I know this picture is cheating, but it tells me so much about the little pueblo my mother’s family is from, El Cargadero. Located about 10 kilometers from Jeréz, the pueblo seems like a shell of what I remember as a kid.
Plaza Cívica el Migrante (El Cargadero, Zacatecas)
On my second day there, I asked Papá Chepe about how many people lived in El Cargadero. He didn’t give me a number and instead said that it was very few. “Three fourths of the homes here are empty.” Then he pointed, to several homes around the plaza belonging to his neighbors. They visited just as often as Papá Chepe and Mamá Toni, a few times a year for a couple of weeks. Papá Chepe continue, “This place is dead.”
He was right, or at least that’s what it felt like during the day. During the day, I saw few people walking around, maybe two or three kids playing in the plaza, and a few older men gathered at the corner of the plaza. At night, despite the cold, teens and kids and adult men came out to the plaza to play volleyball and talk about who knows what.
The above photo shows the name of the plaza that I played in so much as a kid. Now, it notes the connection El Cargadero has to thousands of its children scattered across el Norte in cities and states like Anaheim, Chicago, Washington and North Carolina.
More sources:
Gustavo Arellano, an “investigative reporter” for OC Weekly, has written a lot on el Cargadero and especially its connection to Anaheim. We can both count ourselves among the 1,000s of descendants with direct links to the “mountain hamlet.”
My mother comes from El Cargadero, a mountain hamlet in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas that over the past century has hemorrhaged more than 1,000 residents to Anaheim.
I could have written that sentence.
Answer: Because Mexicans Never Return to Mexico
For years, the only phone in my mother’s hometown of El Cargadero, nestled high in the mountains of the desiccated central Mexican state of Zacatecas, was in the house of Salvador Barrios. Whenever someone received a call, Salvador had to jog up and down El Cargadero’s hilly streets and let the person know that someone wanted to talk to them. It didn’t matter if it was night or day, heat or rain: Salvador ran.
I’ve made and received calls with Salvador o “Chava” during this trip and before. My grandparents still don’t have a phone in their home.
E for El Cargadero
There are more than 1,000 Cargaderenses in Anaheim. I’m sure a few hundred are related to me.
The El Cargadero Social Club by Nick Schou
Appropriately for such a club, the roster reads like a who’s-who list of El Cargadero’s most prominent families: Saldivar, Barrios, Fernandez, García, Ureño, Gamboa, Miranda, Casas and Viramontes. Ninety percent of the Cargaderenses have at least one of those names somewhere in there family trees.
(Italicized apply directly to me.)
I have a similar connection to Matamoros, Brownsville and Port Isabel, Texas. I swear I’m related to about half the population of the latter.
I think its really great that you know alot of your families history.
there’s a lot of history in those little pueblitos.
Hey Chica – Feliz Ano 2006
It’s sad to see that small towns like El Cargadero are dying out. The first generations return, but there kids will marry and may not go back. And as you just mentioned there are about 1,000 in Anaheim – what are the chances that they’ll marry within each other? Slim.
happy belated new year cindylu. i had no clue that towns were being abandoned in this manner until i visited my friends little town in SLP last year. there was something very impresionante and sad about it.
That is crazy. Did you try to get in touch with him?
It is definitely sad that rural towns across the globe are dying out as more and more people it the cities and suburbs, but it’s a process that has been happening for hundreds and hundreds of years. I can’t help but wonder if the internet and hydro-energy may one day reverse that trend.
I do know that in many of these dying towns in Latin America, they’re about 80% female because most men head north at about 17. Not that I would go to any town because it’s full of single women, just saying.
it = hit
Erik,
I definitely wouldn’t go hooking up with any body in those towns until I found out that they weren’t related to me
Joseph,
I try, but I think there’s a lot more I need to know.
Cad,
Definitely. I thought it was pretty cool when I was a kid to get to visit the home where my grandfather lived as a kid.
Julissa,
Oddly enough, there are a couple of people in the second generation who have married someone from El Cargadero (Tío Pancho & Tía Martha) or someone from another pueblito near Jeréz (Tío Chuy and Tía Luisa; Madrina Chilo and Padrino José). Also, in Arellano’s and Schou articles they both discuss how people from El Cargadero in the states tend to marry other Cargaderenses. I’m not sure we’re really dying out, but then again I’m not dating anyone from El Cargadero and the only people I know from there are related to me.
Irasali,
I think this kind of stuff has been happening for a while.
Oso,
I actually have emailed Gustavo a couple of times and he’s pretty responsive. I’m not sure I believe that you’d stay away from these small, mainly female towns…
For informational purposes only, I will say that the towns of Salvatierra, Paracuaro, and Chamacuaro in the state of Guanajuato all have a female to male ratio of 9:1.
Oso,
You’re lucky you did not mention towns near Salamanca (from my knowledge, I don’t think those are nearby). If all my cousins would have stayed in el rancho and not gone to Houston, I think that ratio would be a little more like 7:3. Really.
Cindy and I are exceptions. Most of the children of cargaderenses I know married within the rancho or from the greater Jerez region. I’ve never met Cindy, but in the Anaheim cargaderense community, everyone knows each other because there are parties almost every weekend–weddings, baptisms, and the like. It’s easy to understand, then, why you would find a mate from your own kind.
Interesting comments Gustavo. For some reason I had assumed that due to the fact that there were so many more Latinos in Southern Cal. That marrying within conocidos would not happen. Then again, I did forget about the social clubs that exist.
well…el cargadero…the center( or slightly of center) of the known universe!
does any one remember when the rivers ran or when the mountains sang with rain? when children filled the viens of that beautiful ranchito with the music of life that filled the air? long before the cement suffocated the soul of my beloved ranchito,does anyone remember? does anyone remember the wonderful smell of the river flowing fully thru my ranchito?
did you get to feel the arena under your shoes or huarachesor feet as you walked down to phillipes to buy chicles ? did you get a precious chance ventar polvo dancing to el gallito , during the dances- looking for that special someone who made your heart ache with one mirada ? ay el cargadero, el razon de vivir, ya mero estas muerto. solo punsando son los preciosos corazones que han quedado. y mis amores perdidos. donde estaran? vamonos ,a viajar a cienguitas con nuestros abuelos,caras que puedo mirar en los nubes que no sueltan las aguas . aver si respiran los calles del pasado . ablen me montes y valles, gritanme pierdas del campo! cuando han visto en la vida?
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