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Excerpts from Abe Peña's  Memories of Cibola

All material used with the kind permission of the author, given to me personally.

from The Village at Ojo del Gallo
"On May 10, 1864, a son was born to Doña Juana Maria and Don Mónico Mirabal, in the village of Seboyeta, in western New Mexico. They baptized him Silvestre, and at age two his mother moved to San Rafael, to join her husband where Silvestre grew to manhood and became a legend in his own time. When he died on October 9, 1939, at the age of seventy-five, he had built a land and livestock empire stretching from the Acoma Reservation on the east to the Navajo Reservation on the west. He did it by dint of hard work resourcefulness, and the instinctive ability, given to few, to glimpse the future and act on it.


There were eight children in the family, six boys and two girls. Silvestre was the oldest and attended St. Michael's, in Santa Fe. His sisters, Premia and Reyes, attended Loretto High School, also in Santa Fe. His younger brothers Federico, Nabor, Telesfor, Remigio, and Gilberto also attended St. Michael's as they grew up. Don Mónico and Doña Juana Maria were believers in education, although they had little formal education themselves. As a young boy I recall seeing Don Silvestre, whom people pointed to, at the Fernandez Ranch, near San Mateo. We were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Floyd W. Lee for the inauguraton of a new 'Big Red Barn' at the ranch headquarters, about 1936. A barbeque and barn dance were held, and the people of San Mateo were invited to break bread and share the day with friends of the Lees, who came from all over the state. Some of them flew in, touching down on the dirt strip in a cloud of dust. The airplanes came to a stop near the new barn, which dominated the landscape; it still stands today. It was very exciting watching those planes touch down and take off. Some had the open cockpits of barnstorming fame, and the pilots were dashing, with their goggles and their scarves flying in the wind.


Don Silvestre, as I recall, was dressed in a black suit with a black bow tie, a white embroidered shirt, and a black bowler hat. I remember him as a tall man, but I'm certain his reputation made this uncommon man taller than life. Neither the embroidered shirt, nor hat, nor the black suit were his ordinary dress. Although he wore formal dress for the occasion, and that with aplomb, his usual dress was bib overalls (de pechera), a cotton shirt, and ankle-high work shoes. People who remember him well say that it was hard to distinguish him from those who worked for him. In fact he prided himself on confusing people by becoming one of the many and pretending to be someone else.


They tell the story of the time when he was president of the Bank of Commerce in Albuquerque, which he helped found, and a nervous client from back East needed the approval of the president to secure a rather large loan. He was told that Don Silvestre would be in Albuquerque on a certain day. The client arrived at the bank smartly dressed and in a hurry and was told that Don Silvestre had just walked out of the bank and was on his way to his Albuquerque home on Twelfth Street. The gentleman rushed out and saw a man sitting on the stairs in his work clothes and asked him if the buggy was his and would he take him to Don Silvestre's home. They got in the buggy and trotted to Twelfth Street. He tipped the driver generously, and the buggy went on to the back of the house, while the passenger went to the front door and knocked. After a bit of a wait, the door opened and the gentleman asked, 'is Don Silvestre in?' Suddenly he realized that the man who answered the door was the same one who had driven him there. 'I am Silvestre,' the president said, and with tongue in cheek added, 'and I wonder whether a man as generous with his tips as you are needs more money?' The fellow got the loan, but he also received a big lesson in humility.


There's also the story of a trip he and his oldest son, Mónico, made to Gallup in one of the first trucks to come into the area, about 1916. The first road followed wagon tracks to Gallup, paralleling the railroad tracks and up on the railroad bed from time to time, to cross arroyos. An entrepreneur at Thoreau with barrels of gasoline for those first vehicles, saw the Mirabals going toward Gallup. The following day on the way back, the truck quit running near Continental Divide, and Don Silvestre, or 'Pantaleo,' as many of his friends called him, decided to walk home, while young Mónico tried to get the truck started. The fellow with the gas barrels saw him walking and asked, 'Did your truck break down?' Don Silvestre, without breaking stride, answered, 'No, Mónico's truck broke down back there, mine's still going strong!' And on he walked, with the familiar wool shawl over his shoulders, still some thirty miles from home.
He served as a delegate to the New Mexico Constitutional Convention in 1889, as chairman of the County Commission from 1889 to 1891, as a member of the New Mexico Territorial House of Representatives from 1891 to 1905, as a member of the National Rivers and Streams Commission, as chairman of the board of the Bank of Commerce, and was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma posthumously, in the 1960s.


He also had a general merchandise store in San Rafael, and during the Great Depression of the 1930s, he provided food to many people whether they could pay or not. He also helped many homesteaders by providing sheep and cattle on shares to get them started. He was a generous man, but did not tolerate idleness and had little patience for laziness. If someone was standing around, he handed him a shovel and sent him to clean out the corrals or pigpens.


His wife, Lorencita, was also from Seboyeta, and they raised six children: Mónico, Alfredo, Josefita, Prudencia, Vitalina, and Beneranda. Beneranda married Salvador Milán, the founder of the village of Milan, and the three older sisters married three Candelaria brothers from the Concho area, in Arizona. Beneranda was named after one of her aunts and also after my maternal grandmother, Beneranda, who was related and a good friend of Doña Lorencita. My grandmother remembered 'many happy hours spent at la Casa Grande in San Rafael, quilting with mi prima Lorencita.' When Don Silvestre died, in 1939, the large herds and landholdings were divided among six heirs. Most of the properties are still in the family and grazed by livestock, while some have been commercially developed, such as the village of Milan. Part of this vast empire embraced the land and shearing shed near the golf course in Milan, the Ice Caves, Tinaja and Campo Nueve, El Muerto and Tampico, La Jara and El Morro, and the large meadow and big three-story mansion in San Rafael. Also included in the holdings were the plot across from the church in San Rafael, where the Guadalupe Plaza is located, the property where the Cíbola General Hospital stands in Grants--the litany goes on and on.


Beneranda Mirabal Milán, known as Bennie by her friends, is the only one of the children now living [died late 2000]. She has a home in Milan and an apartment in Albuquerque."