SANTA FE SHADOWS WHISPER

"Their physical body is now dust, but their spirit is always shining and vibrant. The memory of a proud and resilient people is precious and they are worthy of respect from their descendants." So writes Waldo Alarid in Santa Fe Shadows Whisper about his ancestors from the Moya and Alarid families, who arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This family history goes back at least seven generations branching into the following families: Ortiz, Lopes, Archibeque, Dimas Jirón, Domínguez, Zuñiga, Ortega, Morales de Guijosa, Garcia, Romo de Vera, Martín Serrano, Armenta, Fernández de la Pedrera, Peláez, Gómez Robledo, Gallego, Gutíerrez, Febro (Febre), Armijo, Montaño, Sedillo Rico de Rojas, Anaya de Almazán, Gallardo, de Herrera and more.

Alarid captures life in Santa Fe when paved streets were few and motor vehicles were the exception, fruit orchards were in abundance, lilac bushes lined the streets, the Chimayo farmers sold their delicacies in ollas de diez y de quince and the neighborhoods permeated with the smell of green chili roasting, an aroma unrivaled. Alarid includes folk tales about La Llorona, Brujas, Brasas and more. As you delve into the many generations of these two families you will relive a part of their past.

In the following tale Alarid captures the whispers of evening shadows while walking to work in downtown Santa Fe.

"The night was quiet, hardly a breeze, a routine walk like any other night. As I approached Percy's, maybe two hundred yards from my house, I heard a voice from behind me. It seemed to come over the mountain, just beyond the city water reservoir. The voice was distinguishable. It was the voice of "Myito," Refugio Lobato de Moya, wife of my uncle Juan Moya. She had died the year before. Clearly, but like a magnified whisper, I heard my name being summoned twice, a drawn out "wwaalldo." I looked back momentarily to see if someone was behind me, but all I saw and felt was the darkness and stillness of the night. As I went past every street light I could see a shadow trailing behind me and the only sound was the scratchy sound of my shoes on the loose dirt. I kept hoping for the sound of a car engine, anything, but I was the only one on the road. It was a long, lonely, and frightening mile to work that night." -- Waldo Alarid

Photo by E. Terrones Simms

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