El Aguaje de Garcia

Last year I posted about my grandmother and her story of migrating here to Chicago from San Luis Potosi. Her story was published in a Spanish language magazine from our home state and as a blog post in English. This is only a very small portion of her story and our family story.

For the past 50 years the women in my family have documented and preserved our histories. I have been resuming this tradition for many years and have been in the midst of helping to write a book on our small village, El Aguaje de Garcia (sometimes referred to as El Aguaje de Garcias). From our family stories and research it got its name because there use to be beautiful streams of water running through it and some of the families that moved there were made up of surnames “Garcia.”

The village is right on one of the main Silver routes (Camino Real) used during the mid-16th to 19th century when silver was “discovered” in our homelands. The route was actively used as a trade route for 300 years, mainly for transporting silver extracted from the mines of Zacatecas, Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí, and mercury. Many of my ancestors including my great grandfather and grandmother worked the mercury mines in this area. It’s often referred to as a rancho/rancheria made up of a mixture of mostly Indigenous, African and Spanish people. I am not entirely sure what our book will look like and if it will ever be complete in my lifetime but I am going to try to get it done.

Here is a small audio clip from a 20 minute reel-to-reel I got digitized last year. It is my grandmother speaking to my great, great grandmother back home in El Aguaje de Garcia, San Luis Potosi, Mexico. When I first found it in my grandmothers belongings, I wasn’t sure what was on it. My grandmother passed away March 24, 1997. March use to be a very difficult month for me because my grandfather also passed away on this same date five years after her. The anniversary is also a couple weeks after my birthday. In recent years, I have tried to focus on all the good things rather than the sad ones. Honoring the women in my family and especially the ones no longer here with us. Enjoy this small audio clip, their voices and the music in the background.