Bañales Family
Margarito Bañales and his wife, Consuelo V. de Bañales, bought their Chamizal home in 1954. The house stood on 1327 12th Street in the Rio Linda Addition to the City of El Paso.
There, Margarito and Consuelo raised eight of their nine children: Margarito Jr., Jose, Xavier, Manuel, Jaime, Mario, Martha Alicia, and Marco Antonio. Their youngest child, Miguel Angel, was raised in the family’s new home in Altura Heights that was purchased with funds from treaty buy-out proceedings.
In 1975, the third eldest child in the family, Manuel Bañales, wrote an article for El Poder de la Luz, about his family’s Chamizal home. Titled, “We Remember—El Barrio,” Manuel explained that in Rio Linda “there was warmth, there was belonging, there was a sense of family.” “One felt a deep attachment to it, regardless of the conditions under which he may have lived,” he continued. “Leaving was almost next to impossible, as it was for us, and under extenuating circumstances.”
In “We Remember—El Barrio,” Manuel reflected on the profound loss of their Rio Linda home. He insisted that while he and his family may have appeared better off because they moved out of South El Paso and into the middle-class neighborhood of Altura Heights, they profoundly missed the sense of community, belonging, and networks of support that defined life in Rio Linda.
“Chicanos want to preserve the barrio because of the concept of community that has been a part of him for so long,” Manuel wrote. “This concept has been an overriding factor in the preservation of our culture, our language, and everything that is Chicano. It has been our blood.”
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1954: Bañales Purchase Home in Rio Linda
Margarito and Consuelo purchased their home in Rio Linda from Julian and Amelia Arrierta for $4,000. Julian Arrieta had built the house himself and owned another just a few houses down on 12th Street. The Bañales mortgage on their new home was $45/month.
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1965: Bañales sell property to the United States of America
The United States purchased the Bañales property for $10,300. The land on which this home once stood is now south of the international boundary in Cd. Juárez.
A real estate appraiser hired to evaluate and appraise Chamizal properties appraised the Bañales property as $10,300. He described the home as:
“Inside in fair condition, needs painting and some repairs. duct work for air conditioning is exposed in hall. Bath needs new plaster and floors need new asphalt.”
Source: William E Wood Papers, Chamizal National Memorial Archives
Photographs like this one taken by treaty officials, however, vacate & erase the richness of life in Rio Linda.
But if we look elsewhere, there is a very different representation of this neighborhood.
Consuelo Bañales, an avid photographer, diligently documented her family’s life in Rio Linda.
Her photographs illuminate the richness & complexity of life in South El Paso for her children, husband, & neighbors.
Consuelo, who took such pleasure in photographing her family, was herself rather adverse to photos of herself. As such, there are few photos of Consuelo in Rio Linda.
Of those few, here is one photograph of Consuelo (center) with her daughter, Martha (below), and her daughter’s godmother (right) in the front yard of their Rio Linda home on 12th Street.
Photographs courtesy of Martha Bañales and Bañales family.
When the Bañales family left Rio Linda and moved to their new home in Altura Heights, they brought many things with them.
Of those many things, is the small trinket you see here: a wooden water well with two faux song birds perched along the sides.
As they had done when they called 12th Street home, the Bañales family hung this trinket outside the front door of their new home. It is a small token to remember where they came from—and where they were still going.
Photograph by Alana de Hinojosa with permission from Martha Bañales