Los Padrinos

My birth padrino and madrina were my mother's oldest brother Jose Benavidez and his wife Francisca Ortega. My first name at birth was my paternal grandfathers first name, Preciliano. That was it, no middle name. As it was told to me, at the baptismal the priest insisted I needed to have have a Christian name to go along with Preciliano, somehow the name Joseph came up. My padrino Jose probably did not mind and neither did my father as that was his fathers first name. So I ended up Preciliano Joseph instead of like my paternal grandfather, Jose Preciliano. Everyone must have been satisfied and that is what ended up on my baptismal certificate.

My padrino Jose was later to kill his ex wife Francisca in a domestic dispute gone bad. Francisca was a special friend of my mother's and she asked her nephew and their son, Damian, to be my conformation padrino. For some reason or other he ended up in the Navy and unable to be my sponsor at the confirmation ceromony. My mother then asked a distant relative who lived near by to be my padrino, he was Telesfor Archuleta.

My mother, Maria del Refugio Benavidez and Telesfor Archuleta were 1st cousins 3 times removed. Telesfor Archuleta and his wife Teresa Montoya lived across the railroad tracks from my grandparents. They had always been very close and I spent a lot of time at their house being spoiled by both of them. I used to end up at their house "con cara de hambre", as my mother used to say, and mention a particular food and it would appear at the following meal which I was expected to partake in. Cold water, tortillas, biscochitos, sopa and panocha were mine for the asking there. So when my mother suggested my "tio Telesfor" as my padrino for my conformation I jumped at the opportunity. And as such "tia Terisita" became my madrina. In reality, in my case, there was no madrina for the confirmation ritual, just a padrino.

By the time I got married, where there would normally be another set of padrinos, I had left the church and ended up with witnesses picked up at the presiding judge's office in Brighton, Colorado.