The Lost Gold: An Elegy for Santa Fe

Winner of the Silver for the 2016 Ippy Award, "WEST-MOUNTAIN – BEST REGIONAL FICTION"  SILVER: The Lost Gold: An Elegy for Santa Fe, by Tori Warner Shepard 

The Lost Gold, An Elegy for Santa Fe
The very remote Royal Colony of La Villa de la Santa Fe de San Francisco d'Asis, founded in 1598 existed side by side with the Pueblo Indians in a barter economy, often in frequent danger from Comanches and other marauding tribes. So, to protect their wealth, what they saved was buried for safekeeping either in the very walls of their adobe homes, or in the ground itself. The isolated colony continued with few outside influences until the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821. Soon after in 1848, America with her Manifest Destiny over-ran and marginalized both the native Indian and Spanish Colonial cultures, imposing new laws, a new language, compulsory education, a pagan religion and crippling taxes, breaking -up of the land grant estancias in favor of defensible 160 acre homesteads, slowly weakening village life. The railroad brought land-grabbers and cattle. By 1930, the US Forest Service, claiming that it was overgrazed, had fenced off the sustaining mountain cutting off the elk, venison, trout, small farms, building materials and firewood from the settlers. Americans, artist-refugees, from the polluted industrial East came to Santa Fe as an antidote to unchecked industrial progress, essentially turning their backs on the founding Spanish, praising the naturalness of the Indian natives and their “pure untouched” religion. Everything Indian became the fashion and the Hispanics were virtually disregarded.
Faustino Garcia, a very capable young man is cash-poor, having been raised in a small wood-cutting village while his father, like many men in Santa Fe was forced to find work in another state. Don Faustino de Garcia, lacks the land and ancient encomiendas to support his inherited 16th century title of hidalgo; he is now a common villager. But, unlike his padres, he is literate. Still, in his noble heart, he is a son of the conquistadors, refusing to speak English or in any way to capitulate to the Americans and their pagan ways. His marriage vow in 1930, to him a sacred and moral obligation, is to restore the stripped dignity of the Spanish settlers, to recapture their legacy. The task before him is difficult, so he prays and his prayers are answered in a visitation from the Blessed Virgin herself telling him of a map to a cache of gold buried in a nearby hacienda, once owned by his ancestors. Not merely a family’s stash of gold coins, Mexican silver and jewelry, the Virgin’s visitation hints at more… A great treasure. For Faustino, this treasure promises the restoration of the Garcia Family’s ancient lands and titles. Too, he wants the mountain returned to her people, and, if possible, the entire territory of New Mexico to Independent Mexico.
Taking the map in hand, Nicasia, his wife, declares, “The greed for Gold brings death.” His two sons balk while his neighbors lay claim to the treasure as their own inheritance. Faustino must proceed in secret to dig his treasure out. Recapturing his ancient legacy will be extremely difficult and the Americans are entrenched.