Commissioner Victoria Serna. “Hosting tours as
well as concerts at our churches will not only help
us raise money to preserve them but will also allow
us to share our rich and unique culture with the rest
of the world while also working towards stimulating
the economy.”
Of all the churches, the ones that have particularly
won Graziano’s heart are those located on the
various Pueblos around the Rio Grande River. San
Esteban del Rey is located at the Sky City, Acoma
Pueblo, high on the Mesa, 350 feet above the desert
floor and was built astonishingly between 1629 and
1640, with “Acoma labor under the direction of the
resident Franciscan, Fray Juan Ramírez.”
“At Acoma and elsewhere the mission churches
are very much monuments to ancestral presence and
to the attributes—strength, perseverance, survival—
that this ancestry suggests,” writes Graziano. One
resident he interviewed went on to say that when,
inside the church, “I get this feeling of sacrifice. It’s
kind of like an overwhelming feeling for myself—
sometimes it makes me emotional. Just to think
about the people who were so strong back then.
I remember my grandmother and my grandfather
telling me that people were so strong at one time
they could change people’s emotions. That’s how
I feel about the church.”Nuestra Señora del Carmen.
El Carmen, Mora County.
St. Augustine, Isleta Pueblo.