On March 2 - 4, 1990, Otilia Urrea de Figueroa, who grew up in Álamos and wrote about her childhood in the booklet “My Youth in Álamos, la Ciudad de los Portales,” made a return to the city of her birth.

She spent the night at the Casa de los Tesoros Hotel, a 200-year-old converted convent which at one time was owned by her uncle Joaquín. By a happy coincidence, Room #10 was given to her.

“Incredible!,” she exclaimed. “This is the room where I attended the first grade in public school before tio Joaquín bought it. My teacher was Concepción Bojorquez, and that was 87 years ago. Now I don’t remember what I did three days ago!”

Standing at the Plaza de Armas, Sra. Urrea talked about the city of her youth.

“The Almada family name has always been associated with Álamos, being one of the old families that originated here. My great grandmother was Rafaela Almada, married to Dr. Don Perrón, a French citizen. I refer to this in my little book (‘My Youth in Álamos’). In my time the Almada business office was here (north of city hall), and it also served as a meeting place for the Almada gentlemen.”

Sra. Urrea was sad to see one house mistakenly identified as the boyhood home of the doctor and operatic tenor, Alfonso Ortiz Tirado. “He was a doctor like his father, and a distant relative on the Salido side. The Ortiz Tirado home was the one next to our hotel, a home now is in very sad disrepair. This house was also owned by my maternal grandmother.”

Sra. Urrea told about the visit to Álamos in 1909 by Don Francisco Madero on a political tour.

“Mexico had a democratic form of government” she said, “but Don Porfirio Díaz for 30 consecutive years had become Mexico’s dictator. Mexico was ready to revolt. Don Francisco was denied the use of any public place where he could speak. Don Adrian Marcor housed the leader, and my father, Don Miguel Urrea, offered his home for the reception the following evening. At that age I was a very enthusiastic and vocal “Madernista,” and I declared that had I a chance to meet Don Francisco I would tell him how I admired him and his patriotic ideals. Somebody told him on the evening of his arrival of my childish fervor, and I well imagine that as a relief of the seriousness of the occasion one of the group insisted that I should be brought and deliver my speech. I did, and naturally I had an upstanding ovation.

“The next day at the reception Don Francisco asked me to play the piano, and while I played he stood by me. After that it must have been difficult to live with me.”

Álamos lost its charm and tranquility during the time of the revolution. From 1912 to 1918 Sra. Otilia Urrea de Figueroa lived in Los Angeles, and upon her return the fortunes of her family had changed dramatically. But during her youth, she remembered when the young ladies living along Obregón Street gathered at a house on the corner of Obregón and Victoria and had a social time. In the mornings the rooms of the houses were open, and pianos were heard through the two blocks where the pianists lived. Girls were always given piano lessons, and several were accomplished pianists. Sra. Urrea recalled that one of the best musicians on her street had studied at the Conservatory of Music in Mexico City.

On March 3 Sra. Urrea visited what had been her childhood home. It was then owned by the Baron, and it is now Hotel Colonial owned by Janet Anderson.

“It is strange—it looks so different,” Sra. Urrea said when entering the house. “It has the same back yard, but it is so barren and dry. Here was a persimmon tree; father had grown it from seed, and it was the first persimmon Álamos had ever had. An avocado tree was here, a zapote there, and we had orange and lime trees as well as mother’s roses. In the back we had two date palm trees. One bore fruit and the dates sun ripened. When they fell on the ground, we eagerly picked them up and enjoyed them very much.

“Our house had become too small for our large family. When I went to Oakland I remember seeing the new doors in the back portal and the bricks in the rear of the back yard for the construction of a planned enlargement, but the revolution changed father’s plans.

“The furniture in my room had been made especially for me when I came from school. An armoire, a washstand with a large marble top, a pretty dressing table, a small desk, and also a small rocking chair. The armoire was in the corner where I’m standing now, and I used to hang my nightgown and robe behind it. I had a red glass oil lamp on my desk—it was very pretty.”

When asked about the young ladies being serenaded, Sra. Urrea said that in Álamos the young ladies never acknowledged the music. “In Álamos we were very mindful of manners. When the serenaders were there, we never made a move. In Mexico City, when I was there, my nephew and niece serenaded me with a music ensamble. They were waiting for me to turn on the light, because in Mexico City you turn on the light to show that you are listening, that you are accepting. Finally my nephew and niece said ‘Well, we’re wasting our time,’ and climbed the walls. I saw the shadows, which frightened me! “They knocked on my door and said ‘Are you listening? ‘Are you listening?’

“In Álamos each girl had a music piece that she selected as her favorite. For instance, mine was a waltz called ‘Adriana.’ When I was serenaded, the music started with that waltz. My sisters had their own favorites, and that was the only way we knew who was being serenaded.”

Sra. Urrea noted that in Mexico City the families asked the gentlemen and musicians into the house when they sang mañanitas and offered them champagne, but that was not the custom in Álamos. Sonora was provincial, and the Mexicans from the capital “looked down” on all the provincial people—which Sr. Urrea believed might have been from the influence of Maximilian and Carlotta.

While in the Baron’s house, Sra. Urrea told about large photographs of her grandparents in heavy gold gilt frames which hung from her parents’ bedroom walls; pictures of her parents, in frames just as large, hung in her sister’s bedroom. The pictures came down in 1906, and Sra. Urrea said that people posed with such sour, sad faces in those days, that she felt her relatives were criticizing her when she looked at the pictures.

The floor in the Baron’s house was the same floor her father had designed for them. The house had two sets of cane parlor furniture, consoles with mirrors, tables with marble tops, beautiful glass vases, and cuspidors made of China. There was also a piano that eight girls were playing constantly. “It wasn’t a concert piano that we had, not a baby, but in-between—a three-fourths. We abused that poor Beckstein.”

Sra. Urrea remembered that on her father’s desk there was a “press” in the corner, and he would make documents with that press. During the revolution he built a false ceiling in his closet where he kept his valuables. Since Madero’s revolution had failed, her father became disillusioned and refused to become involved in politics. The revolutionaries believed that anyone not “for them” was “against them,” so both parties demanded money. When the Villistas came, money was demanded of her father and the other gentlemen of wealth to maintain their troops. Sra. Urrea remembers when a soldier came to the house asking for $2,000, then another time for $5,000. “I kept for years a torn $20,000 check which probably father had torn and had to write again,” she said.

In Álamos on the 16th of September, it was the custom to put cachembas, coal lamps with wicks, spaced a foot apart on the roofs of buildings. Sra. Urrea remembered how beautiful it had been in the days before the revolution, but the revolution changed many of the customs of Álamos.

Sra. Urrea remembered that many times before breakfast she walked with her father to La Colorado—a good walk as she remembered. While her father talked with the manager of the distillery, she picked and ate the fruit that was in season: oranges, mangos, guayabas, and plums. On Saturdays, if the family was going to their cabin in La Sierra on a Sunday, she often came with her father to La Colorado to select a favorite mule for the trip. The mule was taken back to their home so they could have an early start in the morning.

La Colorado

On the March, 1990, trip to Álamos, Sra. Urrea made a visit to the site of her father’s distillery, La Colorado. The property was bought by the Haywoods from Connecticut in 1954, and they had to get the official deed through the Mexican Consular Office in New York. The official who processed the paperwork was Roberto Urrea, the son of Sra. Urrea’s uncle Joaquín. He was, in fact, registering the sale of his ancestral home! He felt it to be a strange coincidence that he was the one certifying the sale.

The Haywood’s daughter, Judith Jacoby, opened the house to Sra. Urrea during her visit. Sra. Urrea remembered how there was always a nice breeze on the property, and she marveled at how the grounds were beautifully kept. “Here at La Colorado, nature boasted like a peacock with its spread tail with its best weather, vibrant colors, the bluest sky and hills, and the tranquility of order.” Sra. Urrea told Judy about the orange trees that had been on one side of the front of the house, how her father had grafted a few trees from navel oranges. A worker, Octaviano, came to visit her father in Álamos in 1926, and he told them he had helped grow the orange trees. Octaviano was a priest of the local Mayo tribe, and a very good looking man.

“Father went to Tequila, down south in Jalisco, to study how a distillery worked. He and mother were just married. They had gone to San Francisco on their honeymoon, and Mother, who loved to do needlework, got many ideas in San Francisco. When she was having her first child, she embroidered satin shoes in all colors for the baby, and my father put soles on them while he was waiting for the distillery to be completed. That’s how they passed the time, and I think it’s a pretty picture!”

Sra. Urrea noted that most of the tequila pits had been filled in, but one was preserved by the Haywoods.

Grandmother Urrea

“On my mother’s side they were very liberal about religion. They didn’t go to church regularly. They were not strict Catholics. Something happened in my family; I tried to find out when and where the break occurred, but no one knows. I guess they were ashamed to say that something happened between one member of the Salido family and the clergy.

“They were very nice people, though, without being religious. When my mother married my father, she had been like a little dove. She must have been intimidated by her mother-in-law! When her first child was born, she said, ‘My children will receive their first communion when they know what they are doing.’ It was against her mother-in-law’s view, but there was still harmony between them. Mother and my father’s mother were very friendly, and they respected each other.

“Mother was very strong. We didn’t go to confession, and I had my first communion in Oakland, CA. I admire my father for standing by her. His wife was “first” and his mother was “second,” in spite of the fact that he was a very devoted son.

“Another thing I admire about the Urrea family is that they never asked me, ‘Don’t you want to go to confession? Don’t you want to be instructed?’ They respected each others’ wishes, and I think it was so wonderful and very civilized. That’s what I liked about the culture in Álamos. There was so much good breeding, tolerance, and respect for others.

“There was one thing my grandmother would say to me: Ay mamacita, que borrachita vengo, como que me voy, como que me vengo—y no me detengo. Translated, it means ‘I’m so drunk I can’t hold myself up, and I have to lean on someone.’ I remember her saying, ‘You are testaruda,’ (a bump on the head) and I couldn’t get it. I must have been so small. I remember she called me ‘testaruda.’

“I heard grandmother intercepted the love letters to her son, Joaquín, when he came back from Santa Clara. They were corresponding and maybe grandmother thought it was serious or something. My mother thought that was awful—it was not right! In spite of that, my grandmother was a very lovely person: very intelligent, and very generous.

“We were supposed to be baptized at the altar she donated, and we all were baptized there. It was the times, you know; I blame an awfully lot to the times, but now we have another point of view. My grandmother was a very respected woman: a good Catholic, but not fanatical. One time a priest was not quite doing what he should have been doing, and they were going to ask the bishop to have him removed from Álamos. They were asking for signatures, but she wouldn’t sign. She wouldn’t sign one way or the other. My mother admired that in her. My mother used to say that none of her daughters were as smart as their grandmother!”