Memories of the Morada
To the Editor:
As I was growing up in San Acacio, Colorado, I remember going to the Morada in San Pablo, Colorado with my brother-in-law’s father and family, Senor Patricio Sanchez from Canon de Chama during Holy week. Every day and every night we had to pray the rosary at his home and we knelt for hours praying for all the living and then for all the dead, name by name. We did not dare to move while in prayer, ask my sister who is married to Patricio’s son, Floyd. At that one time in remembrance, my sister Debbie was kneeling on a small rock that just happened to be on the linoleum. I will always remember the look on her face when we were finally dismissed from prayer.
Those will always be beautiful memories for me during the time of the morada and helping Karen Sanchez, daughter of Patricio Sanchez, in cooking for the men.
Also about 18 years ago, I remember on Good Friday walking from San Francisco (El Rito) to San Luis with groups taking turns carrying the cross and singing alabados and praying. The people from San Luis had booths along the ten mile walk giving the gente (people) water and goodies so they could keep their strength to continue walking to the church along with Father Pat Valdez. This was my very first time walking with my Tio Checho (Floyd Martinez) de San Acacio and a memory I will always cherish. Once we arrived at the church, we gathered inside with more prayers and then we continued our walk to the Shrine of the Stations of the Cross on the Mesa, overlooking the Valle of San Luis. With each station, we stopped in prayer and sang until we reached the top of the Shrine and entered the most beautiful chapel where we ended our prayers for Good Friday.
I wished that all the young people now adays could experience the beautiful culture of Holy Week and participate in the times of the morada. I am 52 years old and live in Denver, Colorado but the memory of those days will always remain in my mind and in the heart of the people of El Valle as well as in mine.
Thank you Mr. Archuleta for the wonderful article of the Penitentes because it brought back beautiful memories of so many people who have gone to serve the Lord.
Respectfully yours,
Wanda Rael (Daughter of Alfonso and Theresa “Martinez” Rael)
Editor’s note: The above letter was originally posted as a comment on our website in response to an article in our March 2010 issue, Los Penitentes Del Valle by Ruben E. Archuleta.
Of Fly Ash and Concrete
To the Editor:
Really enjoyed reading about concerned writers from bashing coal to stopping power lines from crossing private lands. The coal issue is full of “expert advice” by people who are not qualified experts like Prof. P. Kumar Mehta and Dr. Langley of Nova Scotia, as to using all the fly ash that has landfills full to slash cement production. Fly ash is not toxic unless the TVA and others were also burning hazardous waste with the coal. Fly ash-cement concrete highways would easily last over 100 years (shotcrete this stuff on the opera house walls!) and it does not constantly release oil from its make up as does hot-oil-mix “asphalt” roads which have been quietly polluting water for 100 years now; all of this BS oil eventually finds our creeks. BS oil is the very dreggs of oil refining, containing the worst combinations of heavy metals, etc.
As for that powerline, Tesla fully demonstrated wireless transmission of electricity at the World’s Fair more than 100 years ago; Rockerfellow-Rothschild interests were against it, only considering profit. Hydrogen as a fuel has been perfected many times; ‘tis sad that the inventors suddenly died; the closest thing that is of this tech is the water torch (www.watertorch.com). Check out Bruce King’s book on concrete and other books on the Pantheon in Rome. This 1,885 year old building is all-concrete construction without rebar reinforcement of any kind (rusting rebar cracks the concrete and ruins it.) The Pantheon dome is 143 feet across and we cannot duplicate it yet! Scientists are busy studying written documents on “Roman concrete” and others have been busy for about 40 years studying this concrete under powerful microscopes, hoping to fully understand this incredible building material that is almost indestructible, and our dear government used fly ash to build the mighty dams out West, but never intends for this safe material to be used by the taxpayer – stick houses until every tree is cut down. A concrete dome-unit home built of this stuff will never burn, blow away, rot, crack or even mildew. Covered with 6-8 feet of dirt it will never freeze inside without any man-made heat, no matter if it is 50 below outside! And yeah, I like your mag even without glossy pictures!
Ken Malone in hot, humid Texas
(Got any jobs up there in the high country?)
Thoughts on Arizona’s Immigration Laws
To the Editor:
My wife and I went to the Grand Canyon last month and, as always, the grandeur and natural beauty were breathtaking. On our way home we stopped in Page, AZ to visit a friend and we hiked some gorgeous country in that part of the state, including near Lake Powell. Arizona’s immigration bill had just been passed by their statehouse and was awaiting the governor’s signature, so it was the dominant news story while we were there.
I don’t claim to have the solution to illegal immigration, but unless you’re Native American, you or your forefathers immigrated here at some point in the past and even if you are Native American, your ancestors also immigrated here, just not as recently. Every country has to have control over its borders and control over who enters, and we are certainly no different. But it doesn’t seem right to me to uproot and deport a family who came here trying to improve their situation and has been working, paying taxes and playing by the rules.
Hopefully, whatever comes out of Washington’s current efforts at immigration reform will include some sort of path for such families to become citizens. People have been moving from one place to another, whether for better hunting grounds or for better jobs and a better future for their kids, since the beginning of mankind and will continue to do so, either legally or illegally. Whatever your nationality, your forebears probably suffered discrimination when they got here. They were probably called any number of derogatory terms to denigrate their ancestry, and were probably relegated to low paying, menial jobs, and may have lived in overcrowded tenements in an inner city ghetto. If your ancestry is black, your ancestors were kidnapped and brought here on a slave ship and treated as property and not even considered fully human by our laws and by many people. If you are Native American, your ancestors were already here when the whites arrived but were soon rounded up, removed from their homes and relocated to the most inhospitable parts of this country.
When Calvin Coolidge told Congress in 1923 that “America must be kept American,” everyone understood that his definition of “American” did not include Mexicans, Japanese or Eastern Europeans, and basically only meant Northern Europeans such as English, Irish and Scandinavians. This pervasive racism was reflected in the Comprehensive Immigration Act, signed by Coolidge in 1924. So the spirit of racism in Arizona’s “papers please” law is, sadly, nothing new to this country. But what strikes me about today’s situation is not that it is anything new in this country, but that it seems to be centered, at least for now, around Arizona.
I realize that racism is equally disgusting whether it’s directed at blacks in Montgomery or Hispanics in Phoenix, but it strikes me as particularly disturbing when it occurs somewhere as beautiful as Arizona. To me, it’s almost like seeing a pile of discarded trash on the side of the road, with majestic mountain peaks in the distance. Arizona is a state that has so much going for it, with its rich history of many different native tribes covering thousands of years, and more recently, Spanish explorers, missionaries, trappers, traders, and prospectors, resulting in a diversity of cultures and perspectives.
I wouldn’t trade Colorado for anywhere else, but Arizona does possess more than its share of magnificent natural beauty, and it seems particularly disturbing to me to see racism and the politics of division enter into a place that could be an example for the rest of the country on how to tap into their diversity rather than use it as a wedge to drive people apart.
Our country has always been a melting pot of peoples and cultures from around the planet and I’ve always thought that this diversity is what makes us a strong nation. We truly are a nation of immigrants – just look around. We have so many peoples, with many backgrounds and many perspectives and viewpoints, resulting in a stronger union than if we were more one dimensional. I believe the reason this country has been a leader in innovation, new ideas, and new ways of thinking outside the box is directly due to our diversity.
As I said earlier, I’m no immigration expert and I don’t claim to have the solution to our immigration problems, but I do think that anyone who would try to diminish the strengths of our multiculturalism or play into the politics of diversity, racism and an “us versus them” mentality is going down a road that will only make us weaker as a country, not stronger.
Dick Carney, Coaldale, CO
