speaking for the dead
Advocates fight to save an all-but-forgotten Mexican cemetery in south Phoenix
Beneath an overgrown, rock-strewn lot in south Phoenix lie more than 300 souls.
No headstones mark their final resting places; they were vandalized and stolen long ago. The few that remained were removed and stored elsewhere for safekeeping.
Tim Diaz grew up across the street from the cemetery. He and his brothers used to chase vandals away.
He surveys the ruins, and his voice goes quiet. He can recite names from the missing headstones from memory.
It pains him to see the dead so dishonored.
“In our folklore, treating the dead this way invites a curse from God,” he said.
How did things get this way? Who is responsible?
The story is complicated, but it starts with the ravages of time and the fact that few people go out of their way to honor the dead when the dead are poor.
Paul Bustamante. Born 1921. Died May 21, 1923, of pneumonia. Aged 2 years.
Garcia Carillo (baby). Born 1917. Died April 4, 1918, of hypothyroidism. Aged 1 year.
Margarta Cota. Born August 1912. Died March 11, 1913, of ptomaine poisoning. Aged 6 months.
The cemetery, which is fenced on two sides, measures a little less than an acre. It may actually contain the remains of more than 400 people, but the only way to know for sure is to dig them up, which nobody has the time or money to do.
The best Diaz and others who care about it can hope for is that it will be fenced off — not necessarily to keep people out or in, he said, “but to let people know these people are here.”
The cemetery is private property, so help from the city or any government agency is unlikely.
To the west of the burial ground, noisy students at a charter high school practice volleyball outside, unaware that most of the people buried on the other side of the fence were children younger than them.
The principal, who is in her second year, had no idea there was a cemetery less than 100 yards from her office.
To the east is a Salvation Army recreation center. A wrought-iron fence separates the soccer fields from the cemetery and prevents kids from cutting through the graveyard, as they did years ago.
South of the school, someone has dumped an old couch and a chest of drawers, along with mound after mound of fill dirt.
The remains of old wooden fence posts and lengths of rusted barbed wire that once surrounded the cemetery litter the lot. A chain-link fence once kept trespassers out, but someone drove up in the middle of the night and stole every link.
Diaz stands in the middle of the cemetery and looks up at the downtown Phoenix skyline just a few miles north.
“We can see them,” he said. “But do they see us?”
Ernesto Abril. Born Oct. 28, 1915. Died June 11, 1916, of peritonitis. Aged 7 months, 14 days.
Fred Abril. Born Aug. 27, 1918. Died Sept. 9, 1918, of pneumonia. Aged 13 days.
Crysanta Badilla. Born 1892 or 1893. Died March 4, 1914, of tuberculosis. Aged 21 years.
The plot at 12th Street and Broadway Road in south Phoenix is officially known as the Sotelo-Heard Cemetery, but it has had many names. “The Farmer’s Cemetery.” “The Southside Cemetery.” “The Cemetery Across the River.” “The Mexican Cemetery.”
No one has been buried there in nearly a century, and it has been neglected, vandalized and pilfered for at least 50 years.
It is by no means the only distressed cemetery in Arizona, or even metro Phoenix. But Sotelo-Heard is different. It once was a part of the warp and weft of Phoenix’s early Latino narrative. Now it’s as if a thread has been pulled from the tapestry, leaving a hole in the fabric.
This particular thread tells tales of tragedy. The most obvious is the cemetery’s current state of ruin, but the history of the Sotelo-Heard Cemetery also reveals tales of people who were dispossessed of their land, sometimes more than once. And then there is the tragedy of the brutally hard life endured by the Mexican people upon whose backs a city was built and fortunes were made — but not by them.
Joe Flores: Date of birth unknown. Death by gunshot wound Nov. 26, 1916. Aged 28 years.
Louisa Flores. Born 1870. Died Sept. 3, 1918, of tuberculosis. Aged 48 years.
Manuel Fuertz. Born 1857. Died May 1, 1917, of natural causes. Aged 60 years.
The earliest recorded burial in SoteloHeard was May 3, 1896, but a reference to “the Mexican cemetery” in an 1892 Arizona Republican story indicates it had been in use long enough at that time to have been known colloquially.
In 1995, an archaeologist named K.J. Schroeder surveyed the site for the Phoenix Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, which works to preserve historic cemeteries.
Schroeder found the entire 9-acre property, including the cemetery, was rich with prehistoric potsherds, grinding tools and even bone fragments that most likely came from two small Hohokam villages that had been identified in the area. The two sites were probably connected with a much larger Hohokam site, known as Puebla Vieja, about a mile south of the cemetery.
Schroeder, who died in 2015, also pieced together the more modern history of the cemetery. Using mortuary records, church archives, newspaper obituaries and other records and interviews, he was able to document 177 names of people buried in Sotelo-Heard. More than 100 are children.
Most of those buried in the cemetery are thought to have been Mexican laborers and family members of men and women who worked on what became known as the Bartlett-Heard Ranch. Six Pima men who died building the Central Avenue bridge are also thought to be buried there.
Diaz has a list that was expanded by a city of Phoenix researcher to about 300 names. He said many longtime MexicanAmerican families may not even know they have a loved one buried in SoteloHeard.
For more than 30 years, Diaz, who owns a security-door business, and a handful of activists have tried to organize efforts to restore a measure of dignity to the cemetery on behalf of those loved ones.
It is a struggle that continues, but one they have taken up willingly because the dead cannot speak for themselves.
For them, protecting Sotelo-Heard is not just a matter of respect, but of justice. “These were poor people,” said Frank Barrios, a longtime state water-resources official who has worked with Diaz over the years to defend the cemetery.
“They spent their lives basically building the Phoenix area,” Barrios said. “To ignore them and say they never existed, that’s a sacrilege.”
Diaz said the cemetery is owned by a non-profit affordable-housing company.
“I don’t need a home,” he said. “These people do.”
Diaz wonders aloud whether a cemetery full of Anglos, instead of Mexican laborers, would fall victim to the same kind of neglect.
He thinks he knows the answer. “It’s a matter of principle for me,” Diaz said. “This is sacred ground.”
Franciscio Jantiga. Born 1912. Died Feb. 8, 1913, of whooping cough. Aged 1 year.
Felipe Garcia. Born 1870 or 1871. Died May 28, 1899, from injuries in a fall. Aged 28 years.
Emilio de Leyvas. Born 1849 or 1850. Died June 8, 1905, of dysentery. Aged 55 years.
In all likelihood, the “Sotelo” in SoteloHeard refers to a member of a prominent family from southern Arizona who homesteaded in the area and worked for a notorious land baron who once owned thousands of acres in south Phoenix, including the land on which the cemetery sits. There is one person named Sotelo on Diaz’s list of 300 names, but whether they are related is a question lost to history.
Land baron Michael “Don Miguel” Wormser’s holdings stretched from the Salt River to the South Mountain foothills. According to a number of historical accounts, Wormser, a French immigrant who came to the U.S. with only a few dollars in his pocket, amassed his holdings largely by foreclosing on land that had been homesteaded by Mexican farmers.
Many of those homesteaders arrived when the Salt River Valley was still a part of Mexico. They may not have understood or complied with the conventions of land ownership, such as recording deeds, in the Arizona Territory.
Wormser — who owned the rights to the the San Francisco Canal, which runs to the east and south of the cemetery — convinced Mexican families to homestead in the area. He lent them money to buy seeds or supplies and then held a mortgage on their crops until they repaid him. If they couldn’t pay, he forced them to sign their land over to him.
Jose Villela — a retired archaeologist, longtime educator and activist who has extensively researched the land around the cemetery — said Wormser ensured families wouldn’t be able to pay him by restricting access to water from his canal, which reduced their crop yields.
Wormser died in 1898 and was buried in Arizona’s Pioneer Cemetery. In a bit of historical irony, the executor of his estate convinced Wormser’s heirs to donate land to create Beth Israel Cemetery and reburied his body there. A granite monument marks his grave at the center of Beth Israel. It remains well-maintained.
Rita Mejillas. Born 1900 or 1901. Died Feb. 3, 1902, of scarlet fever. Aged 1 or 2 years.
Isabel Jesus de Leyvas. Born 1886 or 1887. Died Nov. 12, 1914, in childbirth. Aged 27 years.
Guadalupe Madrid. Date of birth unknown. Died Aug. 16, 1915, of hepatitis. Aged 34 years.
The “Heard” in Sotelo-Heard refers to Dwight B. Heard, who bought 7,000 acres from Wormser’s estate and established the Bartlett-Heard Land and Cattle Co. with his father-in-law, Adolphus Bartlett. At its peak, Heard’s ranch stretched east from Seventh Avenue to 48th Street and from the Salt River south to the base of South Mountain.
Heard was descended from a Massachusetts merchant family and came West for his health in 1895. He built a real estate and financial empire that made him one of the most powerful — and influential — men in Arizona. He counted Theodore Roosevelt among his friends and once hosted the former president in his home.
Heard was instrumental in getting Roosevelt Dam built to provide water to the Valley of the Sun. He bought the Arizona Republican newspaper and used its influence to advocate for progressive causes and vault himself into politics. He lost the 1924 race for governor by just 801 votes.
Heard and his wife, Maie, traveled the world collecting primitive art and founded the internationally acclaimed museum on Central Avenue that bears their name.
In contrast to Wormser, Heard was a much more benevolent overlord. He was the driving force behind building the Central Avenue bridge over the Salt River. It was then the only way to cross when water was running, which was most of the time.
He established a school and a community center for the people who worked on his ranch, and his wife would regularly drive wagonloads of books across the river to help educate them.
Heard’s ranch produced everything from citrus and pecans to alfalfa and ostriches, but its focus was cattle, and Heard’s stock was prized by ranchers across the state.
Some of those who worked for Heard were vaqueros, Mexican cowboys whose skills were legendary and carried on a 400-year tradition of horsemanship brought to the New World by the Spanish.
Author, historian and horsemanship expert Lee Anderson said vaqueros were highly sought on American ranches in the Southwest and were often used for the most difficult and dangerous jobs because their roping and riding skills were far superior to those of Anglo cowboys.
Even so, they were still considered second-class citizens and were lumped in with other laborers and farmhands.
“There was a lot of prejudice at that time.” Anderson said. “There was a lot of unpleasant history.”
He added: “If there was an accident with a horse or cattle, they (vaqueros) were often buried with very little documentation.”
Maggie Marage. Born 1912. Died July 7, 1915, of measles. Aged 3 years.
Juan Coronado. Born 1880 or 1881. Died Dec. 17, 1916, of tuberculosis. Aged 35 years.
Biatris Martinez. Born Aug. 15, 1913. Died Nov. 18, 1916, of typhoid fever. Aged 3 years.
Heard sold off portions of his ranch to subdivide, and in 1918, a parcel that included the cemetery was sold to a minister named Isaac Forney, who was also a grocer and a land speculator.
Forney never developed the property and held it until his death in 1955. After his wife’s death in 1958, the ownership became tangled. It was listed tax-exempt when Phoenix annexed the land around it from Maricopa County in 1960, indicating that a cemetery was present.
Records show Forney’s heirs over the years denied there was a cemetery on the property, but Villela said a family member told him in the 1980s that she thought the cemetery had been donated to a Latino group.
If there was such a gift, it was never recorded with the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, and no official record of the transaction appears to exist.
As of 1988, the property no longer had its tax exemption. Researchers say it was either because of a bureaucratic mistake or because someone changed it to hide that there was a cemetery on the property and more easily sell it.
No taxes were paid, and a lien was placed on the property. In 1993, a couple from California paid the back taxes and obtained a “judicial foreclosure order,” making the property theirs. They did not know their land purchase included a cemetery until they were told by an archaeologist who was surveying the property in 1995.
Jesus Micarry. Born 1833. Died March 30, 1913, of organic heart disease. Aged 80 years.
Brigida Ysla de Miranda. Born 1871 or 1872. Died Oct. 11, 1902, of typhoid fever. Aged 30 years.
Yrinco Rosales. Born 1863. Died March 8, 1923, of nephritis. Aged 60 years.
Sotelo-Heard is now owned by a nonprofit company called Trellis, which builds affordable housing in Phoenix.
Trellis President Patricia Garcia Duarte said the company has owned the land longer than her tenure at Trellis, which dates back 12 years, and the cemetery has been a concern since day one.
The cemetery is part of a larger parcel the company owns, and initial plans called for the cemetery to be walled or fenced off when the rest of the land was developed with town homes, but that project is on hold indefinitely.
When the Great Recession hit, money dried up and the non-profit shifted its focus from building affordable housing to helping people stay in their homes, she said.
Still, she said, Trellis has taken steps to keep the cemetery from becoming even more ragged. It worked to get it listed on the Phoenix Historic Property Register, which occurred about a dozen years ago. That action limits what can be done with the property and ensures nothing can be built on top of it.
She said the company has also paid landscapers to periodically — and respectfully —weed the lot and clean up trash.
She said she has a great deal of respect for the people who lie beneath the property her company owns.
“I come from a farm worker family,” she said. “We haven’t had the money to do the right thing, but I hope we will.”
Villela leads an organization called Primeras Familias Campesinas, or First Farm Families, which celebrates Phoenix’s early Mexican agricultural heritage.
“My dad’s dad came up from Sonora. My grandmother used to say, ‘I came here before there was a border,’ ” Villela said.
He served as a board member at Trellis for nearly a decade and doesn’t believe the non-profit is truly doing all it can.
“They have the resources,” he said. “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t still be in business.”
Barrios has dedicated his life to public service. A longtime state official, he has worked to ensure that generations after him will have the water they need to prosper. But he also feels an obligation to those who came before him.
As a member of the Pioneer Cemeteries Association, he has worked for decades to revitalize Arizona’s historic cemeteries, particularly the Pioneer and Military Memorial Park at 15th Avenue and Jefferson Street, the burial place for some of Phoenix’s most historic names: “Lord” Darrell Duppa, who is credited with giving Phoenix its name; Jacob Waltz, of Lost Dutchman Mine fame; Apache fighter King Woolsey; and Charles Poston, Arizona’s first territorial delegate to Congress.
Barrios is the author of the Images of America book “Mexicans in Phoenix” and said those buried in Sotelo-Heard deserve recognition, just like the prominent families featured in his book do.
Barrios has no children. He hopes protection for Sotelo-Heard will be part of his legacy.
In the 1990s, as a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, he worked to get the California landowners to turn the cemetery over to the organization to protect it.
The deal fell through when the couple sold the land to Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix, which later rebranded as Trellis.
Barrios has worked with an architect to design a wrought iron fence around Sotelo-Heard. The design is simple and elegant. It wouldn’t begin to restore the cemetery, but it would at least protect it.
Marion Rubio. Born March 1914. Died, Aug. 26, 1914, of malnutrition. Aged 5 months.
John Salazar. Born 1845 or 1846. Died Feb. 25, 1913, of bronchitis. Aged 67 years.
Josefina Pogue. Born 1886 or 1887. Died April 13, 1919, of suicide.
It would be easy to look at the reverence Diaz, Villela and Barrios share for Sotelo-Heard through the lens of Mexican attitudes toward death, as seen in cultural events such as Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. But that would be overly simplistic.
Princeton University sociology professor Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, who studied in Mexico City and has a background in cultural arts and anthropology, said while all cultures revere their dead in their own ways, Mexican traditions reflect a complex and multilayered view of death. It is a view shaped by a unique history and a blend of cultures.
The ancient Aztecs glorified death and used it as a means to control vulnerable populations and build a great empire. Similarly, the Spanish were able to control indigenous people and build an empire in the New World partly through Christianity, with its emphasis on the death of Jesus. And that led to a view of death as inevitable and necessary for the transition into eternity.
“Death was a part and parcel of your own life,” Fernandez-Kelly said. “It would be almost unnatural if you didn’t constantly think about your own death.”
That long history of suffering under the dominion of empire also builds an affinity with marginalized people, Fernandez-Kelly said, noting that the people buried in Sotelo-Heard “are the stigmatized, the forgotten, neglected and impoverished.”
And that gives special meaning to those fighting for it.
“The forgotten cemetery represents what they and their ancestors endured,” she said. “People draw from culture what they need in order to have their voices heard.”