From an Altar Screen; El Retablo: Tales from New Mexico

Fray Angelico Chavez

Ayer Co. Pub

He has been called a renaissance man and New Mexico's foremost twentieth-century humanist by biographer Ellen McCracken. Any way you measure his career, Fray Angelico Chavez was an unexpected phenomenon in the wide and sunlit land of the American Southwest. In the decades following his ordination as a Franciscan priest in 1937, Chavez performed the difficult duties of an isolated backcountry pastor. His assignments included Hispanic villages and Indian pueblos. As an army chaplain in World War II, he accompanied troops in bloody landings on Pacific islands, claiming afterwards that because of his small stature, Japanese bullets always missed him.
 In time, despite heavy clerical duties, Fray Angelico managed to become an author of note, as well as something of an artist and muralist. Upon all of his endeavors, one finds, understandably, the imprint of his religious perspective. During nearly seventy years of writing, he published almost two dozen books. Among them were novels, essays, poetry, biographies, and histories.
 All true aficionados of the American Southwest's history and culture will profit by collecting and reading the significant body of work left to us by the remarkable Fray Angelico Chavez. Sunstone Press is now bringing back into print some of these rare titles.

Chavez, A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico (Southwest Heritage)

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Sunstone Press

A gentle wood carver whose santos are stolen; an old hunchback who, with the help of Our Lady, comes into her own; a horse thief innocent of wrong intents--theirs are the stories that Fray Angelico paints, framing them with exquisite art in the manner of the medieval triptych. Born and bred in the land of sunshine and silence, Fray Angelico Chavez has a threefold heritage and a threefold gift. Heir to the artistic tradition of Spanish New Mexico, steeped in the spirit of Franciscan mysticism, and word-perfect in the folklore of the adobe village, he interprets the ageless spirit of his people in story, poetry and painting.

New Mexico Triptych, Three Stories Set in the American Southwest (Southwest Heritage)

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez, canonical inspector of the missions of New Mexico in 1776, compared most everything in New Mexico to Mexico City, ''the delightful and alluring cradle of my birth, for which no praise is ever adequate.'' And hardly anything measured up. He disparaged the people of New Mexico and the religious art of Spanish immigrant Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco. Then, by an ironic twist later in 1776, Dominguez found himself on a five-month vision quest with Miera and Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante. Dominguez likened New Mexican churches to hacienda granaries, wine cellars, or Mexican pulque parlors. He found fault with certain of his Franciscan brethren, calling them on their drunkenness, insubordination, or public scandal. Yet all the while, Father Dominguez maintained the keen eye and curiosity of a born observer. From no other document do we learn so much about daily life in raw and remote late colonial New Mexico. How much a nanny goat cost (2 pesos), a fat pig (12 pesos), a trade knife (1 buffalo hide), a captive Indian girl from twelve to twenty years old (2 good horses and assorted dry goods), or the funeral of a Spanish child with tall cross and cope (8 pesos); how to prepare atole or chocolate (not coffee); the resentment of the colony's merchants toward their Chihuahua creditors and the fatalism of New Mexican families living under constant threat of Comanche attack; or where to catch trout--such details abound. Dominguez's superiors, however, resentful of his unflattering wordiness and occasional wit, filed his commentary away unceremoniously and forgot it. Since its rediscovery in 1928 and now published in a new edition, the unparalleled Dominguez report has often been compared to the 1630 and 1634 memorials of Fray Alonso de Benavides. The contrast could scarcely be sharper. Benavides looked out hopefully upon a young colony bent upon the Christian conversion of the Pueblo Indians, and Dominguez saw realistically what an ever more secular world had wrought. Whereas Benavides condemned Pueblo Indian ceremonial kivas as dens of devil worship, Dominguez routinely inventoried them as men's club houses. For their timely views, we are deeply indebted to both men.

The Missions of New Mexico, 1776 (English and Spanish Edition)

History

Eleanor B. Adams

Americas

This unusual book, Fray Angelico Chavez's personal meditation on his cultural heritage, is also a kind of spiritual autobiography of the Hispano people of New Mexico. The spirit of New Mexico, he feels, grows out of its dry mountain terrain whose hills and valleys resemble those of Spain and of ancient Palestine. Just as this kind of landscape helped the Hebrew shepherd Abraham to find his God, so in Fray Angelico's view, have New Mexico's mountains kept her people close to their God. In evoking this special closeness between the divine and the human, the author returns repeatedly to the Penitentes of New Mexico--the societies of men who scourge themselves and replay the Crucifixion each Holy Week to share the sufferings of their Savior. Some of his ideas will spark controversy over the meaning of New Mexico's past, but Fray Angelico Chavez's viewpoint, representing that of many native Spanish Americans, deserves the attention of every reader with an interest in the state's Hispanic heritage. No one can read this book without gaining a new understanding of the world of the New Mexican Hispano imbedded in the dry, hilly landscape of the majestic Sangre de Cristo mountains. All true aficionados of the American Southwest's history and culture will profit by collecting and reading the significant body of work left to us by the remarkable Fray Ange1ico Chavez. Sunstone Press has now brought back into print some of these rare titles.

My Penitente Land, Reflections of Spanish New Mexico (Southwest Heritage)

My Penitente land: Reflections on Spanish New Mexico

My Penitente Land: Reflections on Spanish New Mexico

Travel

United States

Museum of New Mexico Press

Written as an autobiography, the author lets this famous willow wood statue speak for herself, tell her own story from the time she was brought to New Mexico in 1625 by Fray Benavides until the present. Many photographs bring this remarkable history to life. Fray Angelico researched, translated and annotated facts about the statue's history, its religious society, its fiestas and chapels, correcting the mistakes and folklore held as truth for more than two centuries. Fray Angelico Chávez has been called a renaissance man and New Mexico's foremost twentieth-century humanist by biographer Ellen McCracken. Any way you measure his career, Fray Angelico Chavez was an unexpected phenomenon in the wide and sunlit land of the American Southwest. In the decades following his ordination as a Franciscan priest in 1937, Chavez performed the difficult duties of an isolated backcountry pastor. His assignments included Hispanic villages and Indian pueblos. As an army chaplain in World War II, he accompanied troops in bloody landings on Pacific islands, claiming afterwards that because of his small stature, Japanese bullets always missed him. In time, despite heavy clerical duties, Fray Angelico managed to become an author of note, as well as something of an artist and muralist. Upon all of his endeavors, one finds, understandably, the imprint of his religious perspective. During nearly seventy years of writing, he published almost two dozen books. Among them were novels, essays, poetry, biographies, and histories. Sunstone Press has brought back into print some of these rare titles.

La Conquistadora: The Autobiography of an Ancient Statue

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Books by Fray Angelico Chavez