Chimayó sprawls across the upper end of a mountain valley the early Spaniards called La Cañada. At its highest point, near the site of Rancho de Chimayó, the valley rises to more than 6,500 feet and sweeps downward from there to the Rio Grande, about ten miles away. The Rio Quemado flows into the town from the 13,000-foot Truchas Peaks to the northeast, and near the Rancho joins another mountain stream, the Rio Santa Cruz, which cuts a winding path through the valley floor.
Many centuries ago Puebloans gave the area a Tewa-language name meaning “superior red flaking stone.” Their term sounded to the early Spanish like “Chimayó,” and new settlers adopted the name. The landscape then and now astounds visitors. The rugged Sangre de Cristo range towering above the valley abounds in spiraling forests and lush meadows, fed by winter snows and summer thunderstorms. The lowlands along the rivers are equally verdant, but serenely bucolic in contrast to the imposing summits. The foothills of the mountains, just above the valley, are another world again—arid sandstone cliffs, eroded and almost barren. The combination of environments, at once foreboding and exhilarating, exerts an eerie magnetism.
Late 1800s. Grandma Trinidad’s wedding portrait. Arturo was raised by her.
Manuel Jaramillo must have felt that lure when he established his rancho in Chimayó in the early eighteenth century, probably in the 1720s. Manuel was the son of Roque, who came to New Mexico with his parents in 1693. Only eleven at the time, Roque served as a soldier on the trek north from Mexico City. Later he married Manuel’s mother, Petrona de Cardenas, and settled near the western end of La Cañada, not far from the Rio Grande.
Wanting land for his own family, Manuel moved east up the valley and chose a farm site on the present location of Rancho de Chimayó. It was a sparsely populated area at the time, on the fringes of the frontier, probably as forlorn as it was alluring.
Hermenegildo’s first wife, who died in childbirth.
Chimayó grew slowly over the next half century. When Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez made an official tour of the New Mexico colony in 1776, there were 71 families in the village and a population of 376. The friar reported that some of the people lived on the Rio Santa Cruz and others were dispersed to the south, constituting together a “large settlement” compared to others outside Santa Fe. He also noted that the land was productive, the orchards were numerous, and the trout fishing in the river was good.
Sometime between Manuel Jaramillo’s homesteading and the friar’s visit, Chimayó residents erected a fortified town plaza. Until recently most authorities placed the construction of the Plaza del Cerro before the 1740s and assumed it was the original center of the town, basing their views primarily on research conducted in the 1950s. Local historian Dan Jaramillo has refuted those conclusions in recent decades. In meticulous research on Chimayó history, he uncovered fresh evidence that the plaza probably dates from the 1770s, a decade when Comanche Indians were constantly raiding New Mexico.
Severely deteriorated but still standing today near the junction of highways 76 and 98, the Plaza del Cerro is one of the few surviving examples of a common form of colonial village defense. Spanish farmers liked to live on the land they tilled, in their scattered ranchos, but that made them a convenient target for Plains Indians, who posed a serious threat throughout the eighteenth century. Since the small army in Santa Fe was too distant to offer much protection, officials encouraged rural settlers to congregate in fortified towns.
The rancheros complied to the degree that the danger warranted. As in Chimayó, they built homes around a large plaza, with all windows and doors facing inward. Except for a narrow entrance, the exterior of the quadrangle was a solid adobe wall. A museum now within the old walls commemorates the importance of the plaza in village life in this period.
The fortifications provided a good measure of safety, though the farmers sometimes had to call on other resources as well. According to one old story, once when Comanches occupied the village of Truchas, just north of Chimayó, the residents sneaked back to their homes at night and stuffed strings of chile down smoking chimneys, which they then sealed. The Indians fled, victims of one of history’s first tear gas attacks.
Among the homes on the Plaza del Cerro is an old chapel, the Oratorio de San Buenaventura, locally venerated but no longer used for religious services. Many people assume it dates back to the construction of the plaza itself, making it the first chapel in Chimayó. Dan Jaramillo’s research demonstrates differently. He has found a nineteenth-century family will that places the origins of the Oratorio in the 1820s or 1830s, after the founding of El Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquípulas.
The Santuario is the most famous church in the Southwest. Many others are grander, some are equally revered, but none compares in spiritual reputation or intensity. Long before anyone thought of coming to Chimayó to eat, the small chapel made the town a place of pilgrimage.
A Place of Pilgrimage
Manuel Jaramillo may have grazed sheep a short walk from his homestead at a spot called El Potrero, Spanish for “pasture land.” The earth his flock would have trodden probably was sacred to the Puebloans from centuries before and certainly would become holy to later generations of New Mexicans. At least from the early 1800s to the present, and possibly for as long as a thousand years, people have walked great distances to the pasture on religious missions of prayer, healing, and thanksgiving.
The Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquípulas is the destination of these pilgrims today, but in the distant past Indians may have been seeking mud with curative powers from a hot spring or pool near the site of the church. Several contemporary Puebloans, including the famous potter Maria Martinez, have said the spot was an ancient shrine. According to these accounts the mud derived its therapeutic properties from the time when the twin war gods tracked and killed a giant that was devouring children. As the monster died, the earth spewed fire and smoke through ponds at El Potrero and a couple of other places, creating pools of healing mud.
Perhaps Puebloan visits to this shrine in the colonial period encouraged the Spaniards to wonder about the soil. All we know for sure is that a prominent Chimayó citizen, Bernardo Abeyta, had a religious experience around 1810 that convinced him and his neighbors that they had miraculous earth at El Potrero. Accounts of what happened vary substantially, but according to Abeyta’s granddaughter, he discovered a crucifix of Our Lord of Esquípulas in a hole in the ground. Three times he took the crucifix to the church in nearby Santa Cruz, but on each occasion it disappeared from there and returned to the spot where it was originally discovered.
Abeyta knew then that the dirt in the hole was as blessed as the crucifix, because in Central America Our Lord of Esquípulas was associated with the healing powers of earth and hot springs. Abeyta erected an ermita, or small shelter, over the holy ground and obtained permission to build a private chapel alongside. He completed the Santuario in 1816, with the ermita attached.
Some of the first pilgrims to the church were members of the Cofradía de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno, better known as the Penitente Brotherhood. Abeyta was an early leader and perhaps one of the creators of the brotherhood, which became a major religious force in New Mexico in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some people today sensationalize the Penitentes, focusing on their flagellation rites during Holy Week, when they relived the agonies of the crucifixion. That was only one aspect of their passionate faith, however. The complex fraternity was active in community affairs year-round, and its impact was clearly beneficial and humane in places like Chimayó.
Abeyta’s granddaughter said he discovered the miraculous crucifix during Lenten penances with the Penitentes. That may have helped to attract his brothers to the Santuario; certainly his position in the organization did. They in turn spread the word about the church and the blessed earth, probably contributing significantly to the numbers of early pilgrims. By the time Abeyta died in 1856, the Santuario was renowned throughout northern New Mexico.
The founder would have been surprised, though, about a change that occurred in the following decades. The chapel added a statue of the Santo Niño de Atocha to its religious icons, partially at least to match a similar santo drawing visitors to a new neighboring church. The Santo Niño was one of the most popular saints in the frontier colony, beloved for running errands of mercy at night, constantly wearing out his shoes. He was also the patron saint of pilgrims and travelers, which made him a particular favorite at the Santuario. Over time the Santo Niño’s spiritual association with the healing powers of the earth came to surpass that of the crucifix of Our Lord of Esquípulas. The transference was so complete that at this point there is even some doubt about which of the two crucifixes in the church is the original.
Thousands of people continue to come to the Santuario annually, especially during Holy Week, when many make the journey on foot from miles around. A few still bring shoes for the Santo Niño, to replace his worn ones, and most still gather some of the blessed earth from the hole under Abeyta’s ermita.
The chapel has changed little in appearance since the early nineteenth century. The adobe façade, including the two distinctive bell towers, has withstood time, aided now by a stucco finish. Benches and a floor were added to the interior, but the altar screen, retablos (paintings on flat boards), and bultos (carved statues) all date from the church’s early decades.
The religious art is intensely expressive, as passionate as you would expect of a Penitente patron. All of it was made in or near Chimayó by untrained folk artists working within village craft traditions.
Village Crafts
In the period when the Santuario was built, there may have been more retablos and bultos in New Mexico than people. Churches brimmed with these santos and every home had at least a few. The sacred images played a vital role in colonial religion, serving as intermediaries with God during a time when priests were scarce, and providing models of saintly living and suffering that inspired personal identification.
The creators of the santos were santeros, painters and sculptors who worked with simple tools and organic materials from the area. A few of the more skilled plied their craft as a trade, but many were occasional artisans, carpenters elaborating on their skills with wood, or farmers filling idle hours in the winter with devotional work.
The santeros developed a distinctive New Mexican style by 1750. They turned away from the representational conventions of Spanish and Mexican art toward a more poignant primitive symbolism. At the same time they began replacing Old World characterizations of their subjects with bold local interpretations. Their saints were portrayed in the ways they were revered on the frontier, taking on many of the features and the dress of the colonists.
Chimayó had a number of part-time santeros over the years, but little is known about them. Many of the santos in the town, including those at the Santuario, probably were made in the neighboring village of Córdova, a few miles away. Córdova established an early reputation for its work some two hundred years ago and has maintained it since.
Córdova’s leading santero in the nineteenth century was José Rafael Aragón, one of the most prolific and perhaps the most skilled of all the colonial folk artists. A carpenter who served as his assistant, José Nasario López, taught woodworking techniques to his son, José Dolores López, a talented carver “discovered” and promoted in the early twentieth century by members of the Santa Fe art colony.
George López, José Dolores’s son, attained broader recognition for the same skill. In the 1980s the National Endowment for the Arts honored him as a national treasure. Members of George’s family and other Córdova artisans continue to carry on the carving tradition, and several sell graceful unpainted pieces out of their homes, ten minutes by car from Rancho de Chimayó.
Even closer to the restaurant are several shops that specialize in Chimayó’s own special craft, weaving. The town is so identified with proficiency at the loom that all New Mexico blankets were once called Chimayós, regardless of where they were woven. Collectors today prefer the term Rio Grande to describe the regional Spanish style, but Chimayó remains the weaving center of the state, as it has been for generations.
The earliest Spanish settlers in New Mexico brought sheep with them and a solid understanding of European weaving traditions. The Puebloans were already making cotton cloth on vertical looms, but the colonists introduced horizontal looms and wool, which was warmer for clothing and more resistant to flame. Following customs of the Old World, men sheared the sheep and carded the wool, while women spun the yarn with a malacate, or spindle. They learned to collect an amole, yucca root, to wash the lanolin from the yarn, and other native plants to use for dyes. Normally men did the actual weaving, usually in the winter when their fields and flocks needed less attention.
They wove several kinds of fabric for different purposes, but blankets were the most important product, serving as a coat during the day and as a sleeping bag at night. Since they were an outer garment many months of the year, blankets became a source of pride, demonstrating the quality of a family’s wool, yarn, and design skills.
Probably a number of Chimayó’s original settlers were weavers, but the first we know about was Gabriel Ortega, born about 1729, who founded a dynasty of artisans. Every generation of his direct descendants up to the present included at least one weaver, usually more, and some of them intermarried with another family of masters, the Trujillos, who date back in Chimayó to 1759.
The Ortegas, Trujillos, and other villagers continued making blankets throughout the nineteenth century, when the craft was gradually abandoned in most of New Mexico because of the increasing availability of cheap, factory-made substitutes from the East. Over time some of the artisans began using commercial yarn, already dyed, but fathers still passed down their looms and techniques to their sons. A clearly identifiable local style emerged, which featured a solid, bold background color, abstract diamond or thunderbird motifs in the center, bands of stripes on the edges, and a strong sense of symmetry.
Levi Jaramillo (left) and Willie Jaramillo with Trinidad. The boys were Arturo’s uncles, but he grew up with them as brothers. Levi helped make tables and chairs still in use today. In front of the hacienda.
At the turn of the twentieth century most of the local weaving was still done for personal use, but that changed quickly in the following decades as the village shifted to a cash economy. The railroad first and then automobiles brought more and more tourists to New Mexico, and they provided an eager market for blankets and other products. Enterprising weavers became merchants, selling “Chimayós” along the old Route 66, in Santa Fe, and eventually in their own shops in the town itself.
Severo Jaramillo was one of the early entrepreneurs. Born in 1891, he married Teresita Trujillo and both became weavers. Their farm alone wouldn’t support them, so Severo opened a small grocery and filling station, now closed. He had his huge handmade loom in the store, and between customers he made blankets, which he sold to gas-buying travelers.
Jacobo and Isabel Trujillo set up shop in their home about the same period, next to their orchards alongside Highway 76. Jacobo was one of the most talented craftsmen of his day and frequently served as a teacher and mentor to others, including his son Irvin, who left an engineering career to open Centinela Traditional Arts with his father in 1983. They named the shop for its location on the old family homestead, the spot in previous centuries where sentinels guarded Chimayó from Indian raids. Irvin and his wife Lisa, both gifted weavers, run the gallery today.
Nicacio and Virginia Ortega founded the largest and best-known business. They became a “Traficador en Serape” around 1900 and built the current Ortega’s Weaving Shop in 1946 with their sons David, José Ramón, and Ricardo. When Nicacio died in 1964, José Ramón and David took over the shop, which the latter continued to manage with the assistance of his wife Jeanine, until her death in 1991, and their sons Andrew and Robert. At the town’s most prominent intersection, the junction of Highways 76 and 98, Ortega’s sells blankets, rugs, jackets, place mats, and other items made by scores of local artisans, mostly people supplementing the family income with part-time work.
These and similar businesses help preserve an important aspect of the Chimayó heritage. The craft of weaving in the town has changed in a number of ways over time, but it’s still a source of pride and a tangible connection to the pastoral past.
The Cherished Chile
Along with its blankets and its Santuario, Chimayó has long been known for its red chile. The reputation goes back almost a century and a half, when local farmers first began bartering their produce with Spanish settlers in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado.
Before then chile was just one of many crops, well suited to the soil, but not more important than the others for agricultural self-sufficiency. Like all of the fall harvest, it was dried for preservation, in this case in long strings, or ristras. The colonists hung the fiery red ristras from the roofs of their homes, drying them in the sun, as Rancho de Chimayó still does today.
The early farmers grew at least a little of everything they could, but beans, wheat, and potatoes didn’t do as well as chile and orchard fruits. The opposite was the case in the San Luis Valley, nearly one hundred miles north. By the middle of the nineteenth century, within a few decades of Spanish expansion into Colorado, the two areas discovered their reciprocal differences and began trading.
Shortly after the harvest, Chimayó chile growers loaded up covered wagons with produce and blankets and took off on the long journey. They traveled in a group, usually a half dozen wagons, sometimes twice that many. The annual caravans continued until World War I, even after easier transportation became available in the 1880s on the Chile Line, the railroad spur between Santa Fe and Antonito, Colorado.
The San Luis residents bartered a lot in goods for the cherished chiles. They would exchange 140 pounds of wheat or 16 pounds of beans for two of the scarlet ristras. Their potatoes fetched less, only a ristra and a half for a full sack.
Chimayó’s Colorado connection dwindled as both areas shifted to a cash economy, but chile retained its importance locally. It became the dominant money crop and brought good prices until the Great Depression of the 1930s, when a ristra plunged in value from $1 to 35 cents. Though every family in town at the time was still growing most of its own food, they all devoted a third of the land under cultivation to chile, producing ample surplus to market.
The Depression hit hard in Chimayó, and the old agricultural system wasn’t up to the strain. The population had grown beyond the ability of the land to support it, and the long-tilled soil was losing some of its fertility. Fewer families could make a living as farmers, and that became increasingly so in the decades beyond. Today many residents continue to grow their favorite crops, but it’s usually a secondary source of income rather than the primary occupation.
As Chimayó chile was declining in commercial importance, it was rising in culinary stature, due in large measure to Rancho de Chimayó. The restaurant was one of the first anywhere to employ chile some way in virtually every main dish, and the kitchen has always featured the local product when it was available in sufficient supply. It’s a business built on chile in many respects, and it has gradually inherited much of chile’s role in sustaining the Chimayó economy.
Though Chimayó has changed considerably over its three-hundred-year history, it has changed less than most towns its age. If Manuel Jaramillo, Gabriel Ortega, and Bernardo Abeyta came back today, they would readily recognize the village as their own. They would notice the growth of the town in area and population, climbing toward 5,000 residents, but key characteristics would not differ substantially. Abeyta would find the Santuario much the same and would be pleased about the number of pilgrims still visiting. Ortega would appreciate the contemporary weaving. Jaramillo would like the look of Rancho de Chimayó on his land, and would enjoy the chile, close in taste to his own. Despite cars, televisions, and other modern intrusions, the three would feel at home, comfortable with Chimayó’s continuing traditions.
Late 1960s. Florence and Arturo by the hacienda. LEN BOUCHÉ
