Table of Contents
PENGUIN BOOKS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Testimonio
Chapter 1 - Tierra de Viejitas
Chapter 2 - Códices de los Abuelos
Chapter 3 - Valle de Silencio
Mexico Viejo
Chapter 4 - Cuento Mestizo
Chapter 5 - The Flowered Path
Chapter 6 - From Huisache to Cedar
Peregrinaje
Chapter 7 - Zona de Niebla
Chapter 8 - Aztec Theater
Chapter 9 - Rain of Stones Lluvia de Piedras
Volador
Chapter 10 - Exilio
Chapter 11 - La Ruta
Chapter 12 - Una Canción
Epilogue
Tent of Grief
Acknowledgements
Praise for Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation
“This audaciously poetic and muscularly philosophical memoir is, alternately, a magical travelogue,
feverish reconstruction of family history, a perplexing detective novel, and finally, a personal spiritua
odyssey back in time to Aztec mythology.”
—San Jose Mercury News (front page review)
“Santos is a vaquero poet at heart, but the laughter has turned to introspection and—may we still us
this word?—wisdom.”
—Chicago Tribune (front page review)
“Santos counts the cost of immigration, assimilation and upward mobility in this graceful memoi
where intimate family chronicle alternates with introspective meditation on the Mexican past . . . h
writes splendidly.”
—The New York Times
“In his impressive memoir, John Phillip Santos attempts to locate the origin of that lingering los
among the descendants of the conquered Indians, and he does so with grand success. . . . What
wonderful story he has told here, in a memoir that is a brave and beautiful attempt to redeem a peop
out of a limbo of forgetting.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Significant and unique . . . a beautiful, universal portrait of migration.”
—The Washington Post
“There is a remembering here that strikes a deep chord. Mr. Santos tells his stories with clarity an
serenity, as one looking back on a long, wide, winding road.”
—Dallas Morning News
“[Santos] uses his talents to paint an incredibly rich portrait of his extended family . . . connecting th
story to the birth of Mexico, the New World, the larger phenomenon of migration, and his brush wit
the apocalypse.”
—The Village Voice
“Too big to fit in a review, and almost too big to fit in one heart. Places is a book that only a journali
could dream, and only a poet could write.”
—Austin Chronicle
“[Santos] masterfully weaves the stories of various unforgettable characters with the landscape an
fragrance of their memories.”
—The Miami Herald
“An unforgettable chronicle.”
—Albuquerque Weekly Alibi
“An unrelentingly gorgeous memoir . . . [Santos] draws from centuries of history and great wells o
emotion to construct a remembrance that flies in the face of his very words.”—Texas Monthly
“A moving, intellectually powerful memoir of Mexican-American life . . . His fine memoir is certai
to find a wide readership.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“[An] elegantly crafted chronicle of one of the thousands of Mexican families who fled to El Nor
during the Mexican Revolution. [Santo’s] book is one of the most insightful investigations int
Mexican-American border culture available.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Many Americans will find themselves in the narrative of upheaval and migration; they will recogniz
the difference between labored nostalgia and heartfelt loss.”
—Booklist (starred)
“It pains me when the incredible histories of our people are trivialized as magic realism; surviving
no magic act. In a time of global migrations and forgetting, these stories remember beyond the Alam
beyond 1776, 1492, and 1519. I would recommend that the governors of Texas, California, an
Arizona, the presidents of Mexico and the United States, and the director of the Immigration an
Naturalization Service read this book. This is the map of one family, and perhaps all families who liv
on several borders. Here, then, are our documents, our papers. This story is our green card.”
—Sandra Cisneros, bestselling author of The House on Mango Street
“This book is a tender treasure, a rare gift, a journey into the rich tapestry of a family’s life an
migrations. Exquisitely woven, intrinsically poetic, Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creatio
moves fluidly among relatives and realities, cities and mysteries, unearthing, liking, shining deep lig
into the memory-caverns of our worlds. The best memoir I’ve ever read.”
—Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Never in a Hurry
“John Phillip Santos invokes the muses of homelessness. He draws his silhouette in the twilight an
inserts it in an ancient mural whose meaning is beyond him. His ultimate realization is that his is
wandering soul but he is not—has never been—alone. His memoir is a lesson in humility.”
—Ilan Stavans
“John Santos’s powerful memoir is not a simple walk down memory lane, but rather a poet
exploration of the ways in which remembering and forgetting inform our fragile modes of survivin
and thriving. From Texas to Oxford, from grandparents to Borges, Santos takes us on a poignan
pilgrimage that ends deep within our souls.”—Cornel West, bestselling author of Race Matters
PENGUIN BOOKS
PLACES LEFT UNFINISHED AT THE TIME OF CREATION
John Phillip Santos, born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, is the first Mexican American Rhode
scholar and the recipient of numerous literary awards. His articles on Latino culture, art, and politic
have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and the San Antonio Express News. He is writer and produc
of more than forty television documentaries for CBS and PBS, three of them Emmy nominees. H
lives in New York City, where he works in the Media Program of the Ford Foundation.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,
London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,
Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,
a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 1999
Published in Penguin Books 2000
Copyright © John Phillip Santos, 1999
All rights reserved
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Frontispiece: Front page of La Prensa, January 10, 1939
Testimonio: The Garcia sisters (top to bottom): Madrina, Uela, Tía Pepa
Mexico Viejo: The Burning of the Idols, detail from La Descripción de
Tlaxcala, used by permission of Glasgow University Library
Peregrinaje: Wedding portrait, Juan José and Margarita Santos, 1915
Volador: Detail from Códice Fernandez Leal, used by permission of
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
CIP data available
eISBN : 978-1-440-67919-3
http://us.penguingroup.com
Para mis padres,
who gave me the story
Family Trees
Los Garcias
(Children in order of birth)
Francisco, UNCLE FRANK
Margarita, Uela, my grandmother
José
Santos
Juan
Tomasita (died at birth)
Tomasa, Madrina
Josefa, Tía Pepa
Jesús, UNCLE JESSE
Gilberto, UNCLE GILBERT
Manuel
Valentín (Manuel’s twin, died at birth)
Carlos, UNCLE CHALE
Los Santos
Juan Nepumencio Santos m. Paula Sandoval
(Children in order of birth)
Mariano
Uvaldino
Juan José, my grandfather
Andrea
Francisca, Tía Panchita
Jesusa, Tía Chita
Manuela, Tía Nela
(Children by Juan Nepumencio’s first marriage)
Pedro
José León
Guadalupe
Jesús María
Juan José Santos m. Margarita Garcia, Uela
(Children in order of birth)
Raul
Juan José, Jr., my father
Consuelo, AUNT CONNIE
Beatriz, AUNT BEA
Margarita, AUNT MARGIE
Rogelio, UNCLE ROGER
Juan José Santos, Jr., DADDY, m. Lucille Lopez, MOTHER
John Phillip
George David
Charles Daniel
Los Lopez
Leonides Lopez m. Leandra Vela, GRANDMOTHER
(Children in order of birth)
Leo William
Lauro Luis
Lydia Viola
Lily Amanda (died at two)
Ludovico Blas
Lucille Cecille, my mother
I learned to breathe this way when I left that body made of ashes, river water, copal and huisach
flowers.
When my breath was South it was a feather as big as a palm frond. The infinite miles were numbere
in stars and the earth was lit from inside.
My eyes were mirrors, my heart was wind.
The ground pulled my songs like a magnet.
The bananas were so ripe they spread like butter when they first brought guns into the garden.
Our legacy is papaya, is frijol, is sangria by the gallons.
Helix inside of helix, the color of blood. Dead uncles. Lost friends. Forgotten amantes.
For five hundred years of impossible weather, this lightning has smelled like night, weaving its net o
forgetting across these lands.
Testimonio
1
Tierra de Viejitas
Land of Little Old Ladies
“Have all the Santos already died?”
That’s the question Madrina asks Aunt Connie several times a week, as she awakens from sleepin
or daydreaming in front of the television. “¿Ya se murieron todos los Santos?”
Madrina Tomasa is my grandmother’s sister on my father’s side of the family. She is the eldes
living sibling of her brood of Garcias. She lives with my aunt and uncle in a bright, meticulousl
arranged room in a house in San Antonio, Texas, where she keeps time by TV novelas like Amo
Salvaje, variety shows, and televised-live Sunday-morning masses from San Fernando Cathedral.
Like others of her generation, the present has lost its claim on her. Mostly she wander
disembodied, through her ninety-five years, as if they were interlocking chambers of an enormou
shell of memories. One moment she is a child, bathing in morning light in the mercado of Múzquiz, i
the mountains of northern Mexico. Then it is 1921, and she is overturning a Model A Ford on Sa
Antonio’s south side. She laughs now, remembering the tumbling tin milk jugs from the dairy truck sh
collided with, pouring out across the oily pavement on Nogalitos Street.
Though she was married to my great-uncle Manuel for almost sixty years, Madrina is still enamore
with el tío Uvaldino Santos, my grandfather’s brother, whom she fell in love with as a teen. Aun
Connie says he was the “love of her life,” but they were not permitted to marry because in Mexico
was considered improper for two sisters to marry two brothers. Dead for more than ten years
Uvaldino comes to her in dreams, upright and impeccable in his dark pin-striped suit, with mustach
and eyebrows perfectly combed, and presents her with large bunches of grapes. And week to week, sh
asks my aunt that same question:
“¿Ya se murieron todos los Santos?”
My aunt replies, “Sí, Madrina, ya se murieron todos los Santos.”
“All of the Santos have died.”
Since Aunt Connie told me that story, I have wondered why she told Madrina all the Santos ar
dead. Who are we?
Aren’t we still unfolding the same great tapestry of a tale begun long, long ago? Aren’t my aun
and uncles, cousins, my parents and brothers, all part of the same long dolorous poem that sings of th
epoch of ocean-plying caravelas and conquest, of Totonacas and Aztecas, of unimaginable treasure
created from jade, silver, and gold? Of gods worshipped and sacrificed to from on top of pyramids—
of thousands upon thousands of Indios baptized for Christ in the saliva of Franciscan monks? We ma
be latter-day Mexicanos, transplanted into another millennium in El Norte, but we are still connecte
to the old story, aren’t we? The familia walked out of the mountain pueblos of Mexico into the olde
precincts of San Antonio—then, finally, into the suburbs of the onetime colonial city, where th
memory of our traditions has flickered like a votive flame, taken from the first fire.
It’s a common name my family carries out of our Mexican past. It is a name that invokes the sain
and embroiders daily prayers of Latinos in North and South America. The old ones in the family sa
the name was once de Los Santos. “From the saints.” But no one remembers when or why it wa
shortened. There were Santos already in San Antonio two hundred years ago. In the records for th
year 1793 at the Mission San Antonio de Valero, which later became the Alamo, you find the names o
Manuel and Jorge de Los Santos, referred to as “Indios,” but it’s not clear whether they are ou
ancestors.
It sometimes seems as if Mexicans are to forgetting what the Jews are to remembering. We hav
made selective forgetting a sacramental obligation. Leave it all in the past, all that you were, and a
that you could not be. There is pain enough in the present to go around. Some memories cannot b
abandoned. Let the past reclaim all the rest, forever, and let stories come to their fitting end.
I never understood people’s fascination with immortality. The idea of life without end gave m
chills. Even as a kid, I wanted to be among my family and my ancestors, walking through our sho
time together, fully knowing it will end. I wanted to bind Texas and Mexico together like a raft stron
enough to float out onto the ocean of time, with our past trailing in the wake behind us like a com
tail of memories.
But the past can be difficult to conjure again when so little has been left behind. A few photograph
a golden medal, a pair of eyeglasses as delicate as eggshells, an old Bible, a letter or two. Som
families in Mexico have troves of their ancestors’ belongings, from pottery of the ancients an
exquisite paintings of Mexico City in the eighteenth century to helmets and shields of the Spaniard
and even hundred-year-old parrots and maguey plants that have been handed down, from the grea
grandparents who first tended them.
By comparison, the Santos are traveling light through time. In my family, virtually nothing ha
been handed down, not because there was nothing to give, but after leaving Mexico to come to Texa
—so many loved ones left behind, cherished places and things abandoned—the antepasados ceased
regard anything as a keepsake. Everything was given away. Or they may have secretly clung so closel
sample content of Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation
download online In the Footsteps of the Yellow Emperor: Tracing the History of Traditional
Acupuncture here
download Organizational Behavior (13th Edition)
Il farmacista di Auschwitz book
download Selected Stories
http://www.1973vision.com/?library/Doc--A-Novel.pdf
http://conexdxb.com/library/Ribofunk.pdf
http://schrolf.de/books/Il-farmacista-di-Auschwitz.pdf
http://flog.co.id/library/Escritos-Libertarios.pdf
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