The Penitente Moradas of Abiquiú

by Richard E. Ahlborn

[59] AASF, Loose Documents, Mission, 1680-1850, and Accounts, books xxxxv and lxiv. Also in Wills and Hijuelas, State Records Center, and in Twitchell documents, Land Management Bureau, both offices in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

[60] Walter Hough, Collections of Heating and Lighting (Smithsonian Inst. Bull. 141, Washington, D.C., 1928), pl. 28a, no. 3.

[61] Stephen Borhegyi, El Santuario de Chimayo (Santa Fe, 1956); also E. Boyd, Saints and Saint Makers (Santa Fe, 1946), pp. 126-132.

[62] George Kubler, in Santos: An Exhibition of the Religious Folk Art of New Mexico with an Essay by George Kubler (Fort Worth, Tex.: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, June 1964).

[63] A fuller discussion of the penitente death cart and further illustrations are found in Mitchell A. Wilder and Edgar Breitenbach, Santos: The Religious Folk Art of New Mexico (Colorado Springs, 1943), pl. 30 and text. Relevant to this study is the death cart with immobile wheels recorded by Henderson, p. 32 [see ftn. 64], as having been used in processions before 1919. It is likely that this is the same cart described above in the storage room of the east morada (Figure 22); it is important because its measurements and construction details are nearly identical to the death cart in the collections of the Museum of New Mexico, reputed to have come from Abiquiú.

[64] Alice Corbin Henderson, Brothers of Light (Chicago, 1962), p. 32, describes a muerte figure: chalk-white face, obsidian eyes, black outfit.

[65] E. Boyd, "Crucifix in Santero Art," El Palacio, vol. LX, no. 3 (March 1953), pp. 112-115, indicates the significance of this image form.

[66] Henderson, pp. 13 (red gown, blindfolded, flowing black hair), 26 (red gown, bound hands, made for mission), and 43-46 (tall, almost life size, blindfolded, carried on small platform in procession from lower [east] morada, horsehair rope).

[67] Boyd, in litt., Nov. 13, 1965.

[68] Boyd, loc. cit. Regarding construction, see E. Boyd, "New Mexican Bultos with Hollow Skirts: How They Were Made," El Palacio, vol. LVIII, no. 5 (May, 1951), pp. 145-148.