The Great Migration

In April the sheep are herded back to the mountains where they will graze till fall. Here they are heading to a communal corral below Mount San Antonio in the distance.

Cuba and the timeless cycle of shearing, lambing, tending, breeding and selling sheep is the story of the rural Hispano culture of land, water, family and faith that permeates the valleys and villages of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. They have lived a life from the land for more than two hundred years. Once upon a time a million and a half sheep grazed the grasslands of the Taos Plateau, the San Luis Valley and Rio Arriba County from Española to Chama. The roots of this deeply communal life pierce deep into the rocky soil of villages in the San Luis Valley like Antonito, Conote, Conejos and Mogote. It began with the great migration of Hispanic families from northern New Mexico in the years following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In 1848 Mexico ceded Nuevo Mexico to the United States. In the fifty years that followed most of the land owned by rural Hispanics in New Mexico was stolen when Spanish and Mexican land grants were not protected by the United States government as it had promised in the treaty. Deep-pocketed Anglo interests conspired to separate the Mexicans from their land. Speculators, lawyers and the courts collaborated to fleece the cash poor Spanish speakers. And they were easy pickings. First the communal land (ejido) was stolen and the private property left over was bought for as little as $1.00 for an entire homestead. For more please read Willian Debuys' River of Traps.

Patriarch Alfonzo Abeyta during birthing in March. It's a 24 hour a day effort with little sleep. Most ewes birth two or more lambs which are standing and nursing within five minutes.

A  24 hour day is written on Andrew Abeyta's weary face. If the ewe refuses to nurse Andrew and his sun Amos fill in. There's nothing sweeter.

Andrew and Amos with two newborns. Amos will to follow in his father's footsteps as Andrew followed Alfonso. 

Alfonzo Abeyta says that the Abeytas came to the San Luis Valley from Rio Arriba County during the historic migration of the 1850s. They came from near Española, most likely from the village of Chamita.  They first settled near Manassa in the 1850s. By the early 20^th century Serafín Abeyta, grandfather to Alfonzo, was living with his wife Luisa and three young children in Sanford. Then he abandoned his family and Serafín became the name not spoken. He may not have been a good man but he was a tough one. Reputedly he fought the Manassa Mauler himself, Jack Dempsey, to draw in warehouse after a day bucking 100 pound sacks of potatoes. They say the bout went 49 rounds before both men asked for a draw. Later Luisa Abeyta remarried Joe Garcia, the man Alfonzo considers his real grandfather.

“My great grandfather took in the Mormon settlers who came to Manassa in 1878. He built them a barn, gave them shelter through the winter and sold them land to grow crops. But they never wanted their daughters to marry our sons.” Alfonzo told me. It’s true that local Mexicans, that’s the term Alfonzo uses, gave aid to the Mormons and that a wealthy Mexican farmer sold them 1,200 acres on which they built Manassa. The Mormons were directed in their pursuits by Brigham Young from Salt Lake City and by his personally appointed emissaries called “elders”. Following the model employed with great success in Utah, the Mormons built the town on one side of the Conejos and divided the land on the other side of the river into 10 acre parcels, one for each family to farm. That was part of the well proven formula, to reside in the town and to irrigate and farm the bulk of their holdings. By 1880 they had arranged to buy an addition 2,000 acres from the State of Colorado and almost instantly the organized and prosperous Mormons had controlled Conejos county. To this day they dominate banking and government and treat the Hispanos as an underclass.