Lo que se hereda

We are speaking now of what was inherited.

We are speaking now of Hijos Dalgo by decree of the Viceroy
Don Juan de Acuña, Marqués de Casafuerte,
the nineteenth of July, seventeen hundred and thirty-one,
four months after sixteen Canarian families stood in a plaza
that was not yet a plaza,
and were told: you are now noble in writing.

We are speaking now of two land grants of the Spanish Crown
to the Ascárate family for military service —
thirteen thousand acres,
and nine hundred more,
in the seventeen-fifties,
held in the family for one hundred and sixty years
through five flags and three wars,
until the night of which this play speaks,
when a man in a coal car was riding north
who said: la tierra es para el que la trabaja.

We are speaking now of silver bars stamped STEPHENSON
moving up the Camino Real from Chihuahua to Santa Fe
through the Organ Mountains east of Las Cruces,
on the backs of mestizo men who did not own the silver,
through a country that did not have a name yet
when it had already had the name of the Manso and the Suma
and the Piro and the Apache for ten thousand years.

We are speaking now of La Casa Grande el Alto at Concordia,
the house Juana María Ascárate built before her death,
and of the chapel of San José de Concordia el Alto
that she built in eighteen hundred and fifty-four
two years before a deer she had raised from a fawn
gored her in the belly
and made her the first burial in the cemetery
that took the name of her house.

We are speaking now of the alcaldía of San Antonio,
held four times by José Gaspar Flores de Ábrego
between eighteen hundred and nineteen and eighteen hundred and thirty-four,
who died in the Runaway Scrape east in eighteen hundred and thirty-six
of a fever, leading three thousand sheep
toward the Trinity River.

We are speaking now of the alcaldía of Ciudad Juárez,
held in nineteen hundred and thirteen by José Jesús Flores Stephenson,
the first popularly elected presidente of the city,
displaced almost as soon as elected,
el alcalde a quien la revolución decidió no destituir hasta que no pudo más.

These are the things inherited.

These are the things the play will not pretend the family did not have.

When Pancho Villa rode north in November of nineteen hundred and thirteen
on a coal train through the Chihuahua night,
he rode for the campesinos
whose grandfathers had cut the silver out of the Organ Mountains
and whose great-grandmothers had not been at the long table.

He rode against my family.
This is the first true thing.
Now begins the play.