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To:  Chaz  From:  El padre

 

          Mira, cabeza y duro (con cariño), this formal missive is to advise you of my protest for your lack of belief and understanding that Muertito Heaven really does exist.  Next thing I know, you will  be saying Narnia or Wonderland or OZ or the Never Never Land do not exist.  I think that perhaps you are overdue for a vacation back home so you can get in touch with our mystical roots again, the cold and dreary winter months of the north are doing something to you guys, Al included.  Please, don't let it happen to Dr. Ana Cristina. Muertito Heaven is, it exists, it really does.

 
Once...........................
 

   I was wondering how I could find out about our grandfather, Luis Oquendo Cruz, son of Natalio Oquendo Maldonado and his wife Juana Cruz, who had died when my father was three years old in 1928.  The man's records were plainly elusive.  There was also the legend that Natalio was a Don Juan and that he was partially Indian....  I went to the parish church of N. S. del Carmen in Morovis but I had no luck whatsoever, just a Natividad and Petrona Cruz, parents of a Fidel who was born the same year that Luis was born if the 1910 census record was correct, stating that Luis was about fourteen.  Several days later, I tried in Vega Alta for Natalio's mother was from there, but no luck.  In fact, I was overwhelmed because there were two Benito Maldonados and both were married to María Riveras which meant there was no way of knowing who were her parents (this was before my other experience).  One set came from Manatí, and the other from Toa Alta.

   What a mess!  The first Benito was a big shot and rich.  The second wasn't too well known but when he married his second wife, María José Rivera Meléndez, all the town's who's who were sponsors of the wedding.  After dealing with my duties on the week end, I went back to Morovis where the secretary, now gone, she must have been a descendant of brujas, and came across a baptismal certificate of a José Oquendo Cruz, whose mother was Juana Petrona Cruz Berríos, and whose father was Natalio Oquendo Maldonado.  I was on track.  I went home (a two hour drive if not done between midnight and five a.m.), and called Naranjito, for José's record said she was from there.  They found her all right, one of her brothers and their parents, Victoriano de la Cruz Rosario and Gabriela Natal Berríos, and THEIR parents Gerónimo de la Cruz and María del Rosario and Gregorio Natal and Manuela Berríos.  Slowly, the line was making some sense.

    On my next visit to Morovis, I tried the marriage books which the bruja never let me see.  I found Natalio and Juana's 1889 marriage and since it said he was 20 years old, I tried the baptism books and sure enough, there was Natalio in 1869.  No other children besides the Fidel, who must be Luis, and José were found, but remembering that Natalio was a Don Juan, I asked my father's two remaining aunts, Celestina, born 1909, and Isabel, born 1911.  They explained that Juana Petrona died before they were born at the beginning of the century and that their mother was common-law wife to Natalio until he went to Toa Alta to work en la caña in the beginning of the 1920's.  There, he took on another wife and that he had a jardín.

I asked for an explanation and, laughing, they told me he had several daughters there, that they had not seen in thirty years.  I was shocked for I remember my father claiming he had an aunt younger than he.  When Isabelita's daughter arrived we made plans to go search for the jardín, which we did the following weekend. They more or less remembered the barrio where they lived in Corozal and when we were there, almost in Naranjito, we asked for directions and thus arrived at the house of one of four aunts that my father had never met.  She went crazy over me and told me that between them the four had twenty eight children, not counting the foster ones, and many more grandchildren. The banyan tree grows, I thought.  She then gave us directions to her sister's bar near the plaza in Toa Baja.  That great-aunt cried and cried when she realized it was her older sister and her niece, and rejoiced when she realized I was her nephew's son.  Never did I feel so much at home with strangers as I did on that day, and, being the adventurous one of the family, I began, even then, to make plans.                 Several months later, I had papi visit me in Puerto Rico with one of my brothers on the pretext that titi Isabelita was not well and that she wanted to see him.  On the day they arrived from los nuevayores, after taking him to my home town to see mami's only sister,  I made as if I had to get back to Ceiba.  However, on the way there I went to Toa Baja and parked outside my great-aunt's  bar.  I explained where we were and he paled.  It was quite a scene.  My great-aunt recognized me and than started crying as she realized that here was the nephew she had never met and since he was so much like her father (his grandfather Natalio) she kept caressing him: he was five years older, but he was the nephew they had never met and she immediately loved him.  She wept over my brother Ángel Luis, too, whom she claimed looked like papi's uncle, José, for whom he was named. Natalio's garden was composed of Rosaura, Tomasa, Catalina and Rosenda, (the Oquendo Febus bunch) born between 1925 and 1934, only one of them just nine months older than my father. What a shocker THAT was!  A family reunion was then planned and before papi and Güito left PR we attended the gathering (dimos pela jugando domino).  I had never thought that the muertitos we gave honor to would ever, ever grant me such an experience.  I was dizzy, I was drunk and I hadn't even had a drink. All I can think of is the list of names they are gathering for us of children, grandchildren and some great-grandchildren.  Oh boy, here we go again.

                   Even though the Doc and I have a lot of small plans, our next big project is on the sixth of January, '99.  I've found out that the Oquendo family in Utuado have a reunion every year for the Oquendo relatives.  I still don't know how we are related but you can be sure I am going to find out.

      So, if you hear of anyone searching the towns of Toa Alta, Toa Baja, Corozal, Naranjito, Vega Alta, Vega Baja, Morovis, Orocovis, Utuado, Ciales, Jayuya, Manatí, Arecibo and possibly Adjuntas for Oquendo, Ramírez, de la Cruz (several families?), Rivera (several families?), Maldonado, Natal, Pantojas, Navedo, de los Santos, del Rosario, Berríos, López, Rodríguez, Soriano, Morales, Arroyo, Meléndez, Figueroa, Vélez, de la Torres, Ayala,  Muriel, Doles on papi's side and Pabón, Oliveras, Otero, Clas, Laureano, Miranda, Alvadalejo, Torres (several families?), Rivera, García, Salgado, Rolón, López (several families?) on mami's, LET ME KNOW!

La Petición

                 What a life this is!  I want to be canonized someday and be made the real patron saint of genealogists. Whoever holds the position now is doing a lousy job except for the meager trips like those I have been on now and then, just when I realize where I have been going, he gets me changed to Rome, Italy.  Would you please pass the word around and let everyone know about my aspirations so I can begin the campaign. My platform is simple: preservation of all records, easy entry into archives by all bonafide genealogists, quick resolutions to red tape obstacles, no more office hours since all will be computerized, even los Archivos de las Indias,  and free access to Muertito Heaven.  Oh, and it doesn't matter what the person believes in, ........can't have us doing to others what was done to us a couple of times.  You know, I think I am perfect for the job.  However, I know for a fact that there are devil's advocates like you, Chaz, who will make it extremely difficult for me to reach the high altars of fame.  Oh well, may you never stumble on Muertito Heaven, I hope it knocks you down on your fondillo. ;o)  Here in Rome, I keep dreaming of the possibilities of reaching past the muertitos we have found. Did you know that there are still no non-criollos in our tree?  I don't know how that is possible but for two hundred years in some lines and for over a hundred fifty in most of the others, we have yet to find a non-criollo. I feel proud about that even though we long to jump the puddle and find some Basque or Castilian or Andalucian ancestors.  By the way, did you notice that the López, Torres and Rivera crop up on both sides of the family tree?  In the same towns, too.  Really weird.  And how those strange surnames crop up: Muriel, Doles, Clas, Alvadalejo, Soriano.  Boy, there's enough work here for another fifty years so don't let anyone kill me off too soon, the patron saint position will probably hold for a while longer.  Oh yeah, please, Chaz, would you let me, please, believe and keep on believing in Muertito Heaven?  Help here a little, Al.  I feel like when I was told that the Tres Santos Reyes didn't exist.  And boy, is someone going to have to pay for that one!

  Los Muertitos Nos Esperan!
El padre (y Ana).

 
[This letter/article was sent to Chaz Fourquet, editor of Nuestra Herencia for the Nuestro Muertitos column. Reference to "Al", is to Al Sosa, founding member of the Hispanic Genealogical Society of New York. Both are long-time friends from the Genealogy forum Hispanic Section on Compuserve. This and the other stories on Muertito Heaven were written while he was in Rome].

 


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Next

  Part IV: El Patron

  Part V: The Puzzle....The Maldonado Connection

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©1998 by Dr. Ana Cristina and Rev. José Antonio Oquendo Pabón on this article.  All rights reserved.
©1997 by Dr. Ana Cristina and Rev. José Antonio Oquendo Pabón for "Nuestros Muertitos" and "Muertito Heaven". All rights reserved.

 

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