DELVIN GARCIA STANDING IN REMAINS OF SANTA ROSA DE LIMA CHURCH
Sections of church walls are all that remain of the 18th-century Spanish colonial settlement Santa Rosa de Lima. Repeated attacks from Ute and Comanche peoples forced the colo- nists to abandon the village. In 1754, through a land grant, the Spanish gave Genízaro and Hopi families 16,000 acres of land about a mile away. Here, the Santo Tomás de Abiquiú settlement was established. During the ensuing years, as Spain, Mex-
ico and then the United States claimed parts of the region, the Genízaro people of Abiquiú lost some of their land. Delvin Garcia (above), former president of the Abiquiú land grant board, has worked with fellow community members to reclaim these lands. As Garcia states, “La Merced del Pueblo Abiquiú (the Town of Abiquiú Land Grant) is recognized and protected under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and is historically unique.”
VICTOR DAVID LÓPEZ IN THE RUINS OF A COLONIAL BUILDING
Victor David López, a retired schoolteacher, traces his family history back to the early Genízaros and Hopi who first lived on Abiquiú land. He remains devoted to researching and understand- ing the legal history of the land grant. As López notes, the Pueblo de Abiquiú was long referred to as an Indian pueblo, but in a 1909 patent document, the U.S. government referred to the community’s inhabitants as “the converted half-breed Indians of the Pueblo of Abiquiú.”
16 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER 2020
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