Note 53 — Interior Space and Artifacts
Reading edition
Interviews with Abiquiú inhabitants: Delfino Garcia in summer 1963 and Agapita Lopez in fall 1966.
[54] Interviews with penitente members at Abiquiú, summers of 1965 and 1967.
[55] José Espinosa, Saints in the Valley (Albuquerque, 1960), p. 75.
[56] Domínguez, Missions, p. 50 (ftn. 5), defines varal and its customary use.
[57] Ibid., pp. 107, 131 (ftn. 4), 167.
[58] Ibid., pp. 121-123.
[59] AASF, Loose Documents, Mission, 1680-1850, and Accounts, books xxxxv and lxiv. Also in Wills and Hijuelas, State Records Center, and in Twitchell documents, Land Management Bureau, both offices in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
[60] Walter Hough, Collections of Heating and Lighting (Smithsonian Inst. Bull. 141, Washington, D.C., 1928), pl. 28a, no. 3.
[61] Stephen Borhegyi, El Santuario de Chimayo (Santa Fe, 1956); also E. Boyd, Saints and Saint Makers (Santa Fe, 1946), pp. 126-132.
[62] George Kubler, in Santos: An Exhibition of the Religious Folk Art of New Mexico with an Essay by George Kubler (Fort Worth, Tex.: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, June 1964).
[63] A fuller discussion of the penitente death cart and further illustrations are found in Mitchell A. Wilder and Edgar Breitenbach, Santos: The Religious Folk Art of New Mexico (Colorado Springs, 1943), pl. 30 and text. Relevant to this study is the death cart with immobile wheels recorded by Henderson, p. 32 [see ftn. 64], as having been used in processions before 1919. It is likely that this is the same cart described above in the storage room of the east morada (Figure 22); it is important because its measurements and construction details are nearly identical to the death cart in the collections of the Museum of New Mexico, reputed to have come from Abiquiú.
[64] Alice Corbin Henderson, Brothers of Light (Chicago, 1962), p. 32, describes a muerte figure: chalk-white face, obsidian eyes, black outfit.
[65] E. Boyd, "Crucifix in Santero Art," El Palacio, vol. LX, no. 3 (March 1953), pp. 112-115, indicates the significance of this image form.
[66] Henderson, pp. 13 (red gown, blindfolded, flowing black hair), 26 (red gown, bound hands, made for mission), and 43-46 (tall, almost life size, blindfolded, carried on small platform in procession from lower [east] morada, horsehair rope).
[67] Boyd, in litt., Nov. 13, 1965.
[68] Boyd, loc. cit. Regarding construction, see E. Boyd, "New Mexican Bultos with Hollow Skirts: How They Were Made," El Palacio, vol. LVIII, no. 5 (May, 1951), pp. 145-148.
[69] Wilder and Breitenbach, pls. 24, 25.
[70] Henderson, p. 26.
[71] José Espinosa, op. cit., p. 75.
[72] Domínguez, Missions, p. 264 (ftn. 59). The brown robe worn by Franciscans today is a late 19th-century innovation.
[73] Boyd, Saints, p. 133.
[74] Boyd, in litt., Nov. 13, 1965. For a comparative illustration of St. Joseph, see Wilder and Breitenbach, pl. 42.
[75] Henderson, p. 51, notes this pair of candelabra with the 13 sockets. Fifteen is the ecclesiastically correct number for tenebrae services.
[76] Acts of Incorporation, microfilm, Corporation Bureau, State Capitol, Santa Fe; see also Land Records, General Indirect Index, Rio Arriba County Court House, vols. I (1852-1912) and II (1912-1930).
[77] Henderson, p. 51, describes the angelito, in the dim light of the morada ceremony, as a "dove like a wasp." Another angel figure was given me through Regino Salazar by one of the penitente brothers of Abiquiú. According to E. Boyd, it appears to be the work of José Rafael Aragon, who worked in the Santa Cruz area after 1825.