¡Colores!; 1006; Recuerdos de Los Duranes

You You You You

You You You You You You

You In 1692, colonists from New Spain came to this land called Remote Beyond Compare. In the 1700s others followed and built small towns or plazas along the Middle Rio Grande Valley.

The main plaza was the Via de Albuquerque. To the north was the Plaza del Señor San José de los Duranes, a farming community founded by the Durán family in the mid 1700s. In my father, José de los Duranes, he built the house, my grandmothers. And we live here since then, all our lives. The area evolved into a rich ethnic mix. Today, the Durán remains an active vital community. This peaceful neighborhood is in startling contrast to the fast-paced life around it. The Durán has preserved its 18th century roots while surrounded by a 21st century city.

One time we were all sitting in the ditch, we cut a watermelon and broke it there and we were eating watermelon. Here comes this man in a bicycle and he says, I remember that so clearly, he says, oh, I was just passing by and I saw you eating that watermelon. I just stopped by to eat, you know, to get a piece. And my mom says, you pass by every day. Why don't you stop by when you're home and also? I eat green chili every day. And I was making some green chili and they said, my daughter says, no wonder you're so healthy, you eat chili every day. And I think I won't live without chili, green chili already. Los Duránes was on the Camino Real. This old house may have been a paraje or a rest stop.

Some of the houses in Los Duránes are very old. There are families here whose ancestors started with the community and gave the streets their name. People are born, they live and die in the same home on the same land. And this is my mother's homeland. Her grandfather was a Rafael Agabaldón and he's the one that settled this valley and the road out here is named for him. We had several acres under cultivation and mainly all south of fields and I used to help with the irrigation. Life in early Los Duránes, depended on the valley land and the river's water, crops were irrigated. Literally covered with water by a system of ditches called asecyas.

The Los Duránes, asecya madre, the mother ditch, still in use, dates back to the beginning of the 18th century. A mayor domo or ditch boss was elected by the community to allocate the water, which was contained and released by a system of compuertas, of gates, and to coordinate the annual cleaning and maintenance of the asecyas. Every year, the second, they would come. Everybody had to go to all the farmers. They would clean out the area of what you call it all the way, you know, all the farmers that would get together. They would upon you had to go on, you know. We get all the neighbors together on one day or two days work with a bigger shower. Floods devastated homes, which were rebuilt again and again. We used to hear the water roaring at night. We'd hear the waves. It was kind of like the ocean, you might say. It was very quiet at night and you could just hear that water rolling down the real granny.

Bad drainage created marshes and fields became waterlogged and unusable. After a few years, the conservancy came in and took over. Then we didn't have to dig the ditches anymore. In the 1930s and 1940s, the middle rigged on the conservancy district drained the swamps. They redesigned the ditch system and they reclaimed the land. In 1880, the railroad-builder's terminal and shops and a new albuquerque appeared about two miles east of old albuquerque. With it came factories, foundries, saw mills, service industries and jobs. If a saw mill, they worked there and they had a doctor for the family. So that was one good thing, you know.

They had a doctor for the family. If we had a pregnant, had a baby, the doctor would come and meet $20 per if it was a girl. 21 if it was a boy. We had to hold every morning. Like in the summertime, get up early in the morning and go out there until 10 o'clock, come back and rest and go back up at 4 o'clock. It was dark. And we used to carry the produce that we grew and our shoulders right here carry it down to the house. It was hard to maintain a family on a small farm. So many people from Los Duranes worked outside the community. They tended their land. They tended animals and homes before and after 10 or 12 hour work days, six days a week. My dad used to wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning, go feed the horses and apply care and get ready to go to work. Then come in the evening, work on the fields, irrigation, you know, with the whole cutting weeds, just busy all the time.

When I was single, I used to work everywhere, laundry, like Celsius laundry, sanitary laundry. I used to work at the Albrado Hotel and I used to work at Kremlin and I held in hotel clean rooms. All that I used to work a lot when I was single. My mother used to wash clothes and iron for 75 cents a day, you know, all that was a lot of work. And children too had their share of chores to do. I was about 11 years old. My grandfather would put the raise right behind me and I'd get behind the plow and cry all day long. But kept on going all day long till the chores got done. I loved helping my dad in the truck. I would help him with the bales of hay and then stack him up in the garage. And then we called it Lakochera, the garage.

And of course the chickens were always loose so they would lay their eggs all over the bales of hay so we had to go down and look in search and for eggs. I just started playing hooky all the time and then my father found out about it and took me out of school and put me to work at the farm for 50 cents a day, for 50 cents an hour. Homes were often hand-built, one room at a time of Adobe's. We moved into the south when I got married. It was in 47. The floors were dirt. The vehicles were every time the car passed, the dirt will fall down, you know. When children married, the land was redeivided so each strip had access to water. Then another room with an outside door was added to the house. What I did is after I built a couple of rooms for my, I had it on to my mother's house, I met my wife and we got married, we got to live there in one of the rooms here for a couple of years. The extended family was good for children who had a grandparent or an aunt to take care of them while parents worked.

The environment for children as I remember was just very peaceful, very calm, very lovely. They always knew they had someone that they could go to. Even if a lot of times they didn't have mothers or fathers had died, neighbors were always available or relatives. And that was my, I guess, favorite memory of always being so comfortable and so loved and taken care of. I started in the third grade at San Felipe Catholic School. The school was converted from the old courthouse. It has been, since been destroyed in a new and built. Formal education was almost unknown until the late 1800s when schools began to appear and children were doomed to attend. The old school, they only had, I think, about eight rooms and no gas. We had some wood stoves, you know.

Those four waters, big ones like that, and we had a little check on the back. And the Hancock Company from Albuquerque from the city of Albuquerque used to bring them some wood and coal, and I used to bring them to the rooms. You know, and put them to the store so we could get warm. We had electricity. I remember we had electricity, but no gas. I went to the old Catholic school very meltdown for the sisters are now. School was sometimes fun, but it could be hard, especially for children who had to learn a second language, English. My parents used to talk Spanish, and we learned Spanish from them, you know. And then we went to school. We learned English in school. And then he was very hard because, you know, we didn't know. We were very dumb in the first place.

And now, like a days, now a days, the kids, you know, they're smart. They are smart. And he used to tell us all the time, I want you guys to go to school. I don't want you to be dumb like me, you know, a sheep herder. So he says, I want you to get great, great education, which we did. And so finally, when I was 18 years old, I said, well, how long were you in the sheep herder, dad? He said, two weeks. Well, all right. Midnight Mass was the most important thing during Christmas time. Life centered around the church. This chapel built in the 1800s once held the entire congregation of Lothuranes.

Seasons of the heart, baptisms, weddings, first communion, funerals, and seasons of the earth were honored here. Holidays such as Christmas and Easter, focused on religion and family, and a single, simple gift was a treasure. It was a tradition over here, and well, just like anywhere else, I guess. People would go out asking for Christmas, they would be knocking on the door, miss Christmas, miss Christmas. They used to go out asking the house by house, hey, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. And they used to give us candies, biscuits, toys, or popcorn, whatever they can, you know what I mean? And my folks didn't used to have money to buy a Christmas presents. You know, we never used to get nothing. And what made us, my brothers and sisters, we all happy, is when my father used to go to a grocery store, and we would go crazy when we were eating oranges. You know, we used to, I guess, like we never had oranges or nothing like that. And we used to go crazy when we saw oranges.

Holy Week was a big week in our lives. All of us went walking from church to church. The whole town did that was Catholic. And this is on Holy Thursday. On Holy Thursday. You visited the churches. And you walked from here, from where we were, to Old Town, to a market conception, to sacred heart. You even went to the church in Martinez down San Ignacio. San Ignacio. And you'd meet your friends along the way, where have you been? And where have you been? Catholic communities have a patron saint who holds special meaning and watches over life. Saint Joseph, San Jose, is the intercessor for those duranes. San Jose's feast is celebrated on March 19th. The face of the saints was very much of an important part of our lives because the church was so involved in our life. And so they would have a procession and people would have altars at their homes. The procession would start from the church and maybe it would stop at our house. And then they would go along singing and they'd stop at another church.

Fiestas and other important days sometimes include Lomata Chines. We got a tradition for many, many years. During the war my mother made a promise that if I came back, you know, all the one piece that I have to dance for, so I start dancing then. We used to order the soul and we used to get twenty-five cents for six hamburgers. So we used to split up all the dice. And then we used to come. I used to show used to be ten cents in those days. We used to go to the best time. Life was very rich, full of joy as well as work. I used to go fishing right here in the irrigation ditches. When I was watering the rows of green chilies, I used to catch some 11, 12 inch struts right there in the tempera.

When we'd come from school, we had got a big tomatoes and my dad would sell them to grocery stores to palms food market and all of that. So of course, we got a big kick out of throwing each other with tomatoes. And then, you know, your hands get so green without the tomato that we'd have to get the red, I don't know if it was real ripe tomatoes and we washed our hands with that, with a real ripe tomato. People gathered just to visit. Early TV was a shared community event. I saw TV when I was seven years old over at the neighbor house. Her name was Dominica. She was the only one that had a black and white TV. So all the neighbors around Duranda's area, about 30 or 40 of us, would get together. She'd take the TV outside and make some popcorn out of us, would sit outside and look at the TV or house.

There were romances, dances, mischief and fun. When I first came here, we used to go to the dance hall in Old Town Society Hall. And then we had a dance hall here in Duranda. They had good music, mostly pole cars and wallsets. The Jitterbog especially. That was a good Jitterbog place to dance at Jitterbog. I mean, a lot of people used to love to dance Jitterbog in. You know, 50 girls around the back and make little fancy stuff. We had the car. I think if I sold it, I won't remember I got into it and I ran around the house. I couldn't stop it till it ran out of gas. I was very mischievous.

It was love at first sight because I tried to find out who she was. I found out about two weeks later, about two weeks later. I found out she was a good cook. I went to see TV at her house. I didn't have a TV. When I saw her cooking at her house, I said, oh, I better get on the ball and marry this cook. I can do it with our Cadillac. I can do it without mansion. We can't do it without the cook. We say we were poor and in the sense we weren't poor at all. You know, because we had all the best wishes in the world. You know, we respect good people and trying to be a good citizen. But in Spanish, we have a saying, no faltaba nada, which means nothing was missing. We wanted for nothing.

In los duranes, people shared food, love, kids, faith, a deep sense of community. Neighbors looked after each other. We were poor, but we had a big heart for everyone. They always shared their vegetables and whatever they raised in the garden. Some belonged to La Sociedad Nuevo Mexicana, de Emoto a protección, a fraternal organization that helped in times of need. We were to have here a society hall. I used to belong to that society hall. My dad, my brother, right on the corner of Rio Grande and Central. Right there, where that shop in San Luis, we used to have a society hall there. And they used to charge us 50 cents a month, we had to pay do, 50 cents a month, and to go in a dollar. And when you die, they give to the, well, if you was a member, they give to your wife is a dollar for each member.

And there were a lot of members. I remember when my dad died, my mother got $900. Like the land, being a good neighbor is handed down for generations. When you make your fortune, don't forget where you came from. Los Duranes as survived floods, droughts, wars, and centuries. Newcomers and longtime residents worked together to retain the region's charm. A restored chapel, a new church, a new community center, and a strong neighborhood association seek to recover, preserve, and teach history. To foster respect for old ways and old people.

Today, Los Duranes is a blend of ethnicities, cultures, age groups, interests, and ancient and contemporary ways. Tradition and tomorrow harmonize as new memories are added to, memories of the Duranes. You know, and people were so friendly, I mean, they're just always smiling. It looked like they were all smiling and singing. And you can see, well, to me when I came here, I thought it was the land where everybody loved each other, like each other. And people are depending more on themselves now than before we used to share each other with whatever we could, you know. We were poor people, but we used to share our goods, our fruits, our garden, whatever we used to grow, I still do.

And that makes me happy to share with somebody else whatever I have I do it with, with my own will, which I think that I do never forget when you help somebody else or somebody else help you when you need it, it's beautiful. Very kind. I love you. I love you.

I love you. I love you. This Coloris program is available on Home Video Cassette for 1995 plus shipping and handling.

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