By María Eugenia Guerra
Publisher

I've had no more pleasant a Sunday afternoon than the one I recently spent in the abandoned townsite of Guerrero Viejo. The old Spanish colonial settlement -- a pivot upon which turned the history of Mexico and South Texas as well as the history of many of our families -- is the object of one of my favorite and most easily accessible excursions.
Long expired, except in memory, as a hub of trade and ranching, Guerrero Viejo persists in the hearts and minds of many border residents as the point of northernmost migration before families moved from there to Palafox, Laredo, Zapata, San Ygnacio, Los Ojuelos, and other nearby towns and settlements. It is said Guerrero Viejo was el embudo, the funnel, through which passed the rich legacy of el vaquero and ranching into this country.
The once prosperous city was condemned by the Mexican government in the early 1950s to make way for the wide and shallow basin of the Falcon Reservoir.
The condemnation by which Cd. Guerrero Viejo ceased to exist officially was a mirror image of action taken by our own government in 1950 to move the residents of the historic towns of Zapata, Lopeño, and Falcón to higher ground.
Ancestral homes and 113,000 acres of productive farm and ranch land were condemned in the name of flood control, the generation of hydroelectric power, and water conservation.
The stories of resistance to the sweeping actions of two governments working in tandem to relocate Zapatenses and Guerrerenses are courageous and heartbreaking epics, stories too big to recount in this small story about an afternoon stroll through a place that on the map of the heart was Cd. Guerrero Viejo. Over the years, I've collected some of those tender stories of the summoning of courage to give up the place to which hearts had been anchored for generations, and it's the substance of those stories that fueled my thoughts on a walk through the once beautiful old city.
Though much of Guerrero Viejo lies now in a rubble of massive sandstone blocks quarried more than a century and a half ago, the persistent elegance of its remaining vernacular architecture does not fail to register in the casual traversing of its streets. La mano de obra is everywhere evident and nowhere more clearly than in the precision of hand-cut stones drystacked and set for what its builders must have believed then would be for eternity.
I come here several times a year as I have for the last 20 years, sometimes to bring someone who has never been, but most often because it is time once more to wander these narrow streets. Even when I visit as a journalist, I come, too, as a pilgrim who wants to touch the stones and walk in the doorways of her antecedentes. It is not possible to enter the archways or carriage ramps of the ancient structures without coming away with a sense of who those early residents were and what their lives must have been.
I came here once by air with archaeological steward Rose Treviño and several times by boat when the reservoir waters lapped at the walls of Nuestra Sra. del Refugio Church. Things have changed since my initial visit. Most visibly is the fact that the reservoir waters are now miles and miles away, and as they have receded over the years, buildings we had not ever seen surfaced from the silty reservoir bottom. The years have been unkind to the ruins and I have noted that many structures that stood for most of the last 20 years have now fallen. Keystones have fallen from arches, looters have carried away doors, mesquite and huisache grow though the floors, doors, and windows of the old homes.
Several years ago, the Mexican government designated the old town as a monument under auspices of INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia), and while at first that seemed to mean something in terms of keeping out looters, restricting vehicular traffic and litter, and paying for a ticket to tour the site, the blue INAH signs now seem to signify little. INAH, did, however, secure the beautiful old church from further degradation by restoring its roof and clearing the rubble and animal droppings of decades from its yellow and maroon tiled floors. For those who have firsthand memory or have seen photos of the former splendor of this house of worship, the generous open space of drystacked walls, keystoned arches, and the altar evoke the onetime glory of this temple of worship. In some places it is possible to see in the remains of cream-colored stucco the tribute accorded to the Virgen de Guadalupe in a continuous strand of inverted gold-leafed fleur-de-lys painted where the high walls of the church meet its massive wooden ceiling rafters. The church is usually kept locked now, though on our recent visit, it was open.
Guerrero Viejo's most recent caretaker Doña Julia Zamora, who lived there for decades without benefit of electricity or running water, is gone. Her beloved bouganvillea, however, continue to bloom in a tribute to her, a riot of magenta along the sandstone walls of her home on la Avenida de la Independencia.
(The most expeditious route we have found to Old Guerrero is down Hwy. 83, through Zapata, and across the International Dam over the Falcon Reservoir -- no bridge lines at the Aduana or U.S. Customs and no waiting. Pick up Hwy. 2 after the dam for a reasonably good road to Old Guerrero. You don't need 4-wheel drive once you divert onto the dirt road for the 40-minute dust fest to Old Guerrero. Things are clearly marked. Say hello to Don José María Martinez at the one closed gate through the ranchlands. On your way back, stop at the Capri for a good meal and clean restrooms. Here's a little reading list: Lori McVey's Guerrero Viejo, A Photographic Essay; La Antigua Revilla en la Leyenda de los Tiempos by Lorenzo de la Garza; Historic Architecture of the Falcon Reservoir, Eugene George, the Texas Historical Commission; the UT master's thesis of Adela Isabel Flores, Falcon International Dam and Its Aftermath, A Study of United States-Mexico Border Policy Making and Implementation.)