SURVIVING THE 1930's-ITALIANS IN NEW MEXICO - #3

Antonio Domenici ran the Montezuma Grocery with his brother Cherubino. This picture was taken in front of his home at 407 North Fourth Street.

LA COLONIA SURVIVING THE 1930's - ITALIANS IN NEW MEXICO - #3

by: f. g. lopriato y lopez

STRETCH IT OUT, MAKE IT LAST, MAKE IT DO OR DO WITHOUT.

Bedsheets wear out when you use them enough. The women in Old Town during the 1930's did not have electric washing machines. They heated their wash water in pots, on a wood burning stove, in the winter, and outside in a galvanized tub and scrubbed everything on galvanized washboards. Whites faded, and very fast colors were boiled and scrubbed, inspected for wear and patched. Socks were darned and dingy colors bleached out and readied. If the sheets were still serviceable, the holes would be repaired or reboiled and rebleached for further use, often as curtains or dish towels. Lye was an indispensable household item. Sometimes bedsheets would be repaired and folded, both halves sewn together for reuse.

Flour came in cloth bags. Most people bought large quantities: twenty five, fifty and hundred pounds sacks, depending on how large a family they had to feed, and white flour tortillas were the fare three times a day. Corn tortillas were also used but not as regularly as wheat, sopaipillas were served at special meals. Besides that, flour was also used to thicken gravies, sauces took starch, chicken, cutlets, pork chops, each made better eating if breaded with white flour. The cloth bags in which the flour came was probably more sought after than the flour itself. With a little boiling, bleaching, and dying, those bags became beautiful dresses and blouses for little girls, shirts, a hanky, slips, and panties. Cloth, not gold, was the big thing to most Old Town women. Most women could sew. The luckiest had pedal operated machines, but most sewed by hand.

A man's suit could become clothing for his children, and the same went for women's clothing and when they had served their time, the same thing might end up as part of a patchwork quilt or a throw rug.

Homemade laundry soap, and homegrown almost everything, even the dyes that they used made the need for money not as pressing but a hell of a lot more work for the women of Old Town in the 1930's. Little did they realize it was just basic training for what was ahead and that some day those who survived would look back on those days with nostalgia.

FDR's WPA Projects did a lot of good, despite the fact that the managers of those funds used the bulk of the money to feather their own nests first and then saw to it that those who could do them more good, socially, politically and financially got what they wanted, but, when those funds finally got down the common people. Any job was better than none in a money hungry world that, at last, found a way to make Old Towners need money. As I said before, we were as self-relying for most of our necessities and financial needs were kept at a bare minimum.

Now, you tell me if what they came up with does not rate, at least an E for effort on the confidence game of politics. There were just over a hundred thousand people in all of New Mexico, the CCC camps did a lot of good planting trees, and dressing up the landscape, there were jobs there for many people and most of them trying to make the transition from farming to business or something that would enable them to fit into their changing world.

There were no roads in the entire state, the WPA built several large dams, in fact most of the dams you see now in New Mexico are WPA projects, and Highway 66 from one end of the state to the other was a WPA project, there were many jobs there, but most of these jobs were being filled by people who were brought in to do the work. New Mexico was high on FDR's priority list. but New Mexicans were joining the armed services and the National guard in order to help their families make ends meet. Someone noticed this and made a fuss about it.

The next thing Old Towners knew, "Singing Teachers" were making the rounds weekly to teach grade school students songs that were already part of their folklore. And the Plaza in Old Town was having a very imposing and out of place stone wall built around the plaza in Old Town. It did not last long, and for the short time that it stood, it cost more to maintain than anything else. Other than being used as an emergency makeshift rest room by migrants who could not make it to a real rest room, it was cleaned up and maintained once a year at Fiesta time. Other than that it was avoided even by church goers who would walk around it rather than cut through even on cold days. Even the stone mason who built the wall hated it, but could not talk his supervisors into doing what the Old Town Plaza has now.

The project that really took the cake, was the WPA Outhouse Brigade. Old Towners didn't live beyond their means and their means were not very demanding to begin with. They made conscious efforts to minimize them more all the while they also made a show of their better materialism to put up a prosperous front. This tempted the controllers to reason that if they could not control the intake they would control the output. The WPA brought in the Outhouse Brigade. Everybody had to have a New State of the Art outhouse, built by "El Diablo a Pi‚. " They made it sound so official that some still think it was a felony not to comply. The city was expanding and Old Town would be incorporated making "City Water " and indoor plumbing mandatory, the new outhouses did no more than tear down the old outhouse and replace it with a prefabricated one of their own, over the existing hole, but, at last, someone had pulled something on Old Town. The word for outhouse used in old town was "Comun" pronounced "Ko MOON" from Commode." The Outhouse Brigade was called "Los Communistas." (The Communists.)

The 1930's were lucky years in a lot of ways for Old Towners. Mainly because of the Italian influence in the town. Italians had been the real leaders in the community, and why not? They don't make a big hoopla about themselves or their accomplishments, no matter where they end up. The segment of Italians who chose New Mexico as their new home left indelible footprints in the sands, not just of this state, but in states surrounding New Mexico and as far as Washington, D. C.. Not just lately, but historically. If walls could talk, they'd do it and be fluent in Wopajo. (all languages) ////fglyl

LA COLONIA ITALIANA D'ALBUQUERQUE

Albuquerque businessmen and politicians, c. 1930

LA COLONIA ITALIANA D'ALBUQUERQUE

by: f. g. lopriato y lopez

(Please Note: Indians-in this article refers to Native Americans)
To Albuquerque, the 1930's should be a very special decade. The railroad shops were going strong. New businesses were starting up and long established companies, such as Sears, Montgomery Ward, Kress, J. C. Penny were expanding and hiring workers. Bars, theaters and restaurants were opening up, and general stores were selling everything from animal feed to clothing, hardware, seed, meats, and even livestock. Oh, Yes! Right smack in the middle of the great depression...

At the top of the local business ladder, were Italian, Jewish, Greek, Armenian, and Lebanese businessmen. They hired family first and locals next. Albuquerqueans were helped to make the transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society by those immigrants who had already experienced the difference in the their old home countries. Most immigrants had come here to escape poverty and understood the plight of the people.

Bars, general stores, and wholesale liquors were the owner by Italians while prepared food businesses were mostly Greek owned. The Lebanese liked marketing almost everything you can dream up. Jewish businessmen tended to go with the new market, created by the Fred Harvey chain. Indians; Indian Lore and Indian Crafts.

It was mainly the Harvey chain that sold tourists the idea to take bus tours out to the pueblos and reservations to see Indians in their natural habitat, and consequently, gave value to Indian jewelry, blankets, even the way Indians dressed and interest in Indian art; sand paintings, their dances and their pottery.

New Mexico was also very culture friendly, because of the Archaeology school at UNM. Grade School teachers who attended UNM (University of New Mexico) made their students aware of Indian culture and their rightful place in New Mexican society long before it became popular to be Indian friendly elsewhere. Jewish merchants established trading Posts that bought and sold Indian craftsmanship and hired Indians to works in their shops and homes. They moved into Indian country to be closer to the source of their income and were so accepted by the frienmdly culture that one Jewish man became the chief of a tribe. Another became governor of New Mexico.

The Italians reigned in the business district of Albuquerque though. Their children went to UNM and became business, social and political leaders, teachers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, etc. All immigrants were welcomed with open arms by the people. The same people who became the consumers and a labor force.

Ideas were exchanged between the immigrants and the populace except for a few individuals in other immigrant groups. It was only the Italians who spoke the language of the state fluently, and could also do business in several dialects spoken by the tribes. Jewish businessmen had the Indian trades in silver and artifacts but more than that they prided themselves in mastering Native American languages.

One Lebanese man ran a grocery store in Isleta Pueblo. He married an Isleta Indian and fathered two beautiful daughters that made quite a name for themselves later in life.

All in all, you could say that Albuquerque survived the 1930's by scratching each others back. Unfortunately others, (non immigrants) did not come here to be part of the town. They came like an occupying army, to change, to take over and be in charge, and by the 1940's Albuquerque was beginning to change. They played the game of "divide and conquer." ////fglyl

Champion Grocery, operated by Alessandro and Amadeo Matteucci and located on the corner of Seventh Street and Tijeras avenue, was one of the largest Italian-owned grocery stores in Albuquerque.


Jubilee Parade. Horsemen passing down Central Ave., near Second St. as crowds look on; business enterprises visible at left; ca. 1930.



Unidefied mem Albue's Italian-American community posing for a photograph on a hunting trip south e city
falo dancers, Tesuque Pueblo, New Mexico


UNM Footbal Team, Albuquerque, NM 1930

Surviving the 1930'3 in Old Albuquerque-Part2

"Fearlessness may be a gift, but perhaps more precious is the courage
acquired through endeavor, courage that comes from cultivating
the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions."

Aung San Suu Kyi

Chapter Two - Community VS Materialism

Today we measure success by how much money we have in the bank or in stocks, how large a house, or how many houses you have, how your own house is furnished, and what kind of a job you have. If you are between ..... say, sixty-five eighty years old, and lived in Albuquerque during the 1930's, you will recall that those things were not considered. You identified yourself with your community and your community identified itself with you. You were an individual, but a cog in a greater wheel, a parish, (Campanella) that in turn was a part of a still greater works, ad infinitum.

In a crisis, the herd instinct automatically took over. Survival depended on those you knew and trusted. The choice of leadership, and dependability had been made long before the crisis came, because everyone knew everyone else and their capabilities and limitations. If you know your community, you already know whom to choose for what job in any given situation. It was easier to know who was who in the 30's, because we were a community. Since then, countless factors broke up that unity.

Only the Wopajo tribe remains true to the old traditions. Look around you. It wasn't always as you see it now. Americans were not always haunted by a sense of scarcity. Somewhere along the line, American people changed. Now they have to have more, in case they lose some, or if someone takes some away from them. Fear of losing material things created monsters that they perceived were out to rob them or to take them for everything they have. That attitude creates greed, and greed creates paranoia. Paranoia is an invitation for real con-artists to move in. The daily news is full of stories about people who have been taken for hundreds, thousands, and even millions of dollars by scam artists. Very few of the victims are lilly-white-innocents themselves. Most of them thought they were going to get more than what they were investing, or something for nothing. The victims that are really innocent are the trusting souls who thought they could trust family members or other trustees to handle their financial affairs.

It's commendable to be cautious, but Paranoia? Fear is natural, it is your survival instinct warning you that something is amiss, in you, around you, or somewhere in your immediate vicinity, but panic is your enemy. It binds your mind and makes you act irrationally. In a panic, you become your own worst enemy, like a deer caught in a spotlight, or a person about to drown.

Wopajos are never alone in a personal crisis, and act as a group, but never identify ourselves as such in a collective crisis. Fear does not control us, we control fear. . . Courage, on the other hand, is not the absence of fear but the control of fear. The Wopajos are unique in that we are not materialistic. We also believe that inch by inch "everything's a cinch." We are, after all, natives of THE LAND OF POCO A POCO. Manana is still good enough for us. So many other people work themselves to death amassing fortunes and die before they can enjoy them. If they live, it's with ulcers or some other chronic illness that robs them of a full life or they lose, or have most of what they sacrifice themselves for taken away one way or another. We pace ourselves and live within our means, ending up no better and no worst than anyone else. When we have abundance we share, and when we don't other tribal members share with us. We believe that abundance is not in what you have but in how many relationships you can claim. The abundance we share is not just material, it is companionship, ideas, and a helping hand doing something that is difficult for one person to handle. We believe humility is a virtue, and that arrogance is a defect. We try not to fail, and when we do, we understand that humans fail, societies fail and countries fail, failures are human and just as inevitable. The higher up you are in the cultural pyramid, the harder the fall when you land. No one in the tribe has failed as much as myself, and no one has fallen so far from so high and landed so hard as have I, but no one has had as many help him up onto his feet again as many times as have I.

What used to be New Mexican humor is almost dead now. The Wopajos still rely on it to break up the tension, but outside of our own little group one rarely finds anyone who understands it. At times it is pitifully misunderstood. It is a play on words where "Charley Mann" the store keeper, became emperor, "Charlemagne, and "Krushchev," beacons "Cruz Chavez."

In New Mexico, the word "chivo" meant a male goat. "Chiva," means a female goat. "Chivato," from whence comes "Vato," means a guy. Rascally boys used to be said to be chivatos. "Chivata," a shepherd's staff. The difference in the new, incoming, Spanish to this state translates "Billy, the kid," obviously meant to mean "Billy, the rascal" as "Billy, the child... " All we can say about it is, BISOGNA! to new Spanish. (it sounds close to 'Piss On Ya!):
///fgyl

“I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through
honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain,
those you deal with should gain as well.”

Alan Greenspan

Surviving the 1930's in Old Albuquerque

SAN FELIPE DE NERI CATHOLIC CHURCH , ca.1930

Chapter one - Las Campanellas

by: f. g. lopriato y lopez

The sound of the bells of San Felipe di Neri church, in Old Town was the uniting factor. Anyone within their radius understood their language, and heeded their every word. Like a large, very obedient, family heeds a domineering mother. Together, we were La Campanella. Loosely translated, it means "Brotherhood Of The Bell." Martineztown had it's own Campanella, So did Barelas, as did all church parish societies. like all family units, we identified with our church, and like all family units, we worked, played, fought, feasted and intermarried. Within those family units, one could find both the good and the bad characteristics of any family, but we remained united in sickness and in health, whether richer or poorer, from our birth, to our death, and it was this unity that helped us get through the hardest part of the 1930's.
Albuquerque owes most of its survival to these Campanellas, not just in the 1930's but from its very beginning, it was the church bells that warned us of imending dangers, and the unity that developed at having to band together to confront a mutual enemy, or help each other in any crisis.
The depression was just another one of these crisis and the people were already programmed to act at the sound of their own church bells.
The bells of San Felipe didn't ring when the stock market collapsed in 1929., but those bells had created a parish unity that transcended all social and political barriers, just as sure as if the crash had been a fire, or an earthquake.
In the 1930's New Mexico was still relatively isolated from the rest of the United States, which is why we were the last to let go of the rules set up by the Holy Roman Empire., and Spanish knighthood, commonly known today as chivalry, but is really no more than common civility.
In a crisis, a gentleman protects the old, the sick, the weak, and helpless animals. " In Old Albuquerque, the animals came first. Even today, New Mexicans reason that animals are more apt to panic, most humans do not.
Feed for our domestic animals was mostly home grown, adobes were made right on the premises, using your own clay and straw to make them. Meats? we had our live stock, plus goats and cows for milk. Telephones and electric lights not a problem, we didn't have either, so we didn't know what they were.
Everything at the store was dirt cheap, but no one had any money. Movies were as little as five and ten cents, and as much as a quarter, but only an occasional treat to us, and only very special movies. dances,sandlotbaseball , kick the can, red rover, jacks, hopscotch, blind man's bluff, hide and seek, treasure hunts, board games were just a few of the games that kept the young ones entertained, visiting each other and family get together at Baptismals, Confirmations, First Holy Communions, Weddings and Birthday parties at each other's homes were festivals, tons of food, all home grown and prepared by the women of the families.
Anyone who remembers Church Fiestas, Las Maromas, (Medicine shows without the snake oil spiel.) will agree that the things that mattered most were not how much money you had in the bank, how big a house or how many houses you owned, but the relationships that you had in the Las Campanellas that mattered.
So much has changed since then, family members don't even know each other unless one is in a political position to important enough to be importuned, then everybody is related. ///fgyl

OUR CULTURAL VALUES

OUR CULTURAL VALUES by: f. g. lopriato y lopez

It will come as a surprise to the mayor and the city of Albuquerque's Health Department, but New Mexico, including this city and county are united by a culture that is over four hundred years old. Mayor Martin Chavez because he has publicly vowed, on the radio, and over the microphones of KKOB AM, that he would change the culture of New Mexico .. To underscore that statement he added that if anyone doubted that he could not do it, to just wait and he would show them. or words to that effect. The Health Department would do well not to even try to politicize the state's traditionaI dishes, such as Posole, tamales, biscochitos and postre during the most sacred and/or most festive days of the year, especially when they attempt to demand that these things be purchased at stores in cans and at the pastry counters. Either the mayor and his Health Department never learned or they have been so driven to undo state culture that they forgot. Whatever the case may be, it's time that someone reminded them that every society has a system of values, a se of interreated values in which a great deal of sentiment is invested. Common sense should tell them that the word, Value, means something of importance to an individual or a group. Ideals; beliefs; things; and people. As political leaders, of any given society they occupy the posts of that that society's Pilots, and societies are piloted by their values. Further, that these things can be important to the society in both a negative or a positive way. i.e. what the society likes and what it doesn't like. No society on the face of the earth is concerned exclusively with the attainment of material ends. Prestige; status; pride; family honor; love of country,; state; county; religious beliefs; and what is commonly known as honor can and often are values so great that entire societies will sacrifice; comfort; well being, and even life itself. i.e. Before the second world war Japanese Immigration into the United States was halted and caused thousands of Japanese citizens to commit suicide, many by jumping into volcanoes, not because they wanted to immigrate themselves but because Japan and its emperor had been insulted. Murder suicide, mass murders, and even individual suicides in the United States are due more to any of these reasons than we care to admit. if you think that these self edifying roach hunters give a tinker's dam about anything but their own perceived importance, you have another guess coming. When guests visit a real New Mexican home during the winter holiday season, they know that they will find a pot of posole; biscochitos; bread pudding,' and tamales, hot coffee or chocolate. even in the most humble houses. Now, come with me to an all-out, no holds barred, gala get together hosted by the mayor after his State of The City speech, for his most loyal subjects, a very special group of Straw Bosses, responsible for assessing the mayor's chances if he seeks an additional term in office and after that their job will be to convince you to vote for him in the primaries and again in the general elections. indeed, a group from which much will be demanded and should be amply rewarded for hav­ing answered the mayor's call. A thin slice of German chocolate cake, and no more. No coffee, no chocolate no ice cream or milk. not even a glass of water with which to wash it down. Economic conditions being what they are and food shortages getting worst and more expensive every day, I look for more New Mexicans to revive the social customs of the past among our own, law or no law.