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revolving sign board, an improved windmill attached

to a generator which harnessed wind into electricity,

and an adjustable clincher wrench he called “Ochoa’s

Chicken Pliers.” There were also several photographs

of a flying machine called the Ornithopter that Ochoa

built several years before the Wright brothers got their

own contraption off the ground at Kitty Hawk. At

first, this material seems to be merely a tangent—an

oddity that would make an interesting footnote, but

nothing very relevant to the main focus of my study.

If I were a mapmaker, these kind of details would be

the equivalent of small alleys or tunnels. Serious car-

tographers usually don’t waste their time charting

anything that’s not a main thoroughfare.

But sometimes the heart of the city can be found

not on a main street, but on a back alley. Ochoa’s

gadgets and contraptions led me in unexpected direc-

tions. They suggested other areas for me to explore—

the relationship between science, invention and rev-

olution, for instance. The Ornithopter offers a key to

Ochoa’s personality. It helps me understand some

other factors that propelled him—excuse the bad

pun—to become a revolutionary, that I wouldn’t

have gotten from newspaper articles or political writings.

History is full of apparently insignificant details

that have taken me to unforeseen terrain. During my

explorations I’ve dug up strange facts (and artifacts):

• An ad announcing a fight to the death between

a buffalo and a bull.

• A Manual for the Physical Inspection of Aliens.

• An El Paso mayor’s silk underwear.

• Halley’s comet.

• Zyklon B.

• A Mexican military band’s tour through the

United States.

• Astral projection.

All of these have led me to explore historical and

geographical zones I didn’t originally intend to even

visit.

ULTIMATELY, MICROHISTORY IS a method of

study that focuses more on the mysterious and the

poetic than on the schematic. “Microhistory and liter-

ature are twin sisters,” remarked Eric Gardel. It’s like

prospecting for gold or exploring underground

mazes—those honeycombed tunnels underneath

Oregon Street in El Paso’s Chinatown that the U.S.

customs officials raided during the turn of the century.

Elderly Chinese immigrants opened secret doors for

them. In one underground chamber the border agents

found cans of opium; in another, they found a young

man playing an exotic stringed instrument the

American officials had never heard before.

I too have found underground trails, forgotten

ancestors, lost photographs and music I had never

heard of before. This subterranean history is slowly

becoming the history of all of us.

DAVID DORADO ROMO

JULY 2005

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