by Don Bullis, New Mexico Author DonBullis.biz
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Chimayó “The Lourdes of the Southwest”
n the last years of the 18th century and the early years of the 19th, a significant landowner and sheep raiser, Don Bernardo Abeyta, lived along El Rio de Santa Cruz some twenty-five or so miles northwest of Santa Fe, when he became ill. The unknown malady was severe and local folks generally believed that he would die. His daughter led him outside one day so that he might warm himself in the sun. As Don Bernardo sat before his house and gazed across the acequia madre at his distant flocks, he is said to have given thought to the good he could do if his life was spared. As he watched, a figure appeared on the opposite bank of the acequia. He recognized it as an apparition of Nuestra Señor de Esquipulas. The figure disappeared as Don Bernardo hobbled weakly toward it, but he fell to his knees on the spot where Our Lord of Esquipulas had stood. Don Bernardo was instantly cured of his illness. In gratitude, he built an adobe chapel on the spot and that small structure marked the beginning of El Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Espuipulas; commonly called El Santuario de Chimayó which was completed after 1810. At least that is one of the legends concerning the origins of El Santuario. Another is that Don Bernardo, a leading member of the Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno or Penitente Brotherhood, did not see an apparition, but he did see something glowing on the ground near his house and he discovered that it was a crucifix. He dutifully took it to a local priest, but it miraculously returned to the place where Abeyta originally found it. He then decided that he should build a chapel on that spot. A variation on this story is that it was a priest who found the crucifix. And one more legend was this: “It was some years after the Chimayó rebellion in 1837, that a priest came to the settlements on the upper Santa Cruz, which are known under the collective name of Chimayó. He ministered to the people who were without a church, and after a while asked them to build a chapel on a spot he had selected. But the people were too indifferent and refused to heed the admonition. One day the priest disappeared and the next
morning, from a cottonwood tree that stood on the spot designated by the priest for a chapel, there protruded a foot. The people were so impressed with the miracle that they built the chapel and made it the most beautiful church in all of New Mexico.” While the above account dates the miracle after 1837, by about 1812 or 1813, the original chapel had already been constructed, and the church that remains in use today was constructed in 1816. Structurally, the only change since then was the addition of a pitched tin roof in the early 1920s. Because Don Bernardo was a devotee of El Señor de Esquipulas, the church was dedicated to him. El Señor de Esquipulas is sometimes referred to as the Cristo Negro, or the Black—or dark—Christ. A shrine to him in Guatemala is dedicated to his miraculous healing powers; the healing associated with holy earth found in
the church. Don Bernardo and his descendants continued to own El Santuario until 1929 when it was sold to the Spanish Colonial Arts Society which in turn donated it to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Hundreds of pilgrims (one source puts the number at 30,000) walk to El Santuario during Holy Week each year. The church itself contains leg braces, crutches and canes; all evidence of the miraculous healings that have taken place there. The origins of the community of Chimayó are in some dispute. One source states that it was first settled during the administration of New Mexico’s colonizer and first governor, Juan de Oñate (15981608). Another avers that it was not settled until after Spanish re-conquest in 1692. Chimayó is also noted for the many outstanding weavers who reside there. The name itself—Chimayó—is said to mean “obsidian flake” or “good flaking stone.” It is of Tewa origin and a Tewa village may been there before the arrival of the Spanish in 1598.
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