Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert

American educator, home economist, and writer

• Born: May 16, 1894
• Birthplace: La Liendre, near Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory (now New Mexico)
• Died: October 14, 1991
• Place of death: Albuquerque, New Mexico

Born into prosperity, Gilbert dedicated her life to helping the poor people of rural New Mexico. Working primarily among Hispanics and Native Americans, she taught the children of farmers and improved the lives of women by instructing them to apply modern methods of home economics to traditional domestic chores.

Early Life

Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert (FAH-bee-OH-lah kah-BEH-zah deh BAH-kah GIHL-bahr) was a descendant of sixteenth-century Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and a niece of Ezequial Cabeza de Baca, New Mexico’s second governor. She was one of four children born to Graciano Cabeza de Baca y Delgado and his wife, Indalecia Delgado. Fabiola and her siblings—Luis, Guadalupe, and Virginia—grew up in San Miguel County on a large, prosperous land-grant cattle ranch, Llano Estacado (Staked Plain) that had been in the family since the 1820’s. Her mother Indalecia died when Fabiola was four years old, and the Cabeza de Baca children were then cared for by their grandparents, Tomas and Estefana, who lived in a large, elegant stone mansion in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Fabiola attended school at Loretto Academy, a Catholic school in Las Vegas, and spent summers at the ranch, riding her own pony and working alongside her father, especially during branding season. She soon left Loretto (allegedly after a confrontation with a nun) and transferred to a public school. In 1906, she traveled to Spain for a year of Spanish language study before returning home. Fabiola graduated in 1913 from a high school run under the aegis of New Mexico Normal School (now New Mexico Highlands University), having earned a teaching certificate. In 1916, she began teaching the Spanish-speaking children of Hispanic and Indian homesteaders at a rural school in Guadalupe County. During a ten-year teaching career, she also was an instructor at schools in Santa Rosa and El Rita. In 1921, she earned a bachelor’s degree in education at New Mexico Normal School, and afterward she returned to Spain to conduct genealogical research. Back in New Mexico, she resumed teaching and was assigned to instruct her students in the relatively new subject of home economics. Intrigued by the possibilities of bringing the modern methodology of family and consumer sciences to traditional domestic chores, in 1929 Gilbert returned to her studies and earned a bachelor’s degree in home economics from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

Life’s Work

Gilbert immediately put her new degree to good use, landing a position as a home demonstration field agent with the New Mexico Agricultural Extension Service in 1929. For the next thirty years, Gilbert, who at the time of her hiring was the only agent who spoke Spanish, as well as two Pueblo Indian dialects, drove throughout the mostly rural and heavily Hispanic Rio Arriba and Santa Fe Counties, bringing the benefits of modern home economics to the wives of isolated, often poverty-stricken farmers. She instructed the women in nutritional values and in techniques of food preparation and preservation, such as how to dry and can fruits or vegetables, and she showed them how to apply new advances in gardening and livestock care to their advantage. She translated useful government bulletins into Spanish for distribution. She also taught wives how to use sewing machines to make traditional craft items, such as quilts and colcha (embroidered coverlets), and helped market the finished products to enable impoverished families to earn extra income during the depths of the Great Depression.

In 1931, Fabiola married insurance agent Carlos Gilbert, who was a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), an organization formed to oppose discrimination against Hispanics, especially in the American Southwest. The couple eloped to Mexico; since Carlos had been married before, Fabiola knew her traditionally oriented father would not approve of the union. Though Fabiola would remain active with LULAC for many years—later serving as a national trustee and as president of a local chapter—the marriage did not last. The Gilberts, who had no children, divorced in the early 1940’s.

Tragedy struck Fabiola in 1932. A train smashed into her car in Las Vegas, scarring her face and mangling her leg so severely that it had to be amputated. It took two years for her to recover, during which time she wrote extensively on home economics, food preparation, folklore, traditions, and other subjects. After recuperation, she returned to her job as an extension agent with renewed vigor, wearing a wooden leg.

Gilbert not only continued doling out valuable domestic advice to her housewife clients, but also she began gathering information from them. She collected prized family recipes, tidbits of folklore, natural home remedies passed down over the generations, details of religious celebrations, incidents from oral history, and other items of interest from Hispanic and Native American heritages. She used the data she collected to publish many articles in local newspapers and magazines. She also hosted a bilingual radio program about home economics. In 1939, she published the first of three books, Historic Cookery, which provided recipes for traditional dishes. In 1949, she released The Good Life: New Mexican Food, a fictional account of a typical Hispanic family that explained traditions and rituals and contained recipes for dishes associated with particular festive events. A third book, We Fed Them Cactus (1954), was a history of her family during four generations.

In 1951, through the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Gilbert was sent to Mexico to teach home economics to Tarascan Indians. She also trained more than fifty students from Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru in modern home-economics techniques. Gilbert retired from the Agricultural Extension Service in 1959, but she kept busy. Always interested in learning about and preserving native customs and traditions, she became an active participant in the Folklore Society of Santa Fe. She lectured widely, wrote copiously, and during the 1960’s served as a consultant in home economics to Peace Corps volunteers in training. Still alert and active late in life, Gilbert died in a retirement home in Albuquerque at the age of ninety-seven.

Significance

Linked by her ancestors to the land for more than four hundred years, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert is an important figure in New Mexico’s history. She played a pivotal role in the survival of poor Hispanic and Indian residents by giving their children the rudiments of education and by teaching adults efficient methods of home economics designed to improve life during the Great Depression and afterward. Working in both domestic and foreign venues, Gilbert brought the advantages of good nutrition and effective food preparation to the Western Hemisphere, and, through her Peace Corps instruction, to the world. Her writings have preserved traditions and customs that would otherwise have been lost.

Bibliography

Gilbert, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca. The Good Life: New Mexican Food. Drawings by Gerri Chandler. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: San Vincente Foundation, 1949. A fictional account of a typical Hispanic family, including recipes for foods associated with particular holidays.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Historic Cookery. 1939. Reprint. Santa Fe, N.Mex: Ancient City Press, 1970. Gilbert’s first published book, containing recipes for traditional New Mexican dishes.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. We Fed Them Cactus. Drawings by Dorothy L. Peters. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1954. A four-generation history of Gilbert’s family.

Locke, Liz, Theresa A. Vaughan, and Pauline Greenhill, eds. Encyclopedia of Women’s Folklore and Folklife. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2008. This well-researched, painstakingly documented, two-volume work discusses Gilbert’s written works in conjunction with women’s traditional occupations, such as cooking, and the relationship of her writings to the preservation of folklore and culture.

Melzer, Richard. Buried Treasures. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Sunstone Press, 2007. Honors notable people in New Mexico’s history. Includes a biography of Gilbert that recognizes her work as a cultural preservationist.

Schenone, Laura. A Thousand Years over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. An interesting compendium of cooking history that encompasses a variety of cuisines, including Native American and Hispanic, complete with recipes.