Family, Faith and the Land

Patriarch Alfonzo Abeyta in the barn during lambing.

My exploration has been like peeling back the layers of an onion, each of them feeding my knowledge and appreciation of rural Hispanic life on the plains and in the mountains of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. It has led me to revere Victor’s seven solitary months with the sheep on the llano of the Taos Plateau, on the shoulder of San Antonio Mountain and at high camps in the Cruces Basin Wilderness, each location more spectacular than the other. It’s a Zen-like existence with great patches of quietude and thought.

Sons Aaron and Andrew Abeyta during shearing.

 Sometimes the ewe will reject her newborns. That's when Andrew has to step in even if it's all night in the barn.

In 2016 Victor began his forty first and possibly last year tending the sheep for Los Abeytas. But then, he had threatened to retire for several years and 2015 was to be el ultimo año, too. One thing is certain. The year that is the last will be the end of an era and will portend major changes for the Abeyta operation.

Andrew and son Amos herding lambs. 

Shorn.

In many ways the end of Victor’s herding life mirrors the fragility of the Abeytas’ rich history. And they, in turn, exemplify hundreds of rural Hispanic families holding on to a life from the land from generation to generation.

The power of this connection to the land cannot be overstated. It is deeply rooted, unbreakable and nearly religious. Understanding the depth and palpable love the Abeytas have for this land and this life is the essence of their story. Fully understanding it escapes me as do the words to express this profound connection. It’s as though the Abeytas are literally planted in the rocky San Luis Valley soil, as much so as the alfalfa hay that feeds the sheep, the sheep that eat the hay and the sheep that nourish a new generation of Abeytas.

Alfonzo speaks about feeling like an outsider. There is an overarching separateness and quiet anger beneath his stoic surface that is palpable to an Anglo outsider. Alfonzo’s third son Aaron, formerly a professor of English at Adams State University in nearby Alamosa and later head of he poetry program at Western State University in Gunnison, expresses this outsideness in his award winning book Letters from the Headwaters.

To be sure, sheep ranching is not for the faint of heart. It’s a proposition that often teeters on the edge of insolvency.  In February 2015 a snow storm blew in from the northeast soaking the newly shorn sheep with wet snow. Twenty-six ewes died that day along with half a dozen lambs. It was a terrible blow to the Abeytas. It left their flock of ewes severely depleted and their financial survival an open question. A ewe gives birth to two lambs on average so that’s 52 fewer lambs to take to market in October. 52 less lambs at 100 pounds each at $2.00 a pound reduces proceeds of $10,400. That’s a real difference maker in a business of thin margins.

When I asked why he alone among his four siblings chose to continue the life started by his grandfather Amos in the 1920s 53-year-old Andrew Abeyta said “I was kicked on the head by a cow.” And more seriously that “I like being my own boss and coming and going as I please. If I want to take a few days off I can do it.” Even his younger brother Aaron, the professor, admits that “I don’t like teaching all that much. I’d rather be back on the ranch.” But it’s not for everybody either. Of Andrew’s six children only last born Amos, the namesake of his great grandfather, wants to continue the hard life on the prairie. At 23 and already with two children of his own Amos assures that the Los Abeytas’ life from the land will continue for at least one more generation. One hopes that one of his progeny will do the same. 

The lynch pin of sheep ranching  is the herder. And 77-year-old Victor Hernandez is nearing the end of his lifetime of service to the Abeytas. In June Victor’s first words to me were “Esto es mi ultimo año.” This is my last year. Then that very afternoon he was talking about next winter on the Taos Plateau with the sheep. So it has gone for three years. Victor says he’s going to quit and comes back for one more year.

It would be easy to dismiss the Abeytas and other small ranchers and farmers like them as uneducated and lacking a world view but that would be completely wrong. They are smart, tenacious and proud. Alfonzo’s four children chose very different and surprising paths. Alfonzo Jr is a builder and operates a fishing camp on the banks of the Conejos River. Elaine graduated from West Point, was an Army Captain and is now an executive in Seattle. Andrew is continuing his father’s and grandfather’s ranching life while Aaron is a writer, poet, college professor and a founder with his wife Michelle Trujillo, PhD of a K through 12 school in Antonito. 

The Abeytas rich story deserves an epilogue. In the years since I first wrote these words I've learned that the herder, Victor 'Cuba' Hernandez and Los Abeytas parted ways when they stopped paying for his personal herd of animals. Amos Abeyta, Alfonzo's father, had asked Alfonzo to take care of Victor when he could not longer herd the Abeyta sheep. I thought that meant till death do we part. But when they told him they could no longer pay for feed and water for his personal herd of animals he demanded it. The Abeytas stood their ground and Victor was given his walking papers. The last I knew he was living out his days on a ranch east of Antonito. I don't know if he's still alive. 

The Heart of the Story

September conditions in the Cruces Basin in 2015 were a very different than the freak snow in Diablo Canyon in 1950.To tell the story of herding the sheep back to the Abeyta Ranch in Mogote, Colorado. I'm including eight 2016 photographs of the return to the ranch from the high mountains where Victor Hernandez had tended the sheep from June to mid-September.

Victor 'Cuba' Hernandez's summer campo in the pine forest.

The green grass of summer at 10,000 feet.

Amos Abeyta is a mythic figure in Abeyta family lore, a tower of strength through the depression, World War Two and the post war years. No story of this stalwart man is more telling than the one Alfonzo weaves about the freak snowstorm of 1950. At twelve years old Alfonzo and his father Amos were tending the herd in Diablo Canyon high above Chama. The whistle of the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad could be heard in the distance.

Down the mountain to the Rio de Los Pinos. See Victor just above the sheep. 

Andrew Abeyta and Victor before crossing the river.

Crossing El Rio de Los Pinos.

Alfonzo’s eyes grew moist as he told of the freak snow that dumped three feet of snow on the flock and of the late summer snow that threatened to kill the sheep and Alfonzo and his father along with them.

Homeward Bound.

Over the next hill to Mogote.

As the snow accumulated only two things mattered. How would they get the sheep down the mountain and back to the safety of the Conejos River Valley? And how would they survive the night when temperatures would dip into the teens? It was a moment of truth and that truth was that the sheep would suffocate in the snow and Amos and Alfonzo wouldn’t the last the night without shelter. 

Alfonzo recalls with crystalline clarity that his dad felled a mid-size pine and drug it like a giant broom behind one of their horses to clear a route for the sheep to pass. He dragged the tree all the way the way to the flats, a distance of four miles. Having cleared a path, Amos summoned his backcountry skills to prepare a shelter. He cut down saplings and built an arbor to keep out the snow. He cleared the snow from the from the frozen ground beneath the shelter and spread small branches and pine needles to insulate them from the frigid turf. 

As if it was routine the next morning they herded the sheep back to the Abeyta Ranch in Mogote. It's the Abeyta story that captures the essence and strength of their mythic connection to Mother Earth.

Both sides now

Patriarch Alfonzo Abeyta during February shearing. It's a communal affair with neighbors from Mogote and Antonito pitching in. The shearers are mostly Amish from nearby Manassa and Bob Barr, who runs the crew, is Mormon. When the job is finished  his son Andrew Abeyta and his wife host a late lunch for forty of their closest friends. Alfonzo says that "We're clannish. We can talk about each other but you can't."

Alfonzo Abeyta says that he didn’t speak English until he began school in 1943. He went to high school in Manassa and was raised as Mormon but that ended when he made a date with a Mormon girl from school. “She liked me and I liked her. I offered to pick her up at her house but she said that wouldn’t work so she snuck out her bedroom window and met me. When her dad and brother found out they came after me and beat me so bad that I couldn’t eat anything but soup for weeks. After that I never went back to the Mormon church and converted to Catholic.”

Sheep Chute.

All hands on deck.

An experienced shearer can shear a sheep in two minutes.

Shorn.

And released.

His father Amos Abeyta could only afford to send one of his children to college. That college was even an option and that his daughter, the oldest, was chosen speaks volumes about the kind of man Amos was. Because Alfonzo couldn’t afford to go he joined the Marine Corps.

When he was discharged in 1961 he tried to buy more land to add to Amos’s 70 acres. But when he went to the bank in La Jara to apply for a loan he was told, “Your people are meant to work the land not own the land.” He says, "I was so angry that I couldn’t speak.”  He and his wife Martha left the valley and moved to Denver. There he went to work for Martin Marietta where he became the first Hispano who wasn’t a janitor. Throughout his stint there and later with the telephone company in Pueblo, a total of more than forty years, he bought small parcels of land which he and his three sons worked every weekend. It’s a pattern common to rural Hispanos who must work full time to support the ranches and farms that are the cornerstone of the life they cherish. Today they own 700 acres.

Discriminatory lending practices were not limited to Conejos County or the San Luis Valley. In the landmark 2000 “Garcia vs. Vilsack” case brought by Hispano farmers throughout the country it was proven beyond doubt that those practices denied the Hispanos equal opportunity. And while they plaintiffs were denied class action status in 2006 because “commonality” in the discrimination wasn’t proven, two levels of compensation were mandated, $50,000 and $250,000. The Abeytas, who were party to the suit, received the $250,000 when it was demonstrated to the court’s satisfaction that the value of their lost opportunity was more than $2,000,000.

Racial and class discrimination is even reflected on the playing field where Anglo superiority is expected and unsportsmanlike conduct is unevenly penalized. Alfonzo's son Aaron Abeyta, a writer, poet and educator, tells the story of a particularly spirited football game between Mexican Antonito and Anglo Sanford where a Sanford player knocked down an Antonito player from behind and called him “a stinking Mexican.” The Antonito player was ejected from the game.

The Anglos go the better Conejos Schools in La Jara. The Mexicans, that's the operative term in the Valley, go to Antonito. Aaron resents it with every fiber of his being and was so disappointed at the education Antonito children were getting that he founded an alternative K-12 school with his wife Michele Trujillo, PhD.