Taos News

Taos Guadalupe Church burned at Fiesta time

David A. Fernández de Taos

Sixty years ago, on July 24, 1961, the old and venerable Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe was completely consumed by fire and destroyed. This occurred during a very hot summer right around Taos Fiesta Days of Santiago y Santa Ana, which were held July 25 and 26.

Suddenly everybody in the Taos area – my then-13-year-old self included – took note of immense clouds of black smoke rising and filling the sky, coming from the Taos Plaza area, from the church. Everybody in the town ran to combat the fierce flames, and to try to save and salvage what they could from inside.

There were so many people who responded. Church parishioners, the townspeople, the Taos Fire Department, all together exerted themselves to try to extinguish this ferocious conflagration. Priests and everyone quickly pulled out all they could: The Blessed Sacrament; the chalices; the vestments; the Santos; holy images; and the books. We were able to save most everything, but only just in time, because then the building succumbed – engulfed and lost in the raging flames.

The burning of the Church was an event of tremendous import for the Taos community, because there was then-consumed a vital physical part of the history and the continuum of the spiritual center here. Could the Taoseños respond, rebound and rebuild?

The first Church dedicated to Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in

Taos was constructed in 1802, and was used until 1911, when it had to be renovated and partially reconstructed; and it was the Church center until that day of fire in 1961.

The Parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe was so designated on July 4, 1833 by the Bishop of Durango, Mexico, during the Mexican governance. After the American takeover in 1847-48 this Taos Parish became in effect the “first and oldest” of Guadalupe Parishes in this “new” country now known as the USA.

The edifice of the Church was destroyed by fire that day, but the parishioners quickly made plans for a new Church. Everyone lent themselves to this vitally important work, and the new Church was built within the next 18 months or so. It was constructed by the hands and the personal work of hundreds of people of our Taos region.

This “new” Church of Guadalupe is situated across the street just north of where the first Church had been located. The original site was scraped clear, and that property was sold for other uses. Now it is an automobile parking lot.

Some speculate that something very interesting may lie beneath the surface of that original Churchyard site, namely, perhaps, the interred burials of people who likely were parishioners who were laid to rest there in the Campo Santo of that previous Church, as was customary then. That notion remains an open question.

But if so, what about those dead who might be interred there, now at rest in between and under the commercial world which continues just above the surface of their sacred burials? Is it right that they would be just left there, forgotten? Should not the living treat them with more respect? What does this state of the situation say about the community if they are just left there forgotten beneath the asphalt?

Proper thought should be given to these questions. Perhaps there are lessons here to be learned from the fiery destruction of the old Church of Taos and the aftermath, and that perhaps those who may be dead and buried and resting there are united now with the love of the Great Lady of Guadalupe, who cares for both the living and the dead.

And lessons for the living and descendants of those gone before might include acting in the spirit of the community 60 years ago when a spiritual center was destroyed. The people could have left it in ruins, but instead quickly and determinedly moved to rebuild and preserve and strengthen that vitally important physical and metaphysical center of the area’s centuries-old cultural continuum of family and faith, when they raised it back up again.

VECINOS

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2021-07-29T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-29T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://taosnews.pressreader.com/article/281822876834658

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