me lo contaron, y la crónica los honra.

In the year two thousand and twenty-six, on Valentine’s Day, the fourteenth of February, my fourth son Lawrence was born — my second son with Jinghan. He is three months old at the time of this writing. El más reciente de los descendientes de la línea. La cosecha que aún no ha llegado, pero que sigue presentándose en cada nacimiento.

In the year two thousand and twenty-six — this same year, the year of Lawrence’s birth and of the writing of these pages — my cousin Ana Christina Alexander died. She was approximately five years older than I am, born around nineteen hundred and sixty-nine. She was the daughter of Tío Albert. She left behind three children: Hannah, Alaric, and Ava. Era la prima de los domingos de Florence Street. Era la prima de las visitas a El Paso. Su muerte este año es la pérdida más reciente que la familia ha llevado al escribirse este libro. La novela está dedicada a mi madre Josie y a Ana Christina Alexander.

In the spring of two thousand and twenty-six, in Austin, Texas, where I now live with Jinghan and our four sons, I completed the manuscript of PASADOR and these accompanying Chronicles. Esto es lo que el niño, en el coche que volvía del cementerio en octubre de mil novecientos y ochenta y ocho, prometió a su madre que cumpliría. La promesa se cumple en esta página.

IV · Los Lugares

Places

Y los lugares de estos treinta y ocho años son los lugares de mi diáspora, que va de Tejas hasta el Pacífico oriental y vuelve.

Austin, Texas. Where I now live with Jinghan and our four sons. Where the novel was completed. No fue donde nací, pero es donde escribí.

El Paso, Texas — La Casa de Florence Street. Where I was born in nineteen hundred and seventy-four. Where I was raised in my grandparents’ house from birth until I left El Paso with my mother for Hawaii at age sixteen in nineteen hundred and ninety. The house where my grandfather Carlos lived for seventy-five years, where my grandmother María Manuela managed the household for six decades, where my uncles grew up, where the porch held the stories. El lugar donde me hicieron. El lugar al cual siempre vuelvo aunque la casa ya tenga otro dueño.

Honolulu and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Where I lived from nineteen hundred and ninety to two thousand and seven. Where I served in the United States Naval Reserves from nineteen hundred and ninety-five forward.

Beijing, China. Where I studied in the summer of nineteen hundred and ninety-seven, the summer of the Hong Kong handover.

Kobe, Japan. Where I lived in nineteen hundred and ninety-eight and nineteen hundred and ninety-nine.

Kyoto, Japan. Where I lived in two thousand and two thousand and one. La ciudad que se me quedó en el corazón.

Shikoku, Japan. Where my shōdō sensei and his family brought me to the onsens, to several of the temples of the Shikoku Henro, and to the tea houses where the chanoyu has been practiced since the sixteenth century.

Hong Kong. Where I worked from two thousand and seven to two thousand and eighteen — eleven years. Where I played amateur rugby for the Hong Kong Football Club. Where Jinghan came to every match.

Denver, Colorado. Where Jinghan and I were married in two thousand and nineteen.

Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul, Sydney, Taipei. Cities of my working years in Asia and the Pacific.

The Hong Kong Football Club, Happy Valley. Where I played amateur rugby through the Hong Kong years. La cancha donde Jinghan me vio por primera vez.

The Stanton Street Bridge, El Paso–Ciudad Juárez. I have crossed it several times in my adult life. I have not lived on the southern side. Pero el puente sigue. Lo cruzo en la dirección opuesta a la que mi bisabuelo lo cruzó. Es el mismo puente.

Concordia Cemetery, El Paso. Where Juana lies since eighteen hundred and fifty-six, where Margarita and José María lie, where my great-uncle Manuel — my mother’s brother who died before age five in the late nineteen-thirties — is buried, and where, as Tío Alfredo told me, Chinese laborers from the late nineteenth century are buried on what was once the family’s ranch land.

Memory Gardens of the Valley, El Paso. Where my grandfather Carlos, my grandmother María Manuela, and Tío Ramón are buried. The cemetery I visit when I visit my grandparents’ graves.

Parque Ascárate, El Paso. Ascárate Park — a four-hundred-acre public park in the southeastern El Paso district, named after the Ascárate family of my great-great-grandmother Juana María Ascárate de Stephenson. The park was developed by El Paso County in the twentieth century on land that had been Ascárate-family-owned for two centuries. El nombre de mi tatarabuela —que está enterrada en Concordia, que fue la primera persona enterrada en aquel cementerio, que murió por una cornada de un venado mascota un día de febrero de mil ochocientos cincuenta y seis— da nombre a un parque público de cuatrocientas hectáreas. La familia se ha hecho monumento.

My desk in Austin, May twenty hundred and twenty-six. The desk where these final pages are being written. The window onto a Texas live oak. The laptop. The manuscript open. The genealogy chart on the wall to my left. Two photographs on a shelf to my right: one of my grandfather on the porch in nineteen hundred and eighty, one of Lawrence at three days old. Es la geografía más reciente de las muchas pequeñas geografías de la familia. Es donde el círculo se cierra.

V · Las Personas

People

Y las personas de estos treinta y ocho años son las que la crónica honra principalmente: los que ya no están y los que están todavía.

Carmen Josefina “Josie” Flores (b. 1939). My mother. The teacher. The woman who, in the car going home from my grandfather’s funeral in October of nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, told me that the stories were already in me and that I would tell them. The dedicatee of the novel. She is alive at the time of this writing. La que me pasó la promesa. La crónica le debe todo.

Albert Delgado. My stepfather, who married my mother when I was in my twenties. Vietnam veteran, Silver Star and Bronze Star recipient, descendant of the Samaniego-Delgado line of El Paso. The chronicle records his presence in my mother’s life with affection.

My uncles, in their generosity. The men of my mother’s generation who told me, in their later years, what they had been carrying. All of them were sweet and kind to me, from my earliest memories through their last years.

Tío Tony (22 November 1933 – 11 May 2024). The eldest. U.S. Navy. Stationed in Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan in the late nineteen-fifties. The man who, in the months before his death, told me — with the gentleness that was his all his life — that I was the second generation of the family to know Asia, not the first.

Tío Alfredo (3 May 1936 – 7 August 2021). The family genealogist. Cathedral High School. Catholic seminary in Santa Fe. U.S. Naval Reserves. The fifty-year compiler of the family chart that is the documentary spine of this Chronicle. The Hall of Honor nominator. The man who told me about the Chinese railroad workers of El Paso and about the gifts from San Francisco. Sin él, no habría este libro.

Tío Albert. The youngest of the seven, my mother’s youngest brother. The father of Ana Christina Alexander. Alive at the time of this writing.

Tío Ramón. One of my mother’s older brothers. Buried at Memory Gardens of the Valley.

Tío Carlos Jr. My mother’s brother named for his father.

My great-uncle Manuel. My mother’s eldest brother. Died before age five in the late nineteen-thirties. Buried at Concordia Cemetery. La tumba que mi abuela cuidaba toda su vida.

Jinghan Wang Flores. My wife. Chinese. The mother of my third and fourth sons. We were married in Denver, Colorado, in two thousand and nineteen. La mujer que vino a verme jugar rugby cada sábado en Happy Valley. La mujer cuyos antepasados pueden ser, sin que ninguno de los dos lo sepa con certeza, parientes de los trabajadores chinos del ferrocarril cuyos derechos mi familia apoyó en El Paso en mil ochocientos ochenta y uno. La línea del Pacífico y la línea del Atlántico se han cruzado en una casa de Austin.

My four sons.

• Lucius (29 November 2008). Seventeen.
• Ulysses (6 October 2012). Thirteen.
• Leo (18 March 2024). Two.
• Lawrence (14 February 2026). Three months old as I write this.

Ana Christina Alexander (c. 1969 – 2026). My cousin, the daughter of Tío Albert. Five years older than me. Died this year — the year of Lawrence’s birth, the year of this writing. Survived by her three children Hannah, Alaric, and Ava. Prima de los domingos de Florence Street. Prima de las visitas a El Paso. Su nombre está en la dedicatoria de la novela.

The descendants of the Chinese railroad workers of late nineteenth-century El Paso. Unnamed in the chronicle because I do not know their names. The chronicle leaves the space open. I hope that one of them will, perhaps, read these pages someday and recognize their grandparents in mine.

The four literary godfathers — Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, García Márquez, Clavell — already named above.

Carlos F. Flores (10 October 1903 – October 1988). My grandfather. The man whose stories made all of this possible. Buried at Memory Gardens of the Valley in El Paso. La crónica termina donde el cuento empezó: en el porche de la casa en Florence Street, en una tarde de octubre, con el abuelo en la silla a la izquierda y el nieto en el escalón. Le doy las gracias.

María Manuela Gómez Velarde de Flores (d. 1990s). My grandmother. Buried at Memory Gardens of the Valley. The woman who tended her son Manuel’s grave at Concordia for sixty years. La que me enseñó, sin enseñarme, que el cuidado de los muertos es uno de los gestos más largos que un ser humano puede hacer.

VI · La Mesa

Food

Y la mesa de la diáspora es una mesa que se hizo en cinco continentes y que ahora se sienta en Austin, Tejas, con una mujer china, cuatro hijos, y una madre mexicana-americana que pasa por Austin con frecuencia.

The kitchen Jinghan and I keep in Austin is the most plurilingual kitchen in the family’s three-hundred-year history. Mexican food in the El Paso register, which I learned from my mother and grandmother: frijoles refritos, carne guisada, enchiladas en salsa roja, tortillas de harina fresh from the comal. Chinese food in the regional registers Jinghan brings. Japanese dishes I learned in Kobe and Kyoto: dashi-based clear soups, gyoza, donburi for quick lunches. Texas-Mexican dishes that my mother brings when she visits from El Paso: menudo, capirotada at Lent, tamales at Christmas Eve. American breakfast staples for the children.

Leo, at two, eats with his fingers. He has eaten enchiladas and gyoza in the same week. He has eaten tortillas and jianbing on the same morning. His palate is being formed by both of the kitchens this chronicle has been recording — the Tejano kitchen of his Flores grandmothers, the Chinese kitchen of his Wang grandmothers — and by the Pacific and Mexican and global kitchens his parents have eaten in for a combined seven decades.

El Día de los Muertos en Austin. Every November first and second I set up the household altar with the photographs of Tío Alfredo, Tío Tony, my grandfather Carlos, my grandmother María Manuela, my great-grandparents José Jesús and Josefina, Margarita, Juana — and in a small frame at the back, my great-uncle Manuel, who died before age five and whose name my grandmother kept alive by tending his grave at Concordia for six decades. Pongo las flores de cempasúchil. Les cuento a mis hijos las historias en español y en inglés. Lucius y Ulysses entienden. Leo toca las fotografías con los dedos. La mesa de los muertos cruzó al fin a Austin. La continuidad se preserva.

VII · La Lengua

Language

Y mi lengua es una lengua hecha de varios idiomas que se hablan en una sola cabeza, y que se hablan en una sola casa, y que se mezclan en una sola página.

My native languages are English and Spanish — the Tex-Mex Spanish of my mother’s El Paso, with the El Paso seseo and the El Paso vocabulary and the El Paso rhythm. I learned Japanese in the Kobe and Kyoto years and maintain it at conversational level. I learned some Mandarin during my Beijing summer. In Hong Kong, the working and social language was English — the colonial language that carried forward after the handover and that continued to be the language of business, of the courts, of the financial sector, and of the expatriate sporting culture I lived in for eleven years. In Asia, my professional working languages were therefore English and Japanese.

The household Jinghan and I keep in Austin is principally English-Spanish-Mandarin trilingual. I speak English to the older two boys, English-and-Spanish with my mother when she visits, English-and-Mandarin with Jinghan. Jinghan speaks Mandarin and English to all four boys. Leo, at two, is acquiring all three languages at once and shows no preference. El español que se habla en mi casa es el seseo de El Paso, que es el seseo de Tenerife, que es el seseo del talabartero. Ha cruzado dos océanos, tres siglos, y siete generaciones. Sigue siendo el mismo.

PASADOR is written in English with substantial Spanish embedded — the proper names, the documentary phrases, the dialogue at moments of weight. The chronicle accompanying it is written in the same register: English narrative with Spanish epigraphs and Spanish sentences at the moments where Spanish carries what English cannot. I write in both languages by deliberate choice — Spanish to honor my ancestors, English to honor my pride in being an American citizen. God bless the United States of America, which gave my great-grandfather a country to walk into at dawn in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen and gave me the country in which I am writing these words today. La crónica es bilingüe porque la familia es bilingüe, y porque las dos lenguas son las dos sangres del que escribe, y porque no se puede honrar la una sin honrar la otra.

VIII · Los Papeles

Primary Documents

Y los papeles de estos treinta y ocho años son los papeles que yo mismo he producido y los papeles que mis contemporáneos en la familia han producido.

El Manuscrito de PASADOR, dos mil y veintidós a dos mil y veintiséis. The novel itself. Fifty-seven thousand eight hundred and twenty-six words. Composed in Austin, Texas. El papel principal de esta crónica.

Estas Crónicas, dos mil y veintiséis. The ten Parts of Las Crónicas that accompany the novel. Composed in Austin in the spring of two thousand and twenty-six.

El sitio web vicentegabrielflores.com. My author website. The book site for PASADOR. The familia page — the family record. The historia page — the published form of these Chronicles. El nuevo Concordia: el sitio donde la familia se reúne.

La Dedicatoria de la Novela. Para mi Madre, Josie. Para Ana Christina Alexander.

El Cuadro Genealógico de Tío Alfredo. The fifty-year compilation, now in my possession in copy form. The documentary spine of the chronicle.

Las Obituarias de Tío Alfredo (agosto 2021) y de Tío Tony (mayo 2024). Both published by Funeraria Del Angel Hillcrest West in El Paso. Both name the family’s ancestral linkages to the founding families of San Antonio and El Paso. Both direct memorial contributions to Cathedral High School.

El Dólar de Plata. The silver dollar Albert H. French paid for the Concordia property at the Federal marshal’s sale in eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, which Hugh Stephenson carried in a leather pouch over his heart for the last three years of his life, which passed down through five generations to me. Está actualmente en una caja sobre un estante en mi casa en Austin. Es el único objeto en toda la crónica que es también físico en mi vida.

IX · Las Fuentes

Sources

The principal sources for this chronicle are the sources cited in Parts I through IX. The chronicler will not duplicate that bibliography. For the Tenth Part specifically:

On Shakespeare. The Folger Shakespeare Library editions of the history plays.

On Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment (1866), The Brothers Karamazov (1880), The Idiot (1869).

On García Márquez. Cien años de soledad (1967). The chronicle’s voice is in deliberate tribute.

On James Clavell. The Asian Saga: Tai-Pan (1966), Shogun (1975), Noble House (1981), Gai-Jin (1993). Read during my Asian years.

On Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji (c. 1010). The Royall Tyler translation (Viking, 2001). The Edward Seidensticker translation (Knopf, 1976). Read during my Kobe years.

On the Shikoku Henro. Various sources on the eighty-eight-temple Buddhist pilgrimage of Shikoku, including Oliver Statler’s Japanese Pilgrimage (William Morrow, 1983) and David L. Moreton’s The History of Charitable Giving Along the Shikoku Pilgrimage Route (Buddhist-Christian Studies, 2001).

On the El Paso Chinese community of the late nineteenth century. Edward J. M. Rhoads’s scholarly work on the Chinese-American Southwest. The Concordia Heritage Association’s documentation on the Chinese graves in the cemetery. Sources I came to after Tío Alfredo’s mention.

On the Hong Kong handover. Standard sources on the transfer of sovereignty on the first of July of nineteen hundred and ninety-seven.

On Ascárate Park. Texas State Historical Association, “Ascárate Park,” Handbook of Texas Online; El Paso County Parks and Recreation records.

The family itself. The memories, the photographs, the letters, the recipes, the stories told on the porch and at the Sunday table. These cannot always be documented. The chronicle has honored them where it could.

X · El Cierre

Closing

I am asked, by the form of the chronicle and by my own conscience, to close.

I close with the two truths that have been the moral axis of this entire work — one looking forward, one looking backward, neither cancelling the other.

The first truth is one I owe to Elon Musk, who put it more concisely than I could: “My children didn’t choose to be born. I chose to have children. They owe me nothing. I owe them everything.” This is the truth that runs forward. My four sons — Lucius, Ulysses, Leo, Lawrence — did not choose to exist. I chose. The choice was mine, and the obligation that comes with the choice is also mine, and it is total, and there is no version of the future in which they owe me anything.

The second truth is mine. I owe my ancestors everything — the air I breathe, the languages I speak, the seseo on my tongue, the silver dollar in the box on the shelf, the name I write under, the chronicle I am at this moment finishing. They crossed the oceans for me without knowing I would come. They buried their small children for me without knowing I would weep their names. They endured the laws that forbade their tongues so that I could write in those tongues a hundred and twenty years later. My debt to them is the simple fact that I exist at all. I cannot pay it. I can only honor it.

The two truths are simultaneously true. They do not contradict each other. They live in the same pair of hands.

Y por eso, en lugar de cerrar con prosa, cierro con un poema. Lo escribo primero en español, en el registro romántico de la lengua que mi familia ha hablado por trescientos años, y después en inglés, en la lengua en que escribo este libro. Las dos lenguas, las dos verdades, las dos miradas — atrás y adelante, hacia los muertos y hacia los nacidos —, sostenidas en las dos manos abiertas del que escribe.

Las Dos Verdades / The Two Truths

En español, en el registro romántico de la lengua

A los que ya partieron:

Cruzaron para mí los océanos sin saber que yo vendría. Enterraron a sus hijos pequeños sin saber que yo lloraría sus nombres. Aguantaron las leyes que les prohibían la lengua sin saber que yo la escribiría. Y por eso, ay, padres de mis padres, mi deuda es el aire que respiro, la sangre que recorre mis venas, el seseo que aprendí sin saber que lo aprendía, el dólar de plata que guardo en una caja y que pesa más que su peso. Nunca, nunca podré pagarles lo que me dieron con el solo gesto de haber sido.

A los que vienen detrás:

Yo los elegí. Ustedes no me eligieron. No escogieron nacer en esta familia, en este idioma, en este apellido, en este viejo dólar de plata que cuelga ahora de mi corazón como colgó del corazón de Hugh Stephenson en mil ochocientos setenta. Ustedes no me deben nada — ni la lectura de esta página, ni la memoria de mi nombre, ni siquiera la palabra “padre” cuando hablen de mí. Lo que yo les debo es todo. Lo que ustedes me deben es nada. La elección fue mía. La obligación también.

Y entre las dos verdades — la gratitud que mira atrás y la responsabilidad que mira adelante — soy yo el puente, el río, el dólar, el nombre, el seseo que pasa de boca a boca, la promesa que comenzó en Tenerife en mil setecientos y que no terminará mientras quede en la familia uno solo que la siga cumpliendo.

In English

For those who have departed:

You crossed the oceans for me without knowing I would come. You buried your small children without knowing I would weep their names. You endured the laws that forbade your tongue without knowing I would write in it. And for this, oh fathers of my fathers, my debt is the air I breathe, the blood that runs in my veins, the seseo I learned without knowing I was learning, the silver dollar I keep in a box on a shelf that weighs more than its weight. Never, never could I pay you back for what you gave me by the simple act of having been.

For those who come behind:

I chose you. You did not choose me. You did not choose to be born into this family, this language, this surname, this old silver dollar that hangs now from my heart as it hung from the heart of Hugh Stephenson in eighteen hundred and seventy. You owe me nothing — not the reading of this page, not the memory of my name, not even the word father when you speak of me. What I owe you is everything. What you owe me is nothing. The choice was mine. The obligation also.

And between the two truths — the gratitude that looks back and the responsibility that looks forward — I am the bridge, the river, the dollar, the name, the seseo that passes from mouth to mouth, the promise that began in Tenerife in seventeen hundred and that will not end while one of the family remains to keep on fulfilling it.

Aquí termina la Décima Parte de las Crónicas. Aquí termina, también, las Crónicas mismas.

He contado lo que mi abuelo me contó. Lo he contado en la forma que he elegido. Lo he contado en dos idiomas. Lo he contado por amor de los muertos que me precedieron y por responsabilidad hacia los vivos que me siguen.

El volcán de Lanzarote sigue dormido bajo Timanfaya. El Río Grande sigue corriendo entre Ciudad Juárez y El Paso, sin reconocer las fronteras que los hombres le han impuesto. El puente sigue cruzando. La palmera enfrente de la casa en Florence Street sigue allí, aunque la casa tenga otro dueño. El cementerio de Concordia tiene sus tumbas chinas a un lado de las tumbas Stephenson y Ascárate. La tumba de Manuel está cuidada. El dólar de plata está en una caja sobre un estante en Austin. Las recetas se pasan de cocina a cocina. El seseo se pasa de boca a boca.

Y Leo y Lawrence, en un cuarto de la casa de Austin, en una mañana de mayo de dos mil y veintiséis, duermen. Jinghan los mira. Yo los miro. La crónica los mira. Los muertos los miran.

Que les sea bien.

Que les sea bien a Hannah y Alaric y Ava.

Que les sea bien a los primos, a los tíos vivos, a los nietos y a los bisnietos de Tío Tony, a los hijos de Tío Alfredo, a los descendientes de Manuel cuyo nombre se pasó adelante porque mi abuela cuidaba su tumba por sesenta años.

Que les sea bien a los descendientes de los trabajadores chinos del ferrocarril de El Paso, dondequiera que estén — en San Francisco, en Cantón, en Hong Kong, en alguna parte que no sabemos.

Que les sea bien a los lectores de estas páginas, sea cual sea su línea de descendencia.

Que les sea bien a todos los que vienen.

Lo prometieron. Lo cumplieron. Lo seguimos cumpliendo. Nunca estaremos acabados.

FIN — y comienzo.

— Vicente Gabriel Flores Austin, Texas Primavera de 2026