The blacklisted movie Salt of the Earth took place in Silver City.
When my wife Gilda suggested a drive to the Esperanza Vineyard in Sherman, New Mexico, just East of Silver City, New Mexico, I readily agreed. It was a perfect sunny day for such a drive and visit.
We had met David and Esperanza Gurulé some time before when they were first starting the Winery. Recently, Gilda had visited the Vineyard when she had attended an event in the area near the Esperanza Winery and she was anxious for me to see it.
The drive from Silver City to Sherman, New Mexico, was relatively short—about 45 minutes, passing through the Mining District on the edge of Silver City famous for the 1951 strike principally by Mexican American miners against the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico, made into a film entitled Salt of the Earth which brought national attention to the plight of the workers, mostly to their wives and daughters who walked the picket line when their husbands and fathers were threatened with termination if the miners walked the picket line.
Today, if we drive eastward from Silver City into the beautiful Mimbres Valley, we can still see sweeping views of arid ranchland and forested mountains brought together by green cottonwood groves along the Mimbres River. In this place that now seems so remote, it is marvelous to know that once a society of great artists flourished [here].
Tom Steinbach, Sr. and Tom Steinbach, Jr., Mimbres Classic Mysteries: Reconstructing a
Lost Culture Through its Pottery, xi, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, 2002.
It was mid-afternoon when we arrived at the Winery, met by the Gurulés who were hosting that day their annual wine-tasting event. Near the Winehouse vendors had set up tents for their wares. The gathering of visitors was surprisingly ample; the babble of voices punctuated the air of celebration and conviviality—the scene reeked with bon homie.
The Gurulés greeted us warmly, led us to a table on the veranda where we met others we knew—Linda Pafford and Bill Hudson, particularly. Maneuvering my walker over the graveled drive-way posed no problem. Gilda brought us drinks from the Tasting The Veranda Room. I asked for a Zinfandel. The breeze caressed us lovingly. It was, in all, a perfect day, made more perfect by the warmth of the hosts.
David Gurulé is a retired Atomic Engineer from the Los Alamos National Laboratory where the first atomic bombs were developed. I was a Marine Corporal waiting for the final assault on the Japanese mainland when President Truman authorized dropping the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
With his wife, Esperanza de la O, David Gurulé undertook transformation of the de la O ranch into the Esperanza Vineyard, deep in Mimbres territory—in Spanish the word Mimbres means a willow tree, a cottonwood specifically, abounding everywhere on the Esperanza property.
The Gurulés are who they seem to be—gente decente (good people)—not pretentious, open without guile, proud descendants of the prevailing Spanish families that brought Spain to America.
Tuscany is in northern Italy toward the Swiss Alps.
I was amused wondering how this spot of earth gave rise to the growth of grapes that subsequently produced such extraordinary wines not only of the Esperanza Vineyards but elsewhere throughout New Mexico. For some time now there has been a burgeoning wine industry in the state. The wines are as good as wines elsewhere.
The Esperanza Vineyards are indeed Tuscany on the Mimbres River. Tuscany is in northern Italy toward the Swiss Alps. It’s a tourist Mecca with Florence as its regional capital. Its artistic legacy is legion and it’s considered the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. I visited Tuscany during my study of the Western Renaissance. Tuscany, Italy, and Sherman, New Mexico, are not really identical, though metaphorically there is a comparison. Tuscany has a western coastline on the Tyrrhenian Sea; while not a coastline, Sherman has a shoreline along the Mimbres River. The wines of Tuscany are acclaimed throughout Europe; the wines of Sherman may not be acclaimed through-out the Americas, but—hey—give it time. The Esperanza Vineyard is not included in Andy Sandersier’s The Wines of New Mexico (2005) Because when the book was written the Esperanza Winery was not in being. I’m sure it’ll be in the next edition.
Tuscany Vineyard Landscape
When I lived in France (including Luxembourg) from 1955 to 1958 I traipsed throughout the vineyards of Europe, tasting all sorts of wines. I’m not a wine connoisseur but I’m a pretty good judge of wines. In France my favorite wine was Beaujolais—the common
man’s wine. It was had everywhere. It’s still my favorite.
Did the Native Americans in this region of what is now New Mexico make wine? My research here has yielded that while “wild” grapes grew in certain areas of the Mimbres terrain, they were not cultivated for “wine” as current grapes are. More than likely, the Mimbreños cultivated cactus-based drinks like pulque. There is considerable evidence to this effect in the extant codices of the major Indian groups of what is now referred to as Latin America. It appears that the Mimbreños did not cultivate grapes as vintners.
The Mimbres River (91 miles long) flows through Sherman, New Mexico, along the edge of the Esperanza Winery and New Mexico 61 and highway 35 heading North. “It actually begins at a mountain spring increased by its tributaries from both the Black Range and the Eastern slopes of the peaks we know as the Mining District. The Mimbres feeds several Acequias . . . .The confluence of the {Mimbres and the [Gallinas] is right at the bridge crossed from Highway 61 onto Royal John Mine Road as you turn off towards De la O Rd {and the Winery]. The Valley itself was created by a fissure which the water follows” (Linda Pafford, Correspondence).
The Mimbres River.
In the near distance are the peaks of the Black Range Mountains. Sherman is dotted by mountains which in places are simply high mounds. Everywhere the lithosphere reveals the story of the earth in its 4 billion year evolution. The Mimbres region includes the southwestern corner of New Mexico with the upper Gila River to the west. The Mimbres region is part of the Mogollon cultural area.
The Mimbreños (Mimbres people) did not leave us much information about who they were except for shards of pottery, the largest (though by no means exhaustive) collection of which is held by and on display at the Museum of Western New Mexico University in Silver City.
Mogollon origins remain a matter of speculation. One model holds that the Mogollon emerged from a preceding Desert Archaic tradition that links Mogollon ancestry with the first (late Pleistocene) prehistoric human occupations of the area (around 9000 BCE). In this model, cultural distinctions emerged in the larger region when populations grew great enough to establish villages and even larger communities. An alternative possibility holds that the Mogollon were descendants of early farmers who migrated from farming regions in central Mexico around 3500 BCE, and who displaced descendants of the antecedent Desert Archaic peoples. A third view is that at the time of the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture the Cochise culture[11] (the early pithouse, late Desert Archaic, antecedents of the Mogollon) had been immigrants into the area about 5000 BCE, and were not linked to the earlier inhabitants, but were receptive to cultural dissemination from the farmers of Central Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogollon_culture
Iconic Mimbres pottery.
Where are the descendants of the Mimbres? Archaeologically noted as a people who simply disappeared from history, Margaret C. Nelson offers that “the largest population ever to live in that part of New Mexico” did not disappear—they simply reorganized (downsized). That is, lived in smaller aggregations and melded into the landscape integrating with subsequent arrivals of new populations (“Mimbres, the Mystery” in Mimbres Lives and Landscapes edited by Margaret C. Nelson and Michelle Hegmon, 90-103, School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2010).
Indeed, the Mimbres did produce an amazing pottery. Not only does it go unrivaled in the Southwest, but to some degree throughout the world—partly in the formation of the bowls but mainly in the incredibly refined and sophisticated hand-painted designs, particularly those unique animal characterizations. Nothing like these exist in the world, prehistoric or otherwise.
Victor Michael Giammattei and Nanci Greer Reichert, Art of a Vanished Race
(Fourth Printing), 9, Dylan-Tyler Publishers, 1975.
The afternoon waned, badinage kept the momentum spirited; visitors were leaving. Esperanza invited us to a supper of Mexican delicacies. Despite my propensity for wine, I had been cautious not to imbibe beyond one glass for fear of disaster with my walker on the graveled driveway. There was still sufficient daylight to see us home.
Enroute, Gilda and I exchanged thoughts about the outing. I mused that the Sherman area might be worth considering for a piece of property on which to build a get-away cabin. “Yes,” Gilda replied, “That would be nice.” I recognized that response from the ending of The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway.
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Copyright 2017 by By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca. Distinguished Scholar in Residence (Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Public Policy), Distinguished Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Texas State University System—Sul Ross
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WORKS CONSULTED
LeBlanc, Steven A., Painted by a Distant Hand: Mimbres Pottery from the American Southwest. Peabody Museum Press, Harvard University, 2004.
Shafer, Harry J., Mimbres Archeology at the NAN Ranch Ruin, University of New Mexico Press 2003.
About the author: Dr. Ortego is author of Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature (University of New Mexico, 1971) first critical study in the field; and is principal scholar of “The Chicano Renaissance” (Social Casework, May 1971), a term he coined to describe the “boom” in Chicano literature (1966-1975). For Washington Square Press, he was editor of We Are Chicanos: first critical Anthology of Mexican American Literature (1973).