Putting Together a Piece of a Family History Puzzle

Searching for family and family history is like a jigsaw puzzle, you find lots of little pieces and you put them together.  Those pieces begin to fit and begin to form a picture of the history of the family.  However, with the death of older generations in the family - aunts and uncles and grandparents - putting together the puzzle of the history becomes very difficult.  We are so involved surviving the challenges of daily life:  School work; making and surviving our careers; rearing children; making friends and fitting into society; providing for the shelter, food and medical care that we all need that we spend little or no time watching and recording the evolution of our family.  Sure, we share stories and some of those stories stick and a small portion of those are sometimes passed to the next generation.  But most often they are not.  What I have noticed is that the family memory fades and disappears and the family fragments.

Unfortunately it is not until we have more time (like after retirement) that some of us begin to let our curiosity guide us into family history.  Some of us look online to sites that help organize family from a historical perspective, some of us begin to research and may be lucky to find some tidbit of information or an event of one of our ancestors that is of interest and feel pride and comfort with a link to the past.  Some of us imagine what the struggles might have been and write stories about them.  And, some of us might have the time and flexibility after retirement to do first had research and interviews of family members trying to document their stories.  Unfortunately, by the time one is of an age of retirement, we are lucky if we find living members of the previous generation, or direct stories of members of two generation ago from members of the previous generation who had managed to have put attention and remembered stories that were passed on.  Those, however, become less and less reliable if the stories are more than one generation before, or if the person remembering has some bias and want to protect that they think is the family "honor."   Most often, pieces of this family "puzzle" become distorted because a complete piece is not found and we try to fit what we know into the "family picture," often distorting the picture.

A case in point was the inconsistency of the origin of the Garza family in the village of Villa de Garcia, the town where my mother's family is from.  All my cousins have been told that the direct line of the Garza family, my grandfather's line came from San Luis Potosi when he moved his family back to Villa de Garcia.  Implicitly it is assumed (and believed) that we have no connection to the Garza family in Villa de Garcia.  But his piece of information did not fit rest of the family facts and it seems to not only be from, but form a different puzzle.  As it turns out a great grandmother had moved away when her husband died sometime in the early 1900s.  How they managed to survive the Mexican Revolution of 1915 would make for a fantastic story!  From the pictures that survive and from their historical landholdings, these were people with money and high social status - the targets of the revolution.  My grandfather and his two sisters were raised in San Luis Potosi.  My Grandfather (Serafin) married a woman from Guadalajara (Maria del Pilar Barrera) had three or four of the seven kids in San Luis Potosi (my grandmother had the oldest child from her first marriage - David Negrete) before coming back to Villa de Garcia in the early 1930s.   

Serafin's Grandfather who died (probably after 1900)

Serafin (my grandfather) about 1930

Why didn't the San Luis origin of the Garza family didn't fit the family facts?  We know that the Garza family had incredibly large land holdings in the Villa de Garcia area, most likely small remnants of land grants made by the King of Spain to the "De La Garza" family in the 1600s.  sometime in the 1700s a branch of the De La Garza family dropped the "De La" and became just Garza (there is evidence of this but I have to look for direct proof in church records).  My grandfather's cousins had large landholding, Hacienda-size houses (I remember the house of one of my mother's uncles, Raul, had 10 to 12 bedrooms, inside courtyards, large groves of fruit, avocados, oranges and pecans as part of their back yard.  He also sponsored the circus  ("Circo Osorio") that came to town every year - own by another cousin of his).   

Some of my grandfather's cousins had businesses and my grandfather had large pieces of land with up to 250 horses on his farm at one time in the early 1930s.  Some of his other relatives had businesses and controlled or managed government owned centers such as the natural caverns of Garcia.  His cousins did not come from San Luis Potosi, and he could not have acquired such wealth in such a short time?  Where did all this economic power come from?  My grandfather had to be from Garcia and had moved away on a temporary basis but came back to his holdings.  Luckily, my aunt, the only living relative of my mother's side, remembered the fact about her grandfather dying and her mother moving to San Luis Potosi when I interviewed her and questioned her about this inconsistency.  (Unfortunately, much of the Garza farms did not survive the dry years of the middle 1930s, the same dry years that caused the "dust bowl" and the devastation of the American farmland in Texas and Oklahoma and led to such books as the "Grapes of Wrath" also impacted farms in Northern Mexico and led to the sale of cattle, horses and land by Serafin and other cousins. )

With My Aunt, the Oldest Living Member of My Mother's Family

24 Hours in Parras de la Fuente

Parras de la Fuente is a small city that time forgot, except for cars and internet, the town is living in the early 1800s.  Don't get me wrong, it is a wonderful place to visit and even live if you want to live with small-town values, be very family oriented, with people who enjoy the simple things in life, like a walk to the town square to speak with friends and family, sit in one of many of the small squares and small parks to have some ice cream (or tacos) and watch the people and the world go by.  All homes (and buildings) are straight out of the Spanish colonial period with original adobe construction and painted in colorful pastel colors; it is candy to the senses.  I hope it will not be overrun by tourists and developers - although I so some evidence of cheap row-housing in the outskirts of town.  There are no Walmarts, there are no large chain stores, there is only local vendors with mostly local producers producing and selling to the locals.  There are mayor industries, and Parras is or was known for denim production, wine production (since the early 1600s - in fact the wine was so good and cheap that the King of Spain prohibited them from selling and competing with Spanish wine in the 1700s and the 1800s).  It produces a large variety of fruits and vegetables because it has been always considered the "Oasis" of the high planes desert.   Parras de la Fuente also contains the roots of the Rivera family line.

 Scenes from Parras - Stores and Business look like regular houses with few signs

My father has always spoken of his family in Parras, but since they not affect me, I never put much attention.  My last trip there, with my father, was over 45 years ago, and the only thing that I remembered was that it was not a place I wanted to be.  I was just initiating my career in the high tech area, and the last thing I needed was to "waste" time with farmers too concerned about, what I considered, were the simple things in life; growing and harvesting grapes , nuts and fruit, making and drinking wine, spending large portions of your life on family time, relaxing and enjoying the trees, the flowers, the food and the people around you.  At that time I thought all that was backward and a waste of time.  I think differently now, and I'm sorry I did not stop and listen, smell the flowers and drank the wine.

I knew that if I wanted to get more facts on the Rivera family, I had to go to Parras.  I dragged my cousin from Monterrey to go with me and made a one day trip there.  All of my father's uncles, cousins and relatives of his generation and the generation of his father were dead, and since I did not bother to keep any records, I had no idea where to start to look for this "lost" family (actually we were the ones that were lost, they had been there all the time).  The town is a little less than a 3 hour drive from Monterrey on the freeway.  We got there about three in the afternoon.  I drove into the middle of town where we knew one of my father's uncles had owned a large variety story, akin to a small K-Mart store.  I parked in the main street of the commerce center, Reforma street, and my cousin and I proceeded to look for the store - nothing!  One old security guard remembered that one of the variety stores used to be a Rivera Variety Store but that was over fifteen years before.   

Disillusioned,  we began to walk back to the car to try to plan our next move.  We passed two little old ladies (and I mean little and old - about 80 years old) sitting on a bench watching the world go by.  We decided to take a change and asked them if they remember a Rivera-owned store on this street.  They did!  In fact, they used to shop there.  But they been closed for a long time and the owner died.  "But," she said, "there are other Rivera store owners around."  My heart jumped and my disillusionment melted.  "I don't know who they are or where their store is, but I can take you to someone who might know."  She said, and proceeded to walk us to a small hardware store about a block away.  The woman at the small hardware store pointed us to a small shoe shop about half a block away.  We went there and it turned out that the lady minding the store was the wife of the owner whose name was Rivera.  The husband was not there and was not due back until later that evening.  Realizing that not all Rivera's are family, we started asking her questions on the relationship of her husband and I could tell that that was going over like a "fart in church."   Not so much that she did not want to tell us, it's just that she did not know.  She did indicate to us where another store was whose owner was a Rivera - about three or four block away. 

The other store was a small grocery stored manned by a man about 50 and had a strong resemblance to my father's father.  His reaction when I introduced myself was interesting, he said I looked like one of his uncles.  After some comparison of family history (as much as I could remember), I realized we hit the jackpot!  He sent us to his 93 year-old mother on the other side of town.  He apologized he could not leave the store unattended, gave us the address and directions to his mother's house and sent us to go and talked to her.  He also gave us the name of a cousin who is a lawyer and had his law office on the way to his mother's house.

 With Second Cousin Maria Olivia and her mother Maria de los Angeles

His mother, although she is 93, took one look at me and immediately said "you look like Juan."  Her daughter, Maria Olivia, in her late fifties, early sixties, proceeded to talk about family history, trying to determined where we fit in the family tree relation to her.  The rest of the afternoon and the morning of the next day went like clockwork, we visited more family members and by noon the next day I had a draft of the family tree with at least ten branches and over one hundred and fifty entries.  I got some addresses, some phone numbers and some e-mails, and even had some Facebook links.  Overall it was a successful 24-hour trip.  I hope to summarize all the information and return in a few months with more time and start gathering family stories.  I got some interesting tid-bits of stories dealing with of family intrigue, stories of adventurers, and businesses, and can't wait to go back.

 With other second cousins

A Day in the Quest for Family Information

Research into of the Rivera, Gaytan, Garza, the Barrera, family histories, among some of my parents family names, have uncovered some very interesting stories.  Stories of unimaginable tragedies, of sacrifice and endurance under a tremendous odds, abundant wealth and extreme poverty, romantic love and forbidden love, of intrigue and a conspiracy,  and an overwhelming desire by to keep the family together, even at the expense of locking the skeletons in the closet along with the dirty family laundry.  I wish I have had the foresight to document all I saw and heard  when I was younger, and to have interviewed or at least listen to old relatives when they were eager to tell their stories.  Now the bulk of the historical treasure is either lost or hidden in pieces in church and government records and in the minds of older relatives who remember bits and pieces of what they heard or saw.   

I am trying to collect these bits and pieces so they can be documented for our generation, and to be able is like collecting little pieces of a complex puzzle and piecing it together to form a picture of a family in its evolution over the last one hundred and fifty years.  Every conversation with relatives I find or rediscover leads to a clue of who they might have been.  They also lead to the next clue or piece of the puzzle.  Sometimes I feel like a detective trying to piece together a whole novel but only finding one letter at a time, but I have also had some lucky finds that have led me to a whole chapter.

It is difficult to research family history when one lives in Michigan and the relatives and family history are scattered all over northeastern part of Mexico.  Also, for the type of family stories I am interested in documenting, the internet has limited value.  So the only solution is hitting the pavement and knocking on doors.  Luckily, I have a cousins who are also interested in this venture and indulge me enough to help me get around, without their help, I would not be finding these lost relations as fast as I am. 

For example, one of my cousins had a notion of where a "lost" cousin's mother used to live.  So we went to her house.  That aunt, had died many years ago, her house was abandoned, but the door was unlocked and we went in to see if we could find any evidence of where her son might have moved to.  The house was in shambles and we found no information.  A young lady, who took the bus near the house every morning was standing waiting for a bus and we asked her if she knew anything about it.  She indicated that she remembered seeing some man come by a couple of times during the past year but did not know anything else.   An elderly lady a few houses down and across the street was standing in her front porch watching us so we decided to ask her about the woman who used to live there.  "Yes," she said, she used to be my friend until she died a few years ago."  She knew her son and other members of her family.  Unfortunately she did not know where her son lived but she heard she lived near the end of the Metro in the western part of the city.  We found out the name of the street of his last known address from my sister who happened to find a possible address that she had written down over 30 years ago and we set out cruising through the neighborhood for this guy.  Now that we had narrowed the search area to a few blocks, he was easy to find.  It was a great reunion full of hugs, stories, food and drink.  But most important; information I, and the rest of the family did not know, contacts to other family members and clues as to where to find other relatives in a small town one hundred miles away.  So my next stop, this small town, Parras de la Fuente, in the state of Choahuila, (officially the "Free and Sovereign State of Coahuila de Zaragoza") at one time the hometown of the Rivera and Gaytan family.

Below are pictures of my aunt, whose abandon house we visited, the courtyard of the abandoned house and a picture of my lost cousin with his wife.  We were extremely lucky to find him in the outskirts of a city of almost 4 million, without an address and without a phone number. We are now liked up through e-mail and Facebook and phone numbers. 

Guadalupe - circa 1950

The courtyard of the abandoned house

My cousin with his wife and another cousin

All these emerging stories are extremely interesting, funny, sad and tragic, and I hope to bring them to life through a series of books so that our family can have a written version of our history to pass on to other generations.  I have completed and published the first book "Surviving the Avalanche of Life,"  and hove to have the second volume "Living on the Edge of Irrelevance," in the Fall of 2016.  Other priorities kept me from finishing the second book in 2015, but I set a schedule and hope to keep it.

If you are interested in these books, let me know and I'll send you a link.  Also if anyone is interested in providing editorial review for the second and third books, I welcome any help I can get.  You can contact me via Messenger in Facebook or send me an e-mail to my address at rafael@rivera-fam.com.  I'm a little slow in responding, but I will get back to you.

Surviving the Heat and Slow Pace of Bureaucracy

Monterrey is the industrial and financial center of the north.  It is a large metropolitan area with nearly 10 million people in the city and surrounding communities.  People are taught to be entrepreneurs from the moment of birth and the work ethic is unmatched anywhere in the world.  The motto seems to be "let's do business."   It is a very efficient city, everybody follow the rules (more-less) and things get done - except when it comes to correcting a birth certificate!  Business in Monterrey runs on rules (both written and unwritten) and there are procedures for everything, the U.S. army could learn a few things from here.

Some years ago, the municipal authorities decided that all city records would be digitized to make the running of city government (and serving the public) the most efficient it could be.  Sure enough, when I went to the new hall of records, a tall beautiful building built near the grounds of an old foundry, I was amazed at the efficiency of the system.  Here I am, a person who was born at home, lived on the farm at the edge of what is now the city boundaries when I was young, lived outside the country for almost sixty years, walk into the building to get a copy of my birth certificate, obtain a certified copy and be out the front door in less than three minutes.  Now that is efficiency!

Unfortunately, the certificate had me being born in 1946 instead of 1947.  I went back in there indicating the mistake.  "No mistake Señor,"  and they proceeded to show me printout of digital copies of the original records of 1947.  Sure enough, there was the problem.  It seems that whoever was the clerk at the records office on March 26, 1947 - two days after I was born, took the statement of my birth from my father and very neatly wrote it down in flowery terms probably to impress himself and impress everybody around him.  Instead of writing born on March 24 of the current year he wrote (roughly translated) "born on March 24 of next year's past year."  Why he would write the year that way?  My only guess is that he might have been charging for the number of words he used.  Nonetheless, sixty some years later when records were being digitized, some poor data entry person of the contractor that was probably hired to read and digitize these records, probably a local college student, probably didn't know what to think.  I can just picture the discussion on what the hell this meant.  Some supervisor, probably decided that it was not worth the delay in data entry and told the college kid to just put the "previous year" or 1946.

Where does that leave me sixty nine years later?  "Well Señor, in order to correct this you will have to go to the Office of Corrections and have them petition to change the official date."  The clerk told me.  "But it is clearly a mistake," I told him, "can't you just make that change here?"  "No Señor, this is an official record and changes have to be petitioned to the court and the judge has the final say."

Off to the Office of Corrections that was in a building in the center of the city near the courthouse.  The "Triage" center is a large hall with 13 cubical offices where the clerks determined if you case had the right supporting information and merited further review.  I chose a number "203" and they were attending number 158.  Hey with 13 clerks, how long of a wait could it be, its only 45 numbers.  Well….. I have concluded that all bureaucrats in the world come from the same mold.  They all have three simple objectives:  1- Avoid making decisions;  2- Protect your ass;  and 3- Annoy the living shit out of the client.  The clerk I got was a beautiful young lady and was obviously a bureaucrat in training because not only did she do 1 and 2 extremely well, she excel at number 3.  "Well you seem to have the proper information and your request seems to be valid," she said, so I will send your case to the lawyers upstairs and they will do the formal interview in preparation for your case."  So off I go to another waiting area.  Half an hour later a person comes in to escort me to the fourth floor to where the lawyers reside.  The reason I need an escort is that the elevators on this side of the building are being repaired and we have to go to the other side of the building to use those elevators.  My guess for having an "escort" is that they don't want angry frustrated clients walking around the building by themselves - I guess it's a way to avoid another Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

In order to get to the other elevators we have to go outside the building.  If you want to shock your body, go from a climate controlled 78 degree office to a humid 104 degree sidewalk.  It was only a short walk but just long enough to start me sweating - "just another part of this bureaucratic torture chamber,"  I said to myself, "they are trying to get me to give up my case."  We arrive at the waiting area in the 4th floor and 40 minutes later I was escorted to very good looking lawyer sitting very business-like behind her desk.  "I'm sorry to tell you that I cannot present your  petition to the Court because I am certain that the judge will not accept it."  She started the conversation on a negative note.  "What is the problem,"  I said.  "First, the copy of the official 1947 record of your registration has to be certified.  You have to go back to the Hall of Records and obtain a certified copy."  She said.  "Second, " she continued,  "the judge does not read English, so your passport, your driver's license and any other document in English will have to be officially translated, and the only official translating source is the department of Philosophy and Letters at the State University (the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon)."  "Would they accept a translation from the Mexican consulate in Detroit?"  I said.  They would, she indicated, but I would have to pay the translation handling fee.

"Well," I said, "I am here this week and I can have them translated and bring them in next week when I get back from Mexico City."  "I'm sorry," she said but his whole office and the court close down this Thursday for vacation and will reopen on July 25th.  So even if you could bring them in this week, your case will not be submitted to the court until after the 25th.  After then it could take up to five weeks to hear your case."  She continued.

Well, I thought to myself, there goes one of my objectives of this trip - to get my birth certificate corrected.   Bureaucracy trumps efficiency everywhere!  At least the family information gathering is going well.