De veras, I was quite overjoyed when I received your e-mail.
I knew I had misunderstood. Thank you for your fine and moving witness and for your great vote of confidence in regards to my becoming el santo patrón de genealogía. However, don't get too hasty now, about my leaving this existence, I must be around for a while longer so that I can get some points in with the faithful following achieved recently. Besides, there are a number of unresolved issues.
"A la diminuíta anciana, le parecía un día excepcionalmente caluroso.........."
(Beginning sentence of © Mi Pena y Mi Vergúenza by Rev. José Antonio Oquendo Pabón).
Pero ese, ese es otro cuento, míjo................
el padre
(Article is letter written tongue in cheek to Chaz Fourquet, editor of Nuestra Herencia, boletín of the Hispanic Genealogy Society of New York for the Muertito Heaven column.)
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First, I have been posing for my official hagiographical portrait but have not been too satisfied with the lighting. I think the possibilities of my election are quite good so I am saving some time doing things I know I must have later. Shortly, I will send out some copies of my portrait so you can pass them out, free of charge, of course! At this time, there are no other candidates but with my background, I've got it beat: about two hundred years worth of history in Puerto Rico (no other PR's yet in Heaven except a guy from Caguas named Charlie, but he doesn't count, the only muertito he paid attention to was El Jefe), Castile (probably through at least the Alvadalejo line), other parts of España, possibly some Italian (that's why I got sent here per practicare un pó di italiano for when I get elected), quite a bit of sub-Saharan Africa, and I got my bembes to prove it, a smack of Dutch (those Clas are handy after all) and, of course, Indian. You see, Natalio, my great-grandfather was a throwback, but I still don't know how. This explains my personal traits since we Oquendo Pabón can be quite ornery. However, it also explains why we can't hurry the election process.
In the second place, sometimes Muertito Heaven can be quite elusive. Ah, to hope, to await, to aspire to, to long for, to desire, to pine for, to search! The only thing better is to find, to achieve, to prove, to fulfill, to discover, to be satisfied by. However, someone is tempting quite strongly some of my followers to give up on their search, and on a great scale. Even I have felt the temptation to give up, to fail. It can be very difficult to continue under those circumstances, let me tell you!, but we must be Semper Fidelis to our priorities, ever onward in our search and determination to reach Muertito Heaven. The fact is, though, that I too, (can you believe it?), have been discouraged, no, descorazonado, by obstacles. The fact that I have heroically bypassed even these, has got to be taken into consideration as soon as possible in regards to my candidacy. It is proof that I have got what it takes to be named, although, as Dr. Ana Cristina would say, it is also proof I still have a lot to accomplish. But let me tell you about the difficulty of my situation..........
I once found one of our maternal fifth great-grandparents' marriage record. Since our mother, Doña Rosa María Pabón Oliveras, was an orphan, she hardly remembered her maternal family. Anyway, the fruit of my labor in Vega Baja on that particular day was an 1805 marriage certificate in the second volume of marriage records, folio one, vuelta. Juan Isidoro Oliveras López and Rita Rolón López. Their mothers do not show up on any other records, so we don't know if they were related to each other or if they are related to another maternal line, that of María de la Concepción Alvadalejo López (one of the almost drop outs from first grade) and her mother, María Castora (the beaver lover) who could be a niece or a cousin. Since they are described as being de condición desconocida there is no way of knowing if they were white pardos or white or just pardos. If they had African blood, could they be related to the my paternal López, Cayetana, born 1800 in Vega Baja (according to her records) or to her mother María López, who is sometimes called María Correa, the slave I recently told you about. Even though Juan José son of Juan Isidoro and Rita is born in Vega Baja, his children are born in Corozal and Jayuya. So, the Vega Baja connection is not so strange.
Then, there are our elusive Torres muertitos. You see, our paternal grandmother's great-grandfather (our 3rd great-gf) Ignacio de la Cruz Navedo Vélez, son of the former slaves Antonio de la Cruz Doles and Bárbara Vélez, of feliz memoria, married in 1847 a María Seferina Rodríguez Torres, daughter of (4th g-gps) Pedro Rodríguez Negrón and a Dominga Torres Ayala, daughter of (5th g-gps) Atanasio Torres and Petrona Ayala who in the beginning of the 1800's would have also been infants in Vega Baja, just like my maternal 3rd great-gps Marcelino Pabón Torres and his wife Tiburcia Torres. Since a child of Marcelino and Tiburcia married a first cousin, I know Pedro Pabón Torres and his wife María Baldomera Torres are related to Marcelino and Tiburcia, but not how since the marriage record does not stipulate the relationship!
Even worse, there is a third pair of Pabón Torres - Torres unión, they and the others are godparents to each other's children. Could they be related too? The interesting thing is that probably abuela didn't know that some of her ancestors were also originally from V.B. To make the rompecabezas just a wee bit more inconceivable, we must not forget the fact that Petrona Ayala shares the surname of Segundo de Rivera Ayala and his prima hermana/esposa Lucia Meléndez Ayala from Corozal. Once again, the same two towns. (One of the reasons I must become the patron of genealogists is to solve this.) And then, to complicate things even more, there are, so said great-aunt Alberta Pabón Otero, mami's foster mother and maternal aunt, two Pabón families in Vega Baja who are not related. YET, I have come to believe they are, since our Pabón start out in Vega Baja and then return after about one hundred years, probably after losing the memory that this was home when our maternal grandfather, Angel Pabón Otero moved there from Ciales with our grandmother, Ana Oliveras Clas, probably to help her forget the death by tuberculosis of her son, Luis Ángel Ferrer Oliveras.
Ah! and then, there are the Rivera bunch. Francisco Rivera, one of our 2nd g-gf's through our paternal güeli Cristina, had only one daughter, María Belén, with Ignacio and Seferina's daughter, María de Jesús. He did not deign himself as being able to marry María de Jesús Navedo Rodríguez, or as being able to recognize his daughter who is known as María Jesús Navedo. And yet, when his poor daughter, known as just María Belén Navedo, has her first (unrecognized child, i.e by the father) by Pablo Ramírez Pantojas, it is Francisco Rivera who registers the girl, as a Navedo, in the civil registry without stating that he is the grandfather. However, gúeli Cristina, always signed herself as Rivera. Obviously, Francisco had a lasting relationship with María de Jesús, but the whole mess is strange. I have no knowledge of his origins, but give him a mid-1850's birth since María Belén is born in 1874. Now, can he be related to María Isabel Maldonado Rivera, a Vegalteña of a Corozal mother, María Josefa Rivera Meléndez, the daughter of Segundo de Rivera Ayala and Lucía Meléndez Ayala mentioned above? Or how about to the Laureano Rivera from Corozal who lived around the same period? Or how about to the father or mother of Julia Rivera, Natalio's common-law wife?
Yes, with screw-ups like these we defiantly need a new patron of genealogists in the higher echelons of the Great Allá-Arriba. And do you want to hear a good one? As if I had not enough líos to deal with, some character named Scott Meléndez (probably a relative now) starts e-mail bochinchando with Doctor Ana Cristina Oquendo Pabón, enunciating about the Meléndez Rosado (the Rosado have crossed with several of my parientes siblings over the years). Do I have to put up with the Rosado bunch too, as of now? I am not even dead yet and the fans are looking for inspiration and help... At any rate if the Doc is giving any vital information out to primos pretendientes I want the Honorable Sociedad Genealógica Puertorriqueña to do an exhaustive inquiry with a Procurador especial into the matter. What nerve these two have! And then la neófita esa sends me an e-mail from a José Oquendo just like you, she says to me, and then one from a José Rivera Nieves from Dios sabe dónde. Is there no end to this mess? I don't know, Chaz, this is outrageous. We need the patrón real soon.
You know, I was all ready to give up on account of the e-bochinche but somehow I thought of my poor slaves, Bárbara and her kids, and I could not do it. In fact, that night I had a dream about Bárbara and decided someone (me, myself and I) should write about her and her experience. I could just see the copyright on the story that begins:
"A la diminuíta anciana, le parecía un día excepcionalmente caluroso.........."
(Beginning sentence of © Mi Pena y Mi Vergúenza by Rev. José Antonio Oquendo Pabón).
When I finish, I'll let you see it before la neófita does. This Roman exile has me so debilitated I had to take a vacation and go to Donostía-San Sebastián to find out about the Basque country that my Oquendo forbears come from. I went to some exciting archives and I found out that there is a valley and town named Okendo and that in the middle ages it was established as part of the Hermandad de Aiala (Ayala), and that the parish Church is San Juan Bautista, which is unbelievable because Domingo Oquendo Soriano had five Juan or Juana's among his many children.
Pero ese, ese es otro cuento, míjo................
el padre
(Article is letter written tongue in cheek to Chaz Fourquet, editor of Nuestra Herencia, boletín of the Hispanic Genealogy Society of New York for the Muertito Heaven column.)
MUERTITO HEAVEN
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- ©1998 by Dr. Ana Cristina and Rev. José Antonio Oquendo Pabón on this article. All rights reserved.
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©1997 by Dr. Ana Cristina and Rev. José Antonio Oquendo Pabón for "Nuestros Muertitos" and "Muertito Heaven". All rights reserved.
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