photo_ada_duran - Gurulé Family 2024

              

Hi, my name is Ada Duran and this is my family tree tracing back to family #14, beginning with Juan Nepomuceno Gurulé.

I have been told some stories about great grandfather, Moises Pacheco, how he homesteaded the property in Penasco.  He began by planting a bean field in a flat area deep in the mountains of Penasco.  About 20 years ago, we began going back to the land annually, planting a bean field in his memory.  In the fall, we return to harvest the crop which has been watered and cared for by nature and God.  It’s amazing how the bean plants flourish and there are very few weeds.  It’s almost as if there is one of our ancestral caretakers caring for it.

I have many pleasant memories of these family get-togethers up the mountain.  I have several pictures of my grandfather Leonides and some videotape of him explaining the history of the bean field.  My grandfather Leonides Pacheco told me stories about how the family ran a store in Penasco for many years.

Sadly, my grandfather Leonides passed away in 2005, but we continue to return to the land in the spring to plant the beans.

My father, Ed Cardenas, tells me stories about my grandfather, Leonides Pacheco.  He was one of the first in his family to attend college.  He attended college back east in the 1920’s and there was a lot of prejudice, but that didn’t stop him from getting his education.  For some time, he was Superintendent of Schools in Taos and also was a social worker for the state of New Mexico for many years.  When he retired, he returned to the land of his youth, living there well into his 90’s.  It is because of his love and dedication to education that my father, Ed Cardenas, and his brother Manny Pacheco of Taos, became social workers.

Our Indian heritage was very dear to my grandfather.  He was very proud of his Ute roots (Suazo) and his Picuris (Marta Rodriguez) roots, as well.  He tells a story about his family finding a little Ute boy and adopting him into the family (I’m thinking this may be the Suazo child that was raised by his aunt and uncle?)   Leonides was tall (over 6 feet tall) and lean in build.  He was very active, chopping wood for the campfires well into his 90’s.  I remember once going to bean field with him and although I was young, I couldn’t keep up with him climbing up the mountains.  I am very glad that I have some of the history of the bean field visits on video (along with my grandfather’s narration of the history of his family).

I asked my father if he has any memories of his paternal grandmother, Maria Sofia Gurule, and this is what he told me:  “After the death of Sofia’s husband, Moises Pacheco, she often came to stay with us in Taos.  One of her most treasured possessions was her pottery which she made and she proudly took wherever she went.  I remember her using it for cooking.  She was a tall, slim woman, when I knew her.  In her old age, she resembled her mother, Maria Victoria Suazo.  She loved to tell me stories, but I don’t remember them.  I had a piece of her pottery which I kept on a shelf above my bed.  When I was a teenager, the shelf collapsed and the pottery was broken.”