Old Las Vegas: Hispanic Memories from the New Mexico Meadowlands

Nasario García is the preeminent editor and translator of oral histories of rural New Mexicans. He has made it his life's work to preserve the experiences of the viejitos (old ones) and often references his own childhood in Ojo del Padre, New Mexico. He wistfully states, "Each time a viejito or viejita dies, a portion of our cultural and linguistic soul is interred with them." García has compiled their stories in several volumes since 1992, including voices of grandparents, his father, Hispanic men and women, and a compilation of their chistes (jokes). Joining this body of work are these voices of the viejitos of Las Vegas, New Mexico, in San Miguel County.

Las vegas means the meadows, and the city by the same name is sixty miles due east of Santa Fe. It is a 123-year-old town that has 918 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. It was a stopover for explorer Coronado; the traders on the Santa Fe Trail; the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad; and a magnet for famous ne'er-do-wells like Billy the Kid and Jesse James.

Twenty voices remember the lifestyle of the last generation of sheepherders, ranchers, homesteaders, and villagers. They speak with nostalgia and humor about relatives, education, witchcraft, religion, and politics. They have names of another era: Filemón, Cesaría, Isabel (a man), and more. The elders' accounts have the flavor of a grandparent musing about one thing or another on the porch on a hot summer night. They talk of poverty, pranks, and evil spirits. They had little or no education and rarely traveled farther than Colorado or Texas. Yet they were made of tougher stuff than those of us who have lived softer lives with more possessions and less injustice. And funnier.

The book is bilingual with a glossary comparing English, Spanish, and colloquialisms. The last chapter is "Folk Sayings and Riddles," and I end this review with an adivinanza by teacher Elba C. de Baca:

A tiny little box As white as can be Everyone knows how to open it But no one knows how to close it. What is it?