Email this page  Print this page  del.icio.us  digg

Hallowed ground

Two groups look to restore burial site of Mexican farmhands, families

In 1969, an article in the South Mountain Star told a harrowing tale of a forgotten Hispanic cemetery being plundered:

“Four or five weeks ago, it was reported that a man dug up one of the graves and some teenagers who were present took the skull and a crucifix from the skeletal remains. These same persons are said to have boiled and polished the skull, and still have it in their possession.”

Such was the sad state that had befallen the Sotelo-Heard Cemetery, burial grounds near 12th Street and Broadway in south Phoenix where ranch and farm workers of Mexican descent during the mid to late 1800s were interred. To date, there are about 270 burial sites identified.

DOING ‘THE RIGHT THING’

Today a Phoenix affordable housing development patnership has launched a campaign to save the cemetery and raise the $100,000 needed to preserve and restore the site, so that families of the dead can visit and honor Hispanic history.

Deed to the land was bought and sold several times over the course of 80 years. In December 2005, an organization called the Phoenix Housing Partnership, headed by the Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix, closed escrow on the 7.8 acres of property.

The PHP is developing a tract of 65 single-family homes named Villas Rosa Linda. Home construction on the site begins in 2008.

Patricia Garcia Duarte is the NHS executive director. She and Yvette Uriondo, a PHP program administrator, are coordinating the cemetery preservation effort.

“The cemetery passed through many hands, then finally fell into the right hands,” Garcia Duarte says.

The Partnership hopes to have the restoration donated by a local company or organization that will restore the cemetery as stipulated by the State Historical Preservation Office and the PHP. The Partnership will then award the maintenance contract of the cemetery to a qualified organization. (For more on state cemetery restoration, visit the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association Web site, www.azhistcemeteries.org.)

As part of the planning process and in compliance with Arizona law on repatriation of human burials, Dr. Glen Rice, a former associate professor of archaeology with ASU, conducted several phases of surveys for the PHP. The findings have been documented and a detailed report was submitted to the City of Phoenix Historical Preservation Planning Office.

The City of Phoenix Historic Preservation Commission has started the Historic Preservation overlay for the Sotelo-Heard Cemetery. The zoning application was reviewed at a hearing on June 18. That is the first step for an historic designation for the old cemetery.

Garcia Duarte says although NHS is “not in the business of running a cemetery,” she adds, “Our intention is to do the right thing.”

TRACING SOTELO ANCESTORS

Records as to who was buried at the cemetery weren’t kept by the Arizona Territorial government prior to Arizona becoming a state. Independent research was conducted and details listing names, ages and dates have been catalogued.

The site was first called the Sotelo Cemetery by the Hispanic community in the late 1800s. The earliest burial record was in 1896, and the last in 1923.

In 1995, K.J. Schroeder, a local archaeologist, conducted a study and published a book, An Historic Sketch of the Sotelo-Heard Cemetery in South Phoenix.

Former generations tell the story of the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. Historians at the Pioneer Cemetery Association have archived stories of Hispanic families losing children to the epidemic; many buried at Sotelo-Heard died at a young age. One woman related that she lost three sisters to influenza.

Andy Bernal of Tempe says his family became involved in the preservation effort when a local newspaper story tipped them off that the cemetery was named after his great-great-grandfather.

His ancestor, Tiburcio Sotelo, and his wife Manuela settled in Tempe in the early 1870s, Bernal says. The family has documented the Sotelos migrating from Tubac to Tempe in the late 1800s.

“A lot of people don’t realize we (Latinos) have been here a long time,” Bernal says. “They think we just came across a few weeks ago.”

Duarte Garcia says the goal is to make the cemetery site into a serene reflection park with a protective fence that will allow viewing and visiting.

She adds that anyone who can help or make a financial contribution should contact her office at (602) 258-1659.

“This is a community project,” she says. “The money would go to giving the cemetery the preservation and recognition it deserves.”