Lamy of Santa Fe (41 page)

His provocations were already great, but, for the moment, Martínez held his temper, and occasionally officiated solemnly at ceremonies in his former parish church. But he had an ally in the pastor of Arroyo Hondo, twelve miles north of Taos, Father Mariano de Jesús Lucero, and it was not long until they spoke out together against Taladrid, bishop or no bishop. They had strong native constituencies, and they set about to do everything possible to undermine Taladrid's authority and prestige.

Almost immediately, then, Martínez's powers as the great man of Taos and Taladrid's as the licit pastor came to clash. For one thing, long ago, Zubiría had given Martínez certain faculties as chaplain and custodian—perhaps as a restraining influence—for the Brotherhood of the Penitentes; and since this mandate was made to him, Martínez said, as a personal sub-delegation, and not as “a priest of Taos,” he had not transferred this function to Taladrid, though he had duly notified him of the matter. Otherwise, Martínez felt that he had “with the best disposition” handed over all the other parish rights and duties to his successor, as Taladrid surely must have reported to Lamy.

But Taladrid was not convinced that Martínez's abdication was sincere or complete, or that the parishioners were ready to welcome him. Actually, certain persons had made trouble by reporting how freely Martínez had spoken against him. Taladrid was often suspicious as well as disdainful, even when Martínez protested that he had done his best to bring the people into a respectful attitude. To no avail. “Señor Taladrid,” declared Martínez in a letter to the bishop, “does not behave well toward me, defaming me behind my back, even in some of the outlying missions of the parish.” Taladrid, for his part, wrote to the bishop about Martínez: “The only human thing about him is his shape.” It was the old case of the pot and the kettle.

A hard summer was in the making. Taladrid not only abused Martínez's reputation—he caused him physical discomfort and even suffering. The old pastor still liked to say morning Mass in the church but the new pastor often made this as difficult as possible for him. Taladrid, even though he knew that Martínez in his illness could not sustain a long fast before Mass, would instruct the sexton to delay the preparation of the vestments and vessels so that Martínez would be obliged to wait, “in order to mistreat me”—so the sexton himself had told him. One morning in May when Martínez went to Taladrid at home to beg him to let him say Mass early, Taladrid seized hold of him, cried, “I know how to hit hard and fight!” and added that the bishop was so fixed in his anger against Martínez that he held him forever “in reprobation.” To this cruel statement Martínez answered that it was not from animosity that he had been relieved of his post—it was for consideration of his health, and he had Lamy's letter to prove it.

Now smarting with an aggravated sense of injustice, Martínez published an open letter in the Santa Fe Spanish newspaper—the
Gaceta
—to give his side of the row—at the very least an unseemly public act. It discommoded and angered Lamy, who took to the Taos road himself to try to bring about a reconciliation between the two priests.

It was a difficult road, impossible for carriages, while even freight waggons had to take a laborious detour under half-loads. The bishop rode his horse up along the Rio Grande, through Taos Canyon, coming at last onto the sweep of the Taos Plain, so flat that the cut of the river's deep gorge looked from a distance like a cloud shadow.

Unable to effect a lasting peace in Taos on this first visit, Lamy made a second trip later in the summer, once more with no success. Taladrid had further gravely offended Martínez, who had a strong patronal family feeling, by treating a Martínez cousin “as a heretic”; and even though Taladrid evidently made a sort of redress, the enmity was sealed. Because of all the provocations Martínez had been mad
to accept, his final act of rebellion came in a form which Lamy, even in his patience, could not long condone; for in his visits to Taos, the bishop learned that Martínez had remodeled his own residence to contain a private oratory, and that there he conducted services and officiated in other ways as an independent pastor. His native following—including his large collection of relatives—provided him with a regular congregation for whom he exercised his priestly powers without any authority from Santa Fe. In all his trials with the recusant clergy—particularly Gallegos and Ortiz—Lamy found Martínez “worse than these two together.”

For throughout the summer Ortiz and Gallegos had been working with reckless zeal to secure the latter's reelection as New Mexico's delegate to Congress. The campaign aroused strong partisanships. A priest, one Cardenas, who had been suspended even by Zubiría for moral reasons, wrote to the
Weekly Gazette
of Santa Fe from London to support Gallegos. The paper, “independent in all things, neutral in none,” published an editorial against Gallegos in both English and Spanish which said,

We ask the people of New Mexico in the name of all that's just, to look at the acts of Bishop Lamy since he came into the Territory. Has he done anything that is not calculated to elevate the Church, and to advance the interests of the holy Catholic religion? Has he not relieved the people from oppressive Church exactions levied solely to maintain a corrupt and profligate Clergy, who were in many cases a moral curse to the country? Pause, Mexicans, before you cast your votes for a man who would stop the progress of this glorious reform, in which you are so much interested for yourselves and your children in all time to come.

Miguel A. Otero ran against Gallegos and lost in the final tabulation of votes; but with evidence of fraud at hand, he challenged the election, even though Gallegos had been seated in the House again. Once there, Gallegos laid a speech of great length before the House, in which he directly defamed Lamy. Denying in his speech a charge that “the influence of the Roman Catholic Church was brought into the contest at the polls to secure my election,” Gallegos went on to write:

—In point of fact, this is the precise converse of the truth. A clergyman of that church, I found myself, previous to my first election to this body, deprived of my living in common with all the other native clergy of New Mexico, excepting four only, by the new French bishop, to make way for imported French priests of his own selection. The attempt to vindicate our rights only served to secure the whole weight of ecclesiastical influence against us, one and all. At the [second] election, now the subject of contest, it is notorious that the foreign bishop did, in fact, intermeddle, by himself and his priests,
to support me, but to crush me, and to secure the election of my opponent. And I have now the original memorial, signed by upwards of thirty of the thirty-nine members of the two Houses of the Territorial Legislature, addressed to the chief bishop of the Roman church [Pius IX], praying the removal of one who has shown himself capable of prostituting his office.

Mr Speaker, these topics are not willingly introduced by me, nor do I believe that they will be acceptable to this House; but they are forced upon me, and I am compelled thus to notice them. I leave them now to such reflections as what has been said may suggest to the minds of honorable members.

He then discussed the criteria for counting ballots in New Mexico, and touched upon the legitimacy of 131 ballots cast at La Mesilla village, in the Doñana
Condado
, which had been disallowed as votes cast by Mexican nationals—again the old ambiguity of the civil status of an area within the United States but still in popular ways allied to Mexico.

In his turn, Otero rose as contestant to address the House. He first made the statistical claim that Gallegos had been returned by a fraudulent majority of 578 votes, and then challenged his opponent's claim to represent faithfully all New Mexicans; for Gallegos had based much of his campaign on anti-Anglo-American sentiment, since the Mexican population was still in the majority. But, Otero declared,

For many years past there have been two parties in that Territory—one calling itself the Mexican party, and indulging in great hostility against the institutions of these States; the other denominated the American party, and looking to annexation as the only security from the perpetual discords and civil wars of Mexico. These visions commenced before the late war between the two countries, and continue to the present day as the fundamental distinction between existing parties. I confess I have always been attached to the institutions of this country, and to have been taught from childhood to look to this quarter for the political regeneration of my people. Though of unmixed Spanish descent, I received my education in this country; and I am happy to entertain the thought that I am the first native citizen of that acquired Territory who has come to the Congress of our adopted fatherland, and address it in the language of its laws and its Constitution. And I am proud to know that my own people at home do not consider me the less qualified, on that account, to represent them in this body, whatever may be the opinion of the sitting delegate.…

There is one topic, Mr Speaker, which ought not to have been introduced here at this time, and which I should not have noticed at all but for the attack of the sitting delegate upon the Catholic Bishop of New Mexico. I have asserted in my notice, and it is perfectly notorious in the Territory, that the corrupt priests did exert the influence of the church to secure the election of my competitor. This fact cannot be denied by any honest man who is acquainted with the facts. But I utterly deny that the bishop was guilty of
interference whatever, unless that could be called an interference which sought merely to restrain the priesthood from the scandal of an active and zealous participation in the canvass. I myself carried to the bishop a petition signed by several influential and respectable citizens of the sitting Delegate's native county, requesting that the priests who were actively interfering in the election might be forbidden to use the power of the Church for so corrupt a purpose. Not without hesitation and reluctance, the bishop wrote a mild letter to padre Ortiz [the old ex-dean] of San Juan, which letter I also carried to said prelate, advising him to abstain from taking an active part in the contest. The hypocritical padre, while professing obedience to the wish of his superior, utterly disregarded the instruction given. He was a zealous partisan of the sitting Delegate, and made use of all the influence of his position to aid him in the election.

So much for the election. But Otero felt obliged in conscience to do more. “I feel it my duty,” he declared in the House, “to go further, and to defend the bishop from the charges unjustly made or insinuated against him. I believe him to be eminently worthy of respect for his piety, intelligence, and public spirit, and I should feel myself culpably negligent not to vindicate his reputation here.” Otero went on to quote Gallegos's congressional attack upon Lamy's treatment of him and his fellow dissidents, and then resumed,

Now what is the truth in reference to this matter? It is no part of my purpose, as it certainly would be unbecoming of me, to make any allusion to the private character of the sitting Delegate. I do not wish to be so misunderstood. But the occasion requires me to say that, at the time of the acquisition of New Mexico by this country, when the new bishop was sent out, he found the Church sunk into the most deplorable condition of immorality. The priests themselves were notoriously addicted to the grossest vices. They were, in many instances, the disgrace of every gambling house and drinking saloon, and the open frequenters of brothels. In a word, they personified vice in all its hideous and revolting aspects. The good bishop, seeing how the holy office had been prostituted and the Church disgraced, proceeded at once to remove the delinquent priests, and substituted others in their stead. This is what the bishop has done: “this is the head and front of his offending.”

But Lamy had gone still further, and done “what was never before so effectually done, since the days of the pious padres who first settled the Territory.”

He has established schools upon a good foundation, and has begun the education of the young, both male and female. It is not surprising that the corrupt and degraded priests, who were formerly the worst enemies of the people, imposing upon their credulity and cultivating their prejudices, as the means of attaining their wicked ascendency, should find fault with the measures of reform adopted by the new dignitary. But in spite of their complaints,
all good men will approve the change which deprives them of power and position, so much abused and perverted by their vices. This much I felt it my duty to say in vindication of a pure and good man, who has faithfully served the best interests of his Church, and has labored for the good of the people over whom he has been placed. I know the responsibility under which I speak: I vouch for the general accuracy of the facts stated.

Mr Speaker, I should never have felt authorized to allude to any of these subjects but for the singular production which the sitting Delegate has caused to be laid upon your tables.

Returning to the election issue, Otero further consolidated his arguments in contest. The question was again put before the full House, Gallegos was unseated, and Otero took the oath of office as the new delegate from New Mexico. This debate in Congress was a public vindication of Lamy's whole administration thus far; and further, it might give him one more measure of strength in the Doñana problem, since this had been shown as a matter which clouded not only ecclesiastical but even civil jurisdiction in the diocese. Lamy was yet again awaiting Rome's decision in the matter.

As for another decision, more immediate and distressing to make—Martínez was forcing Lamy to it; for in spite of demands from the bishop that he publicly retract his violent and rebellious statements in the
Gaceta de Santa Fe
(signed with his pseudonym “Santistevan”—his mother's maiden name) he had not done so, though eventually he apologized for his “excessive” language. Further, ordered to cease conducting the affairs of his private “parish,” in which Father Lucero of Arroyo Hondo openly supported him, he disobeyed; and finally, on 27 October, Lamy sent to Martínez a writ of suspension of all his priestly duties. Martínez defied even this, refused to discontinue his ministrations, and so entered into a state of open schism. What could only follow would be further—and extreme—action on Lamy's part, after Machebeuf's return to Santa Fe, expected a week or so later.