More on San Miguel del Vado

Just before Christmas, in a post titled "Enclosure in New Mexico" I discussed the fate of the village of San Miguel del Vado after the case Sandoval v. US was decided against the villagers by the US Supreme Court.  In 1983, Victor Westphall's Mercedes Reales: Hispanic Land Grants of the Upper Rio Grande Region concluded that San Miguel was reduced to "nothing at all."  In that earlier blog post, I cited a 1991 article by Emlen Hall which came to a very different conclusion.  He wrote that the people simply made formal claims to their common land through the land office, and then, in order to secure those claims, started living on out there in the country instead of in the village.

In 1989 I wrote an unpublished paper titled "Alienation of Ejidos:  A New Mexican Ley Lerdo?  My main point was that the seizure of the common lands of the New Mexico community grants was ideologically driven and intended to turn land into capital and people into workers.  In my story "White Caps" the conversation between Surveyor General Paterson and Territorial Assemblyman Herrera is an attempt to bring this conflict to light.

But their next confrontation, in the story "Warrior Princess" has few words and the immediate possibility of massive and deadly violence.  It takes place during a procession for the village's feast day, the Fiesta de San Miguel.  Magdalena, the wife of Assemblyman Herrera, has refurbished the church's small hand carved statue of the Archangel Michael and she feels possessed by the warrior angel to confront the marshal's posse and prevent the violence.  What is unsaid is that the very procession itself, and the continued existence of the church, serve as a way to perpetuate the community.  In an era in which the villagers have moved to their grazing lands and an Anglo government in Santa Fe is usurping  the local Brotherhood's power, the allegiance to their saint may be the strings collective obligation they have left.

That statue was lost to collectors around the same time.  But the village bought a newer one, seven-and-a-half feet tall.  It was in a style unlike what their grandparents had admired, but one must conclude that they found it more powerful and more compelling.  When the current parishioners noticed it in a storeroom in 1998, they called on well-know religious artisans to restore it and to return it to a place of honor in the church's sanctuary.

The procession of the small woodcarving of San Miguel in the story "Warrior Princess" takes place on the Feast Day of St. Michael: September 29.  In 1906 that fell on a Saturday.  In 1999, when the giant woodcarving was processed and returned to the church, it was done on September 25, a Monday.  There was no armed conflict.  But the number of people show that the community has survived and is something indeed; not "nothing at all."

The information regarding the 1998-99 restoration and procession comes from Peter Eller, "Restoration of the Church Statue in the New Mexico Village of San Miguel del Vado" in the Summer 2000 issue of Tradición Revista.  The photo shown here is by Peter López.