Santa Cruz, California

My parents both came to San Francisco in the Summer of Love, Carlos was a Chicano abstract expressionist painter and Patricia was an English/Irish modern dancer. Carlos was studying at the Art Institute and Patricia was dancing with a cutting edge dance troupe. My father's family was as disappointed with the marriage as my mother's family was, both for cultural reasons. By the time I was four years old there was a lot of social upheaval happening in the form of mass demonstrations and full on riots, so my parents decided to move to Santa Cruz, an idyllic beach resort town just 90 miles south of San Francisco. Santa Cruz (Spanish for Holy Cross) was settled by Spanish soldiers, missionaries and colonists in the early 18^th century. The near perfect climate, Boardwalk amusement park and beautiful beaches made it a popular vacation destination for families all over the greater Bay Area. 

When I was a kid I had my mother’s blondish hair and mostly Anglo features, so the only way anyone would suspect I was Latino would be if they knew what my last name was. I ‘passed’ for the most part. In retrospect I can see where teachers may have discriminated against me because of my surname. 

The only Latinos I saw around me there were Mexicans, who I didn’t identify with at all since they looked nothing like my family. Santa Cruz prides itself of being ultra-liberal, but still most residents held pretty negative views of Mexicans, who were really the only significant minority population. Just twenty minutes south of Santa Cruz was the predominately Mexican/Mexican-American city of Watsonville. Watsonville always had a slightly scary reputation for dangerous Mexican gang activity. Just over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the East was San Jose, which is where the serious looking heavily tattooed Cholos that I encountered at the Beach Boardwalk came from. Anglos in Santa Cruz were predisposed to thinking of Hispanics as either poor and uneducated farm workers or scary criminal Cholos, so I think I also picked up these stereotypes. 

I remember in 4^th grade being called a Wetback by a kid on the school bus. In retrospect it’s pretty ironic that a third or fourth generation Irish/German kid would be calling a 13^th generation Spanish-American kid a Wetback. It was made pretty obvious to me that being Mexican was not viewed as a good thing.

     Each year brought more taquerias to the sleepy resort town, as Mexicans from hot dusty Watsonville started to encroach on the outrageously expensive beach town of Santa Cruz. It was clear that this massive influx of Latinos was quickly changing the cultural make up of Santa Cruz and this wasn’t a welcome change for a lot of native Santa Cruzans. The main industry in Santa Cruz County was agriculture (both the legal and illegal kinds) so Mexican farmworkers were essential for the economy. I don’t remember meeting any Puerto Rican or Spanish people during my time there, and I just never really self-identified as Latino. My father was a Chicano, but I had no context for what that meant. My grandmother told me that we were Spanish, NOT Mexican, as if that were a bad thing to be. She told me not to tell Mexican kids that I was Spanish because they wouldn’t trust me, because of Spain’s rocky history with Mexico. According to my father’s DNA test it appears that Grandma Pacheco had more than her fair share of Native blood after all.

    My father suffered from severe depression all of his life and was on SSI because of this. As a child I was ashamed of his situation, which I somehow also associated with the fact that he was Chicano. Carlos also suffered from severe social anxiety disorder and he always thought that strangers were staring and/or giving him dirty looks because he looked Chicano. Now I see that he might have actually been correct part of the time. I could pass for white, but he could not. My grandmother had married an Anglo man after my grandfather had left the family to start a new one with a much younger wife and I think she definitely saw the social benefits of assimilation/passing. She quickly converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism. Gandama Pacheco had porcelain skin and white hair, and spoke with a slight New Mexican sing-songy accent, but few suspected that she had a Spanish maiden name. Public school teachers told her not to speak Spanish to her children at home so that the kids wouldn’t grow up with a noticeable accent. This was very common in those days, and it still happens even today. Now I see this as the tragedy that it is.

 I had very mixed feeling about my Latino identity growing up. I was proud of the family's New Mexican culture, which I associated with my grandmother’s house where I spent weekends. Since the Spanish language was no longer part of our identity my grandmother (who never lost her own Spanish fluency) passed on her culture in other ways; she made her enchiladas flat, baked biscochito cookies and put out luminarias every X-mas, burned pinon incense in little Adobe house incense holders, had Don Quixote statues around the house, and she would give fresh pecan and pinon nuts as gifts after trips to New Mexico. She would tell me, “We don’t dance the Cucaracha or hit piñatas, we are SPANISH, not Mexican.” This may have only partly true, but it really gave me the impression that I had nothing in common with the Mexicans that lived around me in Santa Cruz. It has taken me decades to realize that I am in fact a Chicano like my father Carlos Antonio Valdez, and the fact that my mother is Anglo doesn’t dilute this truth in any way. 

This Chicano studies class has helped me see how all the pieces to my identity as a Latino fit together into a whole. Having a more better historical understanding of the struggles that Latinos in general and my family in particular have gone through has helped me to better understand my place in this society. I now see exactly how I fit into the greater Latino diaspora, whereas before I only saw my own family’s history and struggles. I now see my place in the world as it relates to my musical career, my own family, the Chicano movement, and to the future of my country. I no longer feel like so much of an outsider, who identifies only with a tiny ethnic/cultural group of Spanish settlers in the mountains of Northern New Mexico/Southern Colorado. I identify now with pinatas, burritos, ropa vieja, papusas, Dia de los Muertes, Paella, Flamenco music, Cumbia and Merengue as much as I identified before with green chile, adobe houses, chile ristras and the high desert. I've learned that I have much more in common with Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Central Americans than I ever suspected. In the past my Latino identity was something that was highly limiting and it kept me from appreciating the culture that was all around me. It was a badge of shame rather than something to be proud of. I am so glad that I've had the time to with this class to explore this newly expanded sense of Latino cultural identity. It has opened up a new world for me. It has given me more of a sense of purpose and direction as an artist and as a man.

Barcelona-Spain

Barcelona always held a sort of fascination for my family. It was where they saw the seat of Spanish culture, it was also likely another way to distinguish themselves from Mexican culture. This view of Spanish culture as being higher than Mexican culture was most likely a remnant of the highly stratified social caste system of the early Spanish colonialists. Spaniards born in Spain occupied the highest rank, then Spaniards born in the new world, and so on. My grandmother still spoke an old Castillian dialect that would surprise the Mexicans in California when she would converse with them. Maybe it was because my grandmother came from a wealthy family (by local standards at least), but she always carried herself in an aristocratic way. Once in a while I would hear her say some shockingly racist things, which is not too uncommon a person of her age. She would tell me to look for a nice Spanish girl to marry, which I did. A white girl would do in a pinch, but a Mexicana, black or Asian girl was less then optimal in her eyes. Just look at the problems my father had with my less than stable white mother! 

 It's funny than both sides of the family saw the other in the same way.... a lesser social class; less educated, intelligent, attractive, and certainly less respectable. The rednecks on my mother's side (from Little Rock) would make off-handed comments about 'those damn Mexicans'. Of course they didn't see the distinctions that my family saw between themselves and Mexican migrants. This tension definitely created problems for my parents' marriage, there was just no support for it from either side of the family. I was caught in between. I didn't feel like I was really a bonafied white American, like my friends, and I was even less identified with the Mexican culture that I grew up around in Santa Cruz. I always felt like I was just passing as white and not even recognized as Latino by the Mexicans. I was a 'half-breed', which is a truly awful term to hear as a child. 

Barcelona was a symbol for this ideal of the high Spanish culture that supposedly set our family apart. It's actually very common for New Mexicans who come from old Spanish families to deny that they have any native blood at all, when more often than not they have significant amounts. The plan was to take a family vacation there before my grandmother died, but unfortunately that never happened. Finally I made the trip there with my wife in 2006, then went again just two years later.

Barcelona is a truly amazing city to behold. The architecture makes New York City look like Tijuana. We saw most of Gaudi's work, the Park Guel was like a fantastic dream. Of course the food was spectacular, especially my buddy Pere Soto's mom's fideo seafood Paella. I finally saw what real Spanish culture was like and I identified with it in a way that I hadn't even felt when I lived in Santa Fe, NM. Spaniards are a proud people, they are proud of their art, architecture, music, cuisine, achievements and values. They have good reason to be. It was difficult to leave each time. I recorded a CD in Oaxaca with players from Barcelona this year that's being released next year at a CD release party at the Jamboree in BCL. Hopefully I can get over there for that.


I think my experiences in Barcelona gave me a new sense of cultural legitimacy that I never felt before. I finally saw first hand the culture that my family held as an ideal my entire life. The experienced definitely broadened my sense that I came from a culture with a rich heritage, but it also made me realize that I was NOT in fact Spanish, but a Chicano. I belonged more here than I would ever belong over there. I certainly considered emigrating to BCL at a point, but realized that I'd miss the US if I ever did. I'm also not prone to napping, like to eat dinner early, don't eat pork, and I enjoy have a large place to live....so Spain is just not an ideal fit.  :-)

Santa Fe, New Mexico

  In 1995 I followed a girlfriend to Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was like moving to a entirely different country, in fact the official city motto is 'the city different'. It was the land of cowboys, Indians, jet-setters, new age healers, cosmopolitan tourists, artists and Gypsies. At the time it was the world's third biggest art market and one of the world's top travel destinations. For me it was like going back to my homeland because my family came over from Northern Spain and settled in the San Luis valley thirteen generations ago. I had never really been around Spanish people growing up except my immediate family. Growing up in California there were plenty of Mexicanos around, but I never really identified with them. They didn't look like my family or seem to share the same culture.

   Once I got to Santa Fe I saw for the first time just how New Mexican my family actually was. It was really the first time that I felt like I was a part of the culture in the place I lived. Unfortunately the Jazz scene wasn't that happening but I soon discovered the thriving Flamenco community there. I was taken with Flamenco in a big way. I'd played in Salsa, Cumbia and Merengue bands for years but Flamenco was different. The groove was incredibly deep, the emotional energy made almost every Jazz group sound like Lawrence Welk in comparison and then the dance put it over the top. When I watched the young Sevillian gypsies dance it made me want to trade all my musical training to be able to do what they did. They were improvising at an amazingly high level and I'd never seen anything like it in my life.

Living in Santa Fe reorganized my self of identity significantly. For the first time in my life I felt part of the dominant cultural group rather than feeling stuck between worlds and finally felt like I had deep roots in a place.The people looked and spoke like my family, they ate the same food and celebrated holidays in the same way. For the first time in my entire life I felt like I belonged and was not seen as the 'other' by those around me. I finally blended in!! This is a concern for many mixed race children and I was no different. Instead of giving me my dry cleaning after giving them my last name they would then need my first name to find my order. Even little things like this made me feel a deep sense of belonging that I'd never felt before. Those people understood my ethnic background, they also felt a connection with Spain, but they also were influenced by Mexican and Native Pueblo culture. These were my people, or at least my father's people. The pendulum was swinging the other direction and found myself I distancing myself from the English/Irish southern culture the my my came out of and instead identifying with New Mexican culture wholeheartedly.

   The Santa Fe locals definitely had the same relaxed attitude that my father and uncle seemed to have, they were just naturally 'cool', until you got them really mad, then look out! I loved my time living in Santa Fe and still miss the place a lot. I still have dreams of retiring to a small rancho somewhere between Santa Fe and Taos. Who knows, it might even happen someday. Unfortunately my music career would suffer if I ever moved back, and I don't think I'm quite ready to retire from playing Jazz saxophone.

It still seems like I left my heart in Santa Fe.

   

If you're interested in ordering a DVD of the entire program contact me at: d.valdez@comcast.net

Gerado Moreno can be reached at:
gerard@gerardmoreno.com

Luz and Mita Valdez

My great-great-grandmother Mita Martinez Valdez was born high in the mountains. She had blond hair and blue eyes. Indians liked to kidnap little blond girls so her parents married her (in name only) to an old farmer who lived in the San Luis valley. Mita soon fell in love with a town boy, my great-great-grandfather Luz Valdez. Mita used to dream that the old man would die so she could marry Luz, and eventually he did. After they married he established a farm and Luz opened a general store in San Luis. They had three children: Octavian, Rebeca and another child.   

  When it became obvious that Octavian was no farmer, Luz went to Pueblo and qualified to adopt a little red-headed boy, Uncle Frank. When Rebeca died, Mita and Luz took her daughter Millie in as well. Octavian dressed in a suit every day. He had Bella and Aunt Millie running to make sure all his clothes was perfect. The nuns loved Octavian for his heavenly violin playing.  He gave the masses an extra beauty.

Octavian eventually married and bought a house in town. He had two sons. One day an excited Aunt Millie came after mom to help save Octavian. He had been having an affair with a farmer's wife in San Acasio and Octavian's wife was on her way there with a loaded pistol. The sheriff, a local merchant, Bella and Millie all went after Octavian. When they arrived Octavian was in the yard and his wife was still in her car. The sheriff sat them down and they all had a drink, and resolved to drop the matter. Later in the day when Octavian came home, he crawled into the yard and up the steps and begged to be forgiven. Mom witnessed the whole thing. When he died you could smell the alcohol from the front gate. His two sons moved away and were not heard from again.

Mr. Taylor of San Pablo & Mr. Joseph of San Luis

Mr. Taylor, a black man, used to come in and talk to Manuel in his store. Bella remembers one conversation about Mr. Taylor's trail and acquittal on manslaughter charges. Manuel was sheriff for a while in Costilla County. 

Mr. Taylor, traveling alone through Colorado, had hired on to help build the new dam in Costilla County.  He saw the beautiful, unbiased people, the communal forests and meadows and decided to stay.

He married and learned how to speak Spanish.  Bella remembers him at the dances. He was very popular. His history is recounted in the Taylor family genealogies.

His family lived next door to Manuel's grand kids. My great-uncle Reggie was Esteban Taylor's best friend. Reggie said that Esteban Taylor was one of the handsomest men he'd ever met, with Spanish features and black skin. Esteban married the George girl. Esteban's son and Reggie's son now live in Denver and are best friends.

Mr. George was a Lebanese man who managed the theater. He had asked a priest in Denver for a good place to raise his two girls by himself. He brought his family to begin their new lives in San Luis and who should the old soldier meet in the street but Manuel Pacheco. They had fought in the trenches in France in World War I courtesy of the U.S. army. They couldn't believe the co-incidence of meeting again half way around the world, in an isolated Hispanic village in America.

Gunshots at Dinnertime

At night Manuel would often have Bella and Gus clean his guns. They would take them apart, clean and oil them, put them back together, and take them to Manuel for inspection.

A few months later Manuel, Adelaida, Bella, and Gus were having dinner in the kitchen when they heard loud shots coming from the sheep area in back of the house.  Manuel looked out, then got his rifle and took careful aim at the dogs.  He told his family to get on the floor as he could not tell what was going to happen, and calmly shot the dogs, then went out there and confronted the man.  The argument began to draw a crowd and the sheriff was called (Manuel was not the sheriff at that time). 

The sheriff said that the place to settle this was in court.  Manuel took Mr. Madrid to court and won a judgment against him and an apology for Manuel.  The man apologized but never paid the judgment.  Mr. Madrid was Bela and Gus's teacher, and continued snide remarks about their parents in the classroom.  Adelaida was on the school board and called Mr. Madrid on his behavior.  They told him to remember that the children were not to blame.  He was instructed to cease.

The Barron Clan of Walsenburg

The Barron Clan of Walsenburg

  My grandmother Bella used to spend weekends with the Barrons.  The entire clan owned a three story building in Walsenburg. Adelaida used an old World War 1 German helmet to hang potted plants from. Uncle Fred Barron had Spanish novels shipped from Spain.

Manuel and Adelaida Barron Pacheco buy an Indian handmaiden

Manuel was married to Adelaida Barron Pacheco, an artist who sold her paintings in Taos, New Mexico. The Barrons had once owned the hotel on the plaza in Taos and the entire block it was on. The old man lost it when he signed the wrong document, one giving ownership to a conniving local businessman. Mother Barron would cry when she talked of it.

The entire Barron clan then moved to Walsenberg, Colorado and began again. Uncle Fred became a barber and businessman. Aunt Lola became a podiatrist and treated patients in the barber chair in the back of Uncle Fred's barber shop. Another brother became a policeman. Uncle Pepe became a lawyer, judge, and state senator from Walsenberg.

Adelaida was not a hands on homemaker and Manuel had a maid. She was an Indian girl named

Guadalupe. She was a Navaho who was taken in reprisal for a raid on San Pablo when two Hispanic children were kidnapped. She worked for Manuel all her life. Guadalupe helped raise my grandmother and Manuel's son Augustino. She and her sister later owned the San Luis hotel.

    

Manuel used to say that he bought her for $600. Actually slavery was outlawed in Costilla County at the end of the civil war. All slaves were required to go to the county court house and declare whether they wanted to stay or go back to their tribes.  

       

Manuel also used to say that raising Indian children in the Catholic faith was an old New Mexico tradition.

My grandmother Betty remembers Guadalupe working quietly when Manuel entertained, then offering animated opinions of various guests after they left.

Betty said that when Guadalupe, after much debate, accepted the Catholic religion. Mom says that it was the teachings about sin, and its deleterious effects on a person’s centered-ness that swayed her.

Lunch with Teddy Roosevelt

Grandma Pacheco (Betty as I knew her) remembers Manuel pulling up to the house in one car and Teddy in another. They sat in the parlor a bit while Adelaida, mom, the neighbor girl Tillie, and Guadalupe prepared the meal and set the table.  Then Adelaida, Guadalupe, and the girls came in and met Teddy. He was very nice to them.
 

  Adelaida had short notice so there was no time to roast meat for the meal.  They had meat loaf and yams. Teddy asked about the initial ‘P’ on the dishes.  Manuel said that they belonged to his former wife. That embarrassed Adelaida and Manuel explained that he had been widowed. He said he had educated his two girls in the best boarding schools and colleges, and they were both now school teachers.

After the main course Adelaida sent the girls over to Tillie's house.  The adults then discussed politics. After lunch Manuel took Teddy up to see his ranch.  Teddy had liked it.

Manuel Pacheco (1857-1941) and Teddy

The handsome gentleman in the center of this photo is my great-great-grandfather Manuel Pacheco. A few steps to his right is president Teddy Roosevelt. This photo was taken during Teddy's last tour of the American west.  It is displayed in the Colorado state capitol rotunda in Denver.

When presidents visited Colorado a detail of county sheriffs were provided as security. They hunted, fished, and had a great time. Manuel was part of that security. Manuel's brother was state senator from Taos, New Mexico. His brother-in-law was state senator from Walsenberg, Colorado. He was active in the state Republican party. Teddy and Manuel had politics, the military, and hunting in common. They became friends.

My grandmother saw Teddy three times. Once in San Luis on Main Street, when Teddy walked around smiling and shaking hands.  The second time Teddy came in to Manuel's store in San Pablo when she was there.  The third time Teddy came to lunch with the Pacheco family as described in this post.

Manuel displayed photos of just himself with Teddy Roosevelt and also with President Taft in his general store in San Pablo.  Manuel owned the general store, a couple of farms there, and a ranch on the ventero, or windy place up towards the mountains. He owned big tracts of forest land, he was sheriff, he was the county supervisor, he chartered a bank and established a farmer's co-op. Manuel never had a day of schooling and taught himself to read while was working as a cowboy on Texas to Montana and back cattle drives. In WWII Manuel fought in the front line trenches in France.

My grandmother told my father that Manuel came to her in her dreams when he started to record her stories on tape several years ago in order to preserve family history. He said - "I understand you're writing a book about me. I'm a politician- don't write anything bad about me". Issabella said that she wouldn't. He said ,"Not like some others, huh?"  

Manuel was an avid reader even though he had never set foot in a school.  He'd take Bela with him to Alamosa with a list of subjects and have the bookstore select books for him on them.

Manuel was an avid horseman and played an Indian game much like polo called Chueco. He broke his nose playing it.

Manuel was respected in the valley, and envied.  No one else in Costilla County was a friend to presidents.  No one else had two relatives who were state senators.  No one else owned farms, ranches, forests, chartered banks, was so active in politics.  Why could Manuel do it and they could not?  He was truly envied. The people in Costilla County had nicknames for each other.  The Pacheco’s were called the aristocrats.

The morally flawed (according to family history) Vigil family for instance were called “las hotas” - initially for the letter J, then changed to the letter h – “las hotas”.  Hota is a dirty word in Spanish.  The Vigil family, from the old man down, schemed to get Manuel in some way.  Although the Vigil children went to school with the Pacheco children and were friends with them, Manuel used to say that the best policy towards the  Vigil’s was simply not have anything to do with them.   

Mr. Vigil's daughter Helen lied that she was pregnant to get Manuel's son Augustino to marry her.

  

His son Jack married Manuel's granddaughter Bonnie.  She supported him through medical school.  Then on the day he graduated he punched her in the face and moved out.

When Manuel's granddaughter Bela went back from California to visit San Luis, old man Vigil's daughter Helen took mom out to a little adobe shack and pointedly showed her where Bela's father Virgil, Manuel’s son Virgil, had died.  Mom did not bat an eye at that.  She understood Helen, and all the chemistry that had gotten them to that point.