Читать книгу Ask Not What I Have Done for My Country, Ask What My Country Has Done for Me - Julio Rodarte - Страница 6

El Camino Real

The Oldest Road Still Traveled in the United States from Mexico to Taos, New Mexico

It all started in the winter of 1950. A winterstorm had been pounding on the village of Rodarte, New Mexico, located in the heart of the Sangra de Christo Mountains in Northern New Mexico. A severe storm had dropped several inches of powder snow in the valley, and traveling was at a standstill. The roads were primitive, and the only way of getting around was on foot, horse, or horse-driven wagons.

The days were cold, and even wet snow too soon became gray and dirty, making the whole world look leaden. The roads were full of potholes and slimy mud that would freeze at night, making the whole business of transportation practically impossible.

It was February 6, 1950, a cold winter night in the village of Rodarte, that Maria Sanchez Rodarte, the wife of Julio Rodarte II, came into labor with the seventh child. The wind was blowing, and the snow was accumulating on the village. It had been snowing on and off for several days, not unusual for a small town in Northern New Mexico by the name of Rodarte, with an elevation of 7,600 feet. It is a small village at the base of one of the tallest mountains in New Mexico called La Jicarita on the Sangra de Christo Mountains. According to my parents the blizzard was so severe that it was impossible to transport my mother to the nearest hospital in Embudo, New Mexico, where most of my sublimes had been born, about fifteen miles southwest of Rodarte. My father had no other choice but to call the midwife (la partera) who delivered most of the newborn babies during the winter months.

During this era, highways were a thing of the future. In order to travel within the community in the winter months, people had to install chains on two-wheel-drive pickup trucks to get around or on horse. The oldest male member of the family was in charge of saddling a horse or walking to the midwife’s home and ask la partera (midwife) that she was needed to deliver a newborn. For the most part, la partera delivered most of the newborn babies in the area.

La partera was the village doctor in early 1950s and beyond. In many ways northern, New Mexico had also been culturally isolated from the rest of the country. Until the last few decades the Spanish American village culture of this area was relatively untouched by the urbanization and industrialization taking place in the rest of the United States. For centuries, the villages of this area held tenaciously to their own traditions and values, and Spanish has remained our mother tongue. We have carried on the Spanish traditions and culture for several centuries. My family goes back eight generations in Northern New Mexico. It has been traced to the 1770 when the first Rodarte family arrived in the area, according to a genealogy done in 2015.

Use of the land and minerals of New Mexico goes back to the prehistoric time of the early cultures in the Southwest that long preceded the flourishing sedentary civilization of the Pueblos that the Spanish found along El Camino Real and up the (Rio de Norte) Rio Grande and its tributaries. Many of the Native American pueblos exist today much as they were in the thirteen century, with the exception of the close neighbor Picuris Pueblo, which has maintained its tradition. This is the farthest northeast Pueblo along El Camino Real. This pueblo is five miles south west of Rodarte, New Mexico.

The Picuris Pueblo reservation (la legua de los indios) borders the private landowners of the village of Rodarte into el llano de la legua. El llano de la legua is known for its famous canovas (bridges of carved timbers across an arrio), an ingenious way to get water across a small valley. The timbers were cut and carved by hand and were placed across the valley to bridge the water of the famous acequias. This was done by people of the nearby communities with traditions taught by the Spaniards. Water was bridge with canovas in order to get water to the mesa called llano de la legua. A canova that it is well-known and photographed almost daily can be seen on the side of the road on the high road to Taos part of El Camino Real, one of the oldest communities called Las Trampas. Las Trampas Catholic Church is one of the oldest churches in Northern New Mexico, where many Spaniards settle.