Cleofas Martinez Jaramillo
Cleofas Martinez Jaramillo was a prominent figure in the preservation of Hispanic culture in New Mexico, born on December 6, 1878, in Arroyo Hondo, a village that reflects the region's rich heritage. After a challenging childhood marked by personal tragedies, including the loss of her children and husband, Jaramillo turned to writing in her forties as a means to document and celebrate traditional customs that she felt were fading. She founded La Sociedad Folkórica (The Folklore Society) in 1935 to promote local traditions, stemming from her disappointment with the representation of New Mexican cuisine in a magazine article. Jaramillo authored several books, including *Cuentos del hogar*, which features traditional oral tales, and *Shadows of the Past*, where she intertwines personal experiences with cultural commentary. Her autobiography, *Romance of a Little Village Girl*, reflects her nostalgia for a simpler life, although it also highlights the disparities between social classes within Hispanic communities. Despite critiques regarding her focus on upper-class perspectives, Jaramillo's work is acknowledged for its role in safeguarding the knowledge of New Mexican customs and folklore for future generations. She passed away in 1956, leaving behind a legacy of cultural preservation.
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Subject Terms
Cleofas Martinez Jaramillo
- Born: December 6, 1878
- Birthplace: Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico Territory (now New Mexico)
- Died: November 30, 1956
- Place of death: El Paso, Texas
Biography
Distressed to see the traditional culture of Hispanic New Mexico disappearing around her, Cleofas M. Jaramillo took up writing late in life to preserve it for posterity. She was born on December 6, 1878, in the northern New Mexico village of Arroyo Hondo to one of the area’s pioneer families. At age nine, she attended the Loretto Convent School in Taos, but she was unhappy that she was not allowed to speak Spanish and switched after five years to the Loretto Academy in Santa Fe. In 1898, she married Venceslao Jaramillo, a politician and wealthy businessman. The family was haunted by tragedies. Their first two children died in infancy, and her husband died in 1920, leaving her to raise a daughter alone; that daughter was murdered eleven years later. At age forty-two, Jaramillo had to take over her husband’s business interests, which were now in financial trouble, to support herself. In 1935 she read an article in Holland Magazine about New Mexico cookery and found it, she later wrote, deficient. As a result she founded La Sociedad Folkórica (The Folklore Society) in Santa Fe to promote and preserve local traditions. Jaramillo died in 1956.
According to literary scholar Ramón Sánchez, Jaramillo’s writings are nostalgic reflections, tinged with religion, on upper-class Hispanic interests from a woman’s point of view. Her first of four books, Cuentos del hogar (1939), contains her English translations of twenty-five traditional oral tales she learned from her mother. The Genuine New Mexico Tasty Recipes (1939) is clearly an attempt to make up for the deficiencies in public knowledge of traditional cooking reflected in the Holland Magazine article. Shadows of the Past (Sombras de Posada) (1941) departs from the format of her previous books; in this book, Jaramillo combines information she gathered about household economy and manners, education, folklore, witchcraft, and religion with her own experiences growing up in a small New Mexico village and portraits of women in her family. She laments that modern cultural mixing and technological progress has removed Hispanic New Mexicans from an era in which nature supplied all their wants in a simple life. Romance of a Little Village Girl (1955), her autobiography, continues the theme of lost customs and a vanished idyllic life. She also agonizes over her choice to write the book in English, rather than Spanish, because an English-language book would reach a wider readership. Several critics have pointed out that in writing about her youth the cultural harmony she recalls so plaintively was more to the benefit of the wealthy class to which Jaramillo belonged than to the majority of impoverished Hispanic New Mexicans. However, whatever the limitations of her point of view, the critics acknowledge that Jaramillo helped prevent the knowledge of traditional New Mexican customs and lore from disappearing with her generation.