DONA EULALIA ARANA

Recorded by Romelia Gomez, Field Report

Dona Eulalia Arana came to Bisbee from Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1901, with her husband and two children, both boys. Upon arriving here they went to live “en el monte”. El Monte being the hills beyond Zacatecas, where Mr. Arana built a rude “jacalito” for his family. Here they lived for about three years, Mr. Arana doing his work of being a “lenero”, wood-seller, clearing the hills surrounding his home of all the wood, with which they were covered. At first he had only two little burros to haul his wood, then he kept on buying more by ones and by twos until he had eight of them. He worked independently, going from house to house to sell the wood, for which there was a great demand. At first he sold a “cargo’, or load of chopped firewood tied with a cord, for $ .50; later, he sold it by sack-fulls, at $ .25 a sack. The boys never attended school, as they were always busy working with their father, besides being too far off from the school building. When Zacatecas began to be populated they moved down there.

The Arana family, doing quite well in their wood-selling business, started buying houses put up for sale in Zacatecas until they had ten of these, which they rented cheaply at two, three, and four dollars a month and they were always occupied. These houses were later sold, one by one, because the taxes on them coast more than they were worth. Before his death in 1914 Mr. Arana placed four corner stones on a lot of his in Zacatecas and ordered his sons to build their mother a house on that site. This they did, building a nice house of stone and cement and inscribing on it the year it was finished—1915. Dona Eulalia has lived in it ever since. It is situated at the end of one of the small canyons in Zacatecas quite high up on the side of the mountain, at the end of a little winding road.

Mr. Arana used to go down to a hotel on Brewery Gulch every day to get garbage foods for his chickens and burros. The hotel was always crowded and very busy—the clattering of dishes in the kitchen, the passing to and fro of hurrying waiters and waitresses, the amount of food thrown away daily, and the renting for $10.00 a month of rooms so tiny that one bed scarcely fitted in them—all signifying to the fact that Bisbee had much business downtown. This same hotel is now vacant and for sale.

Dona Eulalia never attended dances or fiestas in Bisbee or in Mexico, for she was brought up very strictly in Mexico by stern, church-going parents who allowed her to go only “from her home to the church, and from church, home again”, so that, not having been allowed to have good times when she was a young girl, she didn’t care for them later. Besides, she has always lived more or less away from the center of town, where most of the community affairs are stages. Even when her son, who is now in El Paso, built the “Cinco de Mayo” dance-hall in Zacatecas and made dances here she never attended them. She knew that many persons attended them, however, and that her son always made money on these dances. One time a man named Rios was shot here by a drunkard, but not much interest was given to the affair and the murderer fled from Bisbee. After her son went to live in el Paso, Mrs. Arana sold the hall, for she didn’t care about making dances there.

Her husband and sons at one time worked as “leneros” in the Huachuca Mts. Under contract with a Mr. Fletcher. She believes they furnished wood for the Fort.

Dona Eulalia doesn’t go to church any more, as she is troubled by rheumatism, but she does enough praying at home for all the people in Bisbee, she says. She thinks superstitions are silly, and laughs at people who believe in them. People tell her that when someone see a “churea” (some kind of a wild bird) it means bad luck for that person. She sees these birds every day around her home and doesn’t think they bring her any worse luck than she is entitled to have, anyway. She doesn’t like to use home remedies, but would rather go to the drugstore and get medicines prescribed by the doctors. She doesn’t even care to use the “juanloco” treatments for headaches when, as she says, “there are always pills and medicines already fixed up at the drugstore.”

Her husband’s name was Isidoro Arana, but all throughout the interview she kept referring to him as “el difunto” (the dead one), which sounded just a little bit weird. Probably the reason for this is that she has married again and uses this term to distinguish between the two husbands. This second husband works with the Company and, for some reason or other, she didn’t care to discuss him.

Mrs. Arana keeps a few chickens and so, in taking care of them, in doing the house-work, or going down to the store for groceries, and in doing one thing and another, she manages to keep busy all day long, going to bed quite tired at night. She takes water from a well right below her house and likes this water better than that which is piped. She says it is much purer and tastes better. She likes Zacatecas very much. Her age is 74.

Copied from microfilm by Wilola Follett, transcribed by Vynette Sage, made available and maintained on the internet via Jean Walker.

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