Did you know that I had been there? Sí, I have been there over the course of the last few years. The last time I was there, I finally realized where I was and I flipped out.
I was feeling out of sorts because I live on a tropical vacation haven and yet have to work in a hot enclosed oficina mientras turistas come back home on vacation. That's PR for you: only place in the world where la gente come back home on vacation. Everyone else leaves home to visit unknown lands, but we come home to vacate... must be a Freudian thing or something. Anyway, I decided to take the following day off and drove in one hour from Ceiba to the interior town of Corozal, situated in the mountainous north-central area of Puerto Rico, south of Toa Alta and bordering the town of Naranjito. The town, plaza and church are bathed all day by that glorious sun that those of us who have left Puerto Rico for any extended period of time pine for in the cold, dreary, dark and damp days of winter in the nuevayores and other Puerto Rican barrios of los Estados Unidos. The pastor, a Spaniard who has known me since my own 1980 ordination to the priesthood, was a difficult one, a neo-Conquistador whose fold know who is boss, but I had to try to get info since every time I was stopped by missing records or the establishment of new towns and parishes, the hints and indications were that Corozal was the place to go look for the missing puzzle pieces of the genealogical rompecabezas. These were just too strong to ignore even if I had been dreading facing this guy since the early 1980's.
So, there I was on a summer Tuesday morning. I know that because the office is closed on Mondays (not even God knows why) and because the pastor was in a good mood because his vacation was drawing nigh. So great was his mood that he invited me to lunch and then took me into the inner sanctum, the cubicle where the secretary enclosed herself with the precious archives that predated the foundation of the town by a couple of years. There, where the horde of Tomes and Volumes reposed, he left me and went out. The last time I had been there I had noticed that someone did un error grande: he had the books done in a red cloth cover. Now, fifty years or so later, the covers were ripped and bled pink and red onto everything they touched; I had come prepared though, with a dark towel and a face mask 'cause I am allergic to my shadow, not to mention the humidity, muskiness and moldiness of two hundred year old books like those. I sat me down, then, with the face mask in position and the towel over my nice dark blue shirt and opened up the second volume of the marriage records.
I was looking for Oquendo, Maldonado and Rivera on papi's side and Laureano, Alvadalejo and López on mami's side of the genealogical tree. Immediately, the patron of genealogists (or was it the family spirits of my Basque ancestors?) smiled upon me so I ripped the mask off - the darn thing smelled of sawdust anyway - and the towel - I hate navy blue shirts - ripped off my priest collar - I had begun to sweat - and began to read:
"En esta Santa Yglesia de Jesús, María y José...." It was the 1826 marriage certificate of our great-grandfather's paternal grandparents whose names we only knew from their children/ grandchildren's baptism certificates. Now we had their whole names on their own record: Domingo Oquendo Soriano and María de la Encarnación de los Santos Morales (juro that is her name; she probably failed first grade, I know I would have if I had to learn to write a name that long!) and in addition the names of their parents: José Oquendo, María del Rosario Soriano, Manuel Cecilio de los Santos and Benedicta (poor thing) Morales. As I read and wrote, I got more and more excited realizing I had found six direct ancestors in record time, less than five seconds after opening the book. 
To calm down, I then did that which is no longer allowed to be cherished in public on the continent but could be indulged in on the isle. Was this real? Was it living? Was it heavenly? Having finished my fetish I returned to my search and immediately almost fainted: I had found the marriage records of two of Domingo's brothers: Ramón with Gregoria García Rosado and Carlos with María de Jesús Ortíz Camacho. Dazed, I opened up a baptismal book, and wondered if I could find any relation to the Oquendo's in Morovis, then I swirled again.
I knew I had entered the heart of a genealogist's heaven. I said aloud: "Ay, bendito, encontré nuestros muertitos! It's like being in heaven... ("Muertito Heaven"). For there, in no uncertain terms, were María de la Encarnación's records, and her siblings Andrés, Juana, Polonia, Tomasa, Eusebio and Francisca de los Santos Morales! Going from book to book, folio to folio in the different volumes I also found the marriage record of a son of Benito Maldonado Arroyo by Agueda Ferrer Crespo, who was Benito's first wife before he married a María José Rivera Meléndez and then, searching to see if he had any children, bingo: an Oquendo Maldonado (Alejo's) 1868 baptismal certificate in Corozal. This meant that there could be a tie with Morovis! You see, I had recently found my papi's great-grandparents' 1867 marriage certificate in Morovis (Juan Bautista Oquendo de los Santos and María Isabel Maldonado Rivera) and had copied some other Oquendos figuring that some day Dr. Ana Cristina and I would know who they were. We could now add as Oquendo Santos siblings, with their spouses and some children: Francisco (wed in 1863 a Josefa Rodríguez Rodríguez - w/one child - and in 1877 a Guadalupe Meléndez), Juan Antonio (two children with Cecilia Rodríguez Rosado), Juan de la Cruz (wed 1866 to Josefa Simeona Torres Ocasio - eight children), Juana María (una natural daughter found), Fermín (four children with María Nicomedes Rosario), Tomasa (gave child to Paulino Rivera Ocasio), María Paula (hijo natural), Gavino and Andrés. Besides the previous ten persons, this meant forty two new individuals! Fifty two at a sitting was not bad, however, los espíritus familiares were not through with me yet. Alejo's record made me think of something and so I went back to one of the open books and looked at something I had registered in the back of my mind but hadn't really read. I read it then, though, reread it and then I wrote it down. It was an 1821 marriage certificate of a Segundo de Rivera Ayala with a first cousin named Lucía Meléndez Ayala. As I looked closer, confusion reigned and obliterated me: I had found the records of the parents of María Josefa (papi's 2nd g-grandmother and Benito's wife) and it contained the names of her four grandparents, Victoriano and Gregoria, and Pedro Pablo and Ursula.
I was dizzy. I knew I should quit for it was six o'clock. As I was closing the last book something caught my eye. OH MY GOD! The name of mami's 3rd great-grandmother on the Pabón Otero side and her siblings flabbergasted me eyes: María Clemencia Laureano Rivera, Juan Manuel, Ruperto and Pedro Candelario. That made me greedy and so I went back to something in another volume and found from mami's great-grandmother on the Oliveras Clas side, María de la Concepción Alvadalejo López (she almost failed first grade too) and her siblings Juan de Dios and Teodora. Another brother, Manuel, appeared in lists as father to a Petrona in Morovis, so I packed him in also and since his daughter's records had his parents, Pedro Vicente and María Castora (named for the family beaver) they were also included. This added up to records on 16 direct and around 55 other relatives. I quit at seven o'clock. Driving home, I FLEW through Naranjito, cut through Bayamón to take the Muda de Caguas to route 2, where travelers changed horses before there were cars and rested before there were highways and from Ponce and San Juan, raced toward Humacao on route 30, cut through Juncos, Las Piedras and Naguabo on route 31 before arriving in Ceiba at nine sharp. That is when I called the Doc and told her to sit down... Now I'm stuck in Rome, Italy. Yes, I know some of you want to meet my neighbor, Karol Woytyla, others want to go to that Chapel down the street, the Sistine and still others crave for cappuccino or dream of ruins and monuments and forums and museums and history and culture - but I want to go to Muertito Heaven! What do I want to waste my time writing a doctoral thesis for? At least I have been there several times, but that's neither here nor there, is it?
Padre José Antonio Oquendo Pabón, Pbro., STL. 
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©1998 by Dr. Ana Cristina and Rev. José Antonio Oquendo Pabón on this article. All rights reserved.
©1997-1999 by Dr. Ana Cristina and Rev. Padre José Antonio Oquendo Pabón for "Nuestros Muertitos" and "Muertito Heaven". All rights reserved.
01/18/99
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