- And
then Grandma sits down on an old wooden wheel, leans on her knees,
tucks her skirt between her legs, and begins her favorite of the
old stories. I listen, watching the dust motes float in shafts of
sunlight …
To a young Don
Usner, summers in the New Mexican hamlet of Chimayo meant chili and
watermelons, worship in the Santuario, and the traditional tales of
his grandmother, Benigna Ortega Chavez. While Usner wove the Ortega
family’s famed wool blankets, his abuela wove
rich stories of The Little Shepherd, who understood the speech of
animals, of how the Knight of the Feather outsmarted a foolish
king, and of Maria Linda, who, persecuted by an evil stepmother,
was saved by the intervention of the Virgin
Mary.
In his new book, Benigna’s
Chimayo, Usner retells 14 of Benigna’s tales in English,
to be enjoyed by readers of any age. His sister, Carole Usner Hunt,
has translated eight of Usner’s renditions back into
Spanish.
Benigna
learned these cuentos from her Chimayo elders nearly a century ago.
The tales’ story lines and themes weathered the long-ago journey
from Spain, but generations of re-tellings have saturated them with
the color and flavor of northern New Mexico. Though rich with magic
and fanciful characters, Benigna’s cuentos are often grounded in
experience. Stories of young men leaving home to ask a tyrannical
king for work remind Usner of his great-uncles’ migrations to
Colorado and Utah mines, where back-breaking labor returned them
haggard and worn to their families.
Full-page
photos of Benigna embellish the cuentos with glimpses of this
102-year-old storyteller in action, gesturing with one hand,
leaning back in her chair, and doubled over with
laughter.
- Grandma
looks at me over her glasses, smiling. “Dime la verdad, ‘jito.
Isn’t that a good story? I don’t know who made it up, but it’s
true. The people used to have lots of wisdom and say many things
that were true, but now? Nada de eso.”
Benigna’s Chimayo: Cuentos
from the Old Plaza, by Don J. Usner, illustrated with
photos and drawings, 153 pages, cloth, $19.95, Museum of New Mexico
Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Benigna’s Chimayo: Cuentos from the Old Plaza.
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