Con la vara que mides, serás medido.
With the yardstick that you measure others, you shall be measured.
I’m on a quest to find Esequiel Trujillo, whom I barely know but greatly admire. Esequiel has described to me how to find his home, and when I lived in Chimayó I often watched him drive past my house in his old truck on his way to the cluster of buildings among which his house stood. The older generations call this little neighborhood Los Ojuelos, a reference to the nearby Arroyo de los Ojuelos, or Arroyo of the Little Springs. Some say the neighborhood is called Los Abuelos, which means “the grandfathers” and could refer to the Abuelos, characters prominent in the Matachines dance. I don’t think so, but it’s a moot point in any case; almost no one uses the old name of this neighborhood anymore.
With some trepidation I drive down Esequiel’s way on this warm autumn afternoon, skirting the dramatic barrancas at the northern edge of the Santa Cruz Valley. The looming presence of the barrancas makes this one of the most picturesque parts of Chimayó. The striking contrast between the dry formations and the verdant cottonwoods and fields below demonstrates the dramatic effect of irrigation water from the humble Acequia de la Cañada Ancha, a small ditch that nevertheless is the longest ditch in Chimayó. It’s also a very old ditch. A record in our papers from 1817 mentions it, and it was certainly around much earlier. Way up in Río Chiquito a small presa diverts the water for this ditch from the Río Quemado. Culverts called canoas, which back in the day were made from hollowed-out logs, channel the water through a break in the sandy hills and carry it out of the Quemado drainage and over into the Cañada Ancha. There it begins its long, winding route along the northern edge of Chimayó, irrigating some of the sandiest soils in the valley and nurturing a string of hardy cottonwood trees. One conduit crossing an arroyo is held up by a line of wrecked car chassis, jammed vertically into the sand.
I make a turn down an eroded dirt driveway at the base of a gigantic sandstone spire, just past a dilapidated old barn and corrals. I toot the horn outside the first house I come to. A sixty-something man in a white muscle shirt comes out to greet me. He walks with a slight limp as he ambles over to my truck and offers a handshake. I expect suspicion but instead am met with openhearted friendliness. He introduces himself as Leroy Trujillo, a cousin to Esequiel. We chat about his relationship with his primo Esequiel and other Trujillos in Chimayó. He tells me of his difficult battle with Parkinson’s disease, which he says is slowly overtaking him. He points down the driveway and tells me where to find Esequiel’s house: down by the old Chevy flatbed.
I creep slowly past a few relatively new houses, a 1955 Chevy Impala sedan stranded in a forest of weeds and trees, and a rundown adobe with once-elegant Territorial-style trim around the windows and doors. I cross a lateral ditch that flows from the Cañada Ancha to Esequiel’s property.
I turn off the driveway at the Chevy truck, a 1946 model, its blue paint weathered and rusted, the red wooden railing of its bed now cracked and chipped and bowed outward. The truck hasn’t moved in years; it’s hemmed in by stacks of adobe bricks, scrap lumber, and other assorted odds and ends. A scattering of newer abandoned cars and trucks are parked at a respectful distance from the senior truck. A furious black Rottweiler, chained to the front of the truck like its personal guardian, dissuades me from examining the vehicle more closely.
The farm gate to Esequiel’s driveway stands open. I park outside and walk through. To my right a weathered old outbuilding stands beside yet another abandoned car, a 1960s-era Oldsmobile, on its hood a Boone’s Farm wine box filled with used car parts. I keep a cautious eye toward the Rottweiler behind me, watching his chain and collar strain close to the breaking point as he leaps and snarls—and then I’m blindsided by a black pit bull racing toward me from the porch of the house. I hold my ground and snap a gruff command: “¡Vete!—Go on!” She cowers and circles away toward a cardboard box filled with whimpering puppies. Esequiel emerges from his doorway, shushing the dog into further submission, then turns to me with a bemused smile.
“¡Mire no más! ¡Buenas tardes le dé Dios!—Will you look at that! May God grant you a good afternoon!” Esequiel exclaims. Then, pointing to the dog, he says, “Perro que ladra no muerde.—A dog that barks doesn’t bite.”
I call out in the same formal greeting of old—“Buenas tardes le dé Dios”—and remind him of our visit at Magdalena’s a while back. I go on to introduce myself anyway, in the way of all tribal people: “Soy Don Usner, nieto de la Benigna Chávez, de allá, de la Plaza del Cerro.—I’m Don Usner, Benigna Chávez’s grandson, from up there in the Plaza del Cerro.”
“Sí, me acuerdo bien.”—Yes, I remember well,” he responds. He asks for my mother and the rest of my family, and we reminisce about that fine day when we all visited at Magdalena’s house.
Glancing around his place, I ask about the old truck. He bought it nearly new and used it for many years. It’s only recently been parked there, he says, and he plans to repair it. We walk over to inspect it, the Rottweiler cowering away at Esequiel’s command. I peer into the cab, through thick, cracked windows. The windshield bears an incongruous, outdated sticker for LAMPF, or the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility, a powerful linear accelerator located at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Esequiel once worked there.) Inside the truck I see several cottonwood rounds piled on the front seat. These are the beginnings of drums, he explains, which he makes and uses in the Matachines dances. “Yo tengo uno muy grande que me dio mi hijo, en la casa.—I have a really big drum my son gave me, in the house,” he tells me. “Yo te enseño.—I’ll show you.”
Looking up the driveway, I point out the old house I admired on the way down. Esequiel tells me he was born there and that the house belonged to his father, Don Benigno Trujillo, the renowned sobador who used to work on my grandmother’s knee. Esequiel is particularly delighted when I tell him, again, how much Grandma relied on Don Benigno and praised his great skill.
“Decía mi grandma que don Benigno era el único que le ayudaba con su rodilla lastimada. No quería nada a los doctores.—She used to say Don Benigno was the only one who could help her injured knee. She didn’t like doctors at all,” I explain.
I don’t yet mention the story Grandma used to tell about Don Benigno, who was the darling of all the old women in Chimayó, with their universally bad knees. The chiste (joke) was that, while he was massaging them, Don Benigno would say to the viejitas, “La lastimada queda poco más arribita.”—The injury is just a little higher up,” and he earnestly endeavored to work his way up past their knobby knees. The women would reel him in and preserve their honor, but they didn’t seem to consider his affections lecherous and always asked him back.
“O sí, sabía mucho.—Oh yes, he knew a lot,” Esequiel agrees. He points to the house next door and says, “Allí vivía él.—He lived there.”
Esequiel and I walk over to Don Benigno’s house and launch into a discussion of my relationship to his Trujillo clan. Eventually we climb the family tree enough to find that his grandfather, Guadalupe Trujillo, from the large Trujillo family of Rincón de los Trujillos, was brother to Severiano Trujillo, who married my great-grandfather’s sister, Senaida Ortega. Thus we are connected, but only through marriage.
The Trujillo name goes way back in our family papers. The first mention comes in 1792, on a land sale from Antonio Trujillo, a resident of Abiquiú, to Salvador Medina, somewhere in Santa Cruz. Any possible link through that line, or our link through marriage several generations ago, seems tenuous and distant, but it’s good enough. “Es que por eso les decíamos primos a los Ortegas.—That’s why we called the Ortegas our cousins,” Esequiel proclaims, in reference to my grandmother’s family. Our footing as primos is secure.
“Siempre está bienvenido aquí. Tome todos los retratos que quiere.—You’re always welcome here. Take all the pictures you want,” he assures me. “Pase para adentro.—Come on in.” And he puts on water for coffee.
El maestro Ciruela, que no sabía leer y puso escuela.
Mr. Plum, who didn’t know how to read, started a school. (Said of someone who doesn’t know anything and yet wants to tell others how to do things.)
El más ciego es él que no quiere ver.
The blindest one is he who doesn’t want to see.
Él que al pobre cierra la puerta, la del cielo no halla abierta.
One who closes the door on the poor will not find the gates of heaven open.
Él que boca tiene, a Roma va.
One who has a mouth goes to Rome. (One who speaks up will go far.)
Él que come y canta, loco se levanta.
One who eats and sings gets up acting crazy.
Él que con lobos anda a aullar se enseña.
One who goes around with wolves learns how to howl.
Él que con perros se acuesta con garrapatas se levanta.
One who goes to sleep with dogs wakes up with fleas. (Bad companions will lead you astray.)
Él que con sabios anda algo se le prende.
One who goes around with wise men will learn something.
Él que da y quita, le sale una corcovita.
One who gives a gift and then takes it away gets a hump on his back.
Él que de cuarenta no está rico se queda pa’ borrico.
One who is not rich by forty will have the life of a burro. (If you don’t make it by forty you will always be poor.)
Él que del costo huye, huye del provecho.
One who runs away from the expense runs away from the benefits.
Él que en hambre vive en el hambre muere.
One who lives in hunger dies in hunger. (One who lives a miserly life dies miserable.)