Fellow “Ranchos” members:
Years ago, while researching 1700’s death records in Aguascalientes, my eye was caught by an unusual entry which has haunted me ever since - so much so that I felt compelled to record it in a fictional fact-based story.
Although this particular entry concerns the Diaz-De Leon family of the Hacienda Peñuelas, it could easily have been about any other wealthy landowners of that time and place.
El Parbulito was written not to judge any particular individual or family, but rather to illuminate the separate reality of the disenfranchised, to give a voice and presence to the many nameless forgotten ones that we genealogists sometimes overlook or ignore in our eagerness and zeal to expand our own lines and generations.
For those interested, El Parbulito was recently published (September 2019) by the on-line Latino literary magazine Somos en Escrito, and can be found at somosenescrito.com. I’m grateful to the editor, Armando Rendón, for finding the story worthy of print.
Respectfully,
Gloria Delgado
El Parbulito
Interessting and well written story. Indeed, the mexican society of the Virreinato was not kind to the native mexicans that were especially discriminated by the hacendados, the same families that we mainly study on Nuestros Ranchos.
I personally descend from Andrés Díaz de León, brother of Vicente Díaz de León, present in your story.
Have a good day
Tristán Díaz de León