Saturday, March 18, 2006

History in its adobe walls

Belen's Felipe Chavez home renovated by a dedicated family of educators a center for culture and history

Clara Garcia News-Bulletin Staff Writer; cgarcia@news-bulletin.com

Belen Walking up to the Felipe Chavez Hacienda on Lala Street in Belen, it's hard to imagine what life was like in the mid-1800s when the home was built.

But as you step through the front door and into this grand home, a rush of history and culture sweeps through your mind. The three-foot-wide adobe walls and the original wooden floors take you back in time to the days when Belen was a pivotal stop along the Camino Real.

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Today, the house stands in downtown Belen and is being renovated by a family who believe that learning from the past will only make the future better. Ymelda and Leroy Baca and their daughter, Gretta, have been working for the past two years to open the house to the public and share Valencia County's history.

It was the family's love for history that led them to buy the venerable house. When the chance arose to make an offer, Ymelda said she couldn't pass it up. While the couple was still living in Washington State at the time, they always figured they would return to New Mexico to enjoy their retirement.

For the first year, Gretta, who still lived in the area, began the renovation while Ymelda and Leroy pitched in during visits. But when the couple returned home a year ago, the whole family came together to make their dream a reality.

From the beginning, the family's goal was to restore the house and property and create an institute for the preservation of culture, language and history.

"That's my mission," Ymelda said. "I've always been an advocate for bilingual education and have always maintained a lot of pride for the people and culture in the area. And, when I saw this house, it was a tie to the past and, because I was born and raised here, I wanted to maintain some of the history."

The Bacas, who are both retired educators, say the new project is an extension of their passion for teaching. They want to show it off and inform the community and its children about where they came from and how the past has influenced the ways in which they live today.

"Our goal is to, hopefully, open this house up so that the community can see what it was like in the past and maybe bring back a feeling of roots, language, culture and traditions," Ymelda said. "We don't only want this house to be a place of education, but we also want it to be a place of celebration. We want people to have weddings here, to celebrate birthdays and get together where people can sing and dance and talk about the past."

The Felipe Chavez house, which is was placed on the State and National Historical Registers in 1980, was built in 1860 by a pioneer merchant, trader and rancher. Felipe Chavez made his fortune with business interests ranging from the New York Stock Exchange to mining in Mexico.

Although there were several haciendas in the area, the Chavez estate was the largest. It included cornfields, extensive pasture, cottonwood groves, a mercantile and, eventually, a school for girls.

Chavez was, for a time, a judge in Belen and even built a small adobe jailhouse in the courtyard behind his home. As the legend goes, he would sentence cattle rustlers and other criminals to death and walk them a few steps from the jail to a large cottonwood tree where they were hanged for their crimes. Both the jail and the tree remain on the property. She hopes to convert the jail into a chapel.

Since Chavez's death in 1905, the keys to the historic house have changed hands more than a dozen times. Through the years, the house has been burned, damaged by floods and even vandalized, but the legacy of the property and of Don Felipe Chavez — also known as "El Millionario" — lives on today.

The task of renovating the old house wasn't an easy one, Baca said. And it's still not completed.

When the family first bought the house, all the windows were broken, four inches of dirt covered the floors, the walls were cracked and much of the interior wood had decomposed. Even though there was a lot of work ahead of them, the Bacas never thought it couldn't be done.

"We started patching and plastering and we were able to salvage all of the windows," Ymelda said. "This was, and still is, a labor of love and we've put our entire lives into this house. We're trying to keep the Spanish Colonial style throughout the house and have come across some great deals.

"We're not finished, and I don't think we'll ever be finished," she said. "This is a work in progress. We are now on what we call phase two. We're working on what was known as the servant's quarters on the other side of the courtyard. I'm still not sure what we're going to do with it --maybe a museum."

Another attraction the Bacas hope will draw crowds is a ghost story. Some people believe the spirit to be that of Felipe's daughter, Margarita Chavez. It's said that because her father left her out of his will, her spirit still roams the house.

Ymelda said she has never seen an apparition or felt uneasy in the house, but there have been a few unexplained occurrences. She recalled one day when they had finished polishing the wooden floor in the front foyer and left for a few hours. When they returned, they could clearly see small, bare footprints trailing across the floor.

"At first, we thought someone had come back into the house," Ymelda said. "But we knew that couldn't have happened. They looked like they were the footprints of a woman. We've never been able to explain that one."

While it doesn't happen every day, or even every week, once in a while the family will go into the house and find that a water faucet has been turned on. Leroy has also heard from people who say they've heard music coming from the house, seen a rocking chair move when no one is sitting in it or people sitting around a table playing cards.

As for the future of the Felipe Chavez house, the Bacas will continue to rent it out for weddings, parties, reunions and retreats. But their main objective is to host gatherings that will educate people about history and culture.

Ymelda, Leroy and Gretta will be hosting monthly events that will include history lessons, ghost stories, music festivals, poetry readings, art exhibits and plays. She said the house will also be open for field trips for school children.

For information, call 565-3167 or 888-5946.

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