Parra Family
In the late 1950s, Zacarias “Jimmy” Gonzalez Parra and his wife, Ana Engracia Parra, began their family business by purchasing a small corner store in the Rio Linda Addition to the City of El Paso. They named this store “Los Alamos Grocery.” To the back of the store was a small house were Jimmy and Ana would raise their children .
Located at 1312 E. 12 Street, Los Alamos Grocery was centrally located in Rio Linda and soon became the centerpiece of neighborhood life there. Not only did the store provide local produce and goods, but it also offered a space for social gathering, exchange, and community-building.
For the children of Rio Linda, especially young boys, Los Alamos Grocery was their evening meet-up spot. Before dusk when their mothers called for them to come inside, Rio Linda boys met outside Los Almost beneath a street light to tell ghost stories and take part in a number of games—a favorite being “escondidas” or to plan that week’s baseball games at the KSET field up the street. Indeed, it was there, outside Los Alamos Grocery, that they played and exercised their imaginations as all children do. In this way, Los Alamos Grocery was the center of their world, a place of growing up.
For five years, Jimmy and Ana owned and operated Los Alamos Grocery before condemnation proceedings as part of the Chamizal Treaty forced the Parra family to leave Rio Linda and abandon their business there.
During the early phases of settlement negotiations, Jimmy was publicly vocal against the Chamizal Treaty. In the 1963 El Paso Herald-Post article shown above, Jimmy told reporters that he owned Los Alamos Grocery on a paying basis and that he did not want to leave. When condemnation papers arrived to his store, and later buy-out offers from the U.S. government for his business, Jimmy refused to sign.
Ana eventually convinced her husband to sign these papers, asking him: “What will we do here if there are no people?”
Listen to Ana recall this conversation.
This recording of Ana Parra is from a 1994 oral history conducted by the Institute for Oral History at the University of Texas at El Paso. You can listen to this oral history in its entirety as well as read a transcript of it by clicking here. Source: UTEP Institute of Oral History
With the money Ana & Jimmy received for their business, they decided to relocate their business in Manhattan Heights. To attract business from Rio Linda customers who had similarly relocated in Central El Paso, the Parras named their new store “Los Alamos Grocery.
For years, former Rio Linda customers continued to shop at Los Alamos Grocery—one man coming from as far as the Ascarate area of the lower valley. Even so, Ana maintained that although “mucha gente viene todavía pero no como antes que teneíamos mucha genta allá.”
Source: UTEP Institute of Oral History