Presentation by Pam Price

March 2, 2017

    Here in Los Portales we are in part

of the large building on the Plaza

built by José María Almada (1791-

1866).  We are in approximately

one-third of a structure that stretches

south to the arch at the end and

includes the Terracotta Restaurant

and the former home of Bill Alcorn,

who passed away recently.

Today I will talk mainly about

Antonio Almada and his son, José

María Almada. My information about

the Almadas comes from a book by an

Almada descendent, Albert Stagg,

“The Almadas and Álamos, 1783-

1867,” published by the University

of Arizona Press in 1978.  Stagg’s

mother was an Almada and he carried

out wide-ranging research in writing

this book, including talking with Levant

Alcorn, whose widow is the

present owner.

      _______________________

       In 1783 newly appointed

Bishop Antonio de los Reyes arrived

in Alamos with two nephews,

Antonio Almada and his brother

Fr. José Almada.  The Bishop had previously been a Franciscan missionary in Sonora.

       The name Almada comes from a Portuguese town across the Tagus River from Lisbon.  “Almadén” means mine in Arabic.  The earliest known Almada ancestor was a feudal lord, Saher, from Lincolnshire, one of four English commanders of an Anglo-Norman contingent with the Second Crusade in 1147.  The lord was awarded land by the king of Portugal for his assistance in conquering Lisbon from the Moors.  Saher donated his holdings in England to the Church and settled in Portugal, taking the name of Almada.

       In the 15th century an Almada predecessor, Alvaro, was active politically in both England and France and was close to the ruling family of Portugal.  Choosing the losing side in a battle, Alvaro lost his head and the king confiscated his lands and possessions.

       In the 17th century Almadas had recovered sufficiently to be active in Portuguese affairs.  At the end of the century an Almada son decided to seek his fortune in Spain, where his family had aristocratic connections.  Taking the Spanish name Antonio, he married and started the line of Spanish Almadas.

       Antonio’s grandson, Josef, married a Reyes woman whose brother became the Bishop de los Reyes, he who brought his sister’s two oldest sons to Alamos.

       Shortly after his arrival Antonio Almada met Luz de Alvorado, an orphan and a great heiress.  She was the niece of one of the most prominent men in Álamos, Bartolomé Salido.  Bartolomé was the royal treasurer in Alamos.  Luz owned a vast hacienda, Tapizuelas, and two rich silver mines.  Her father had been the royal treasurer before he died and her mother came from a prominent family in Sonora, so marriage to Luz gave Antonio entrée into the closed circle of Álamos society.  Luz and Antonio married in 1784 and Luz gave birth to four boys between 1785 and 1791.

       Antonio had been educated as a miner at a mining school in Spain.  The idea for this education originated from his uncle, who had decided that there was great mineral wealth in Sonora when he served there as a missionary.  Antonio was trained in a technique called amalgamation which was not well-known in Sonora and which rendered mines more productive in silver ore.

       Shortly after the birth of his fourth son, Antonio bought his brother-in-law’s interests in the silver mines and the great hacienda, Tapizuelas.  Then he bought the rich Balbanera mine in La Aduana, and then mines in Yécora.  He had become the largest mine owner in Sonora.

       When Antonio Almada died in 1810, his four sons inherited his mines, the richest in Sonora.  Bartolomé Salido, their great-uncle and executor of Antonio’s estate, advised the brothers to pool their resources and continue operating the mines under joint partnership.  Silver mining was a constant gamble, since loads were unpredictable – a vein of high grade ore might suddenly thin down to quartz or pinch out at a fault.  Salido quoted a Spanish saying, “To work a mine requires a mine”.

       The brothers accepted his advice and he managed their mines during his lifetime.  Bartolomé was widely recognized as the leader of the community in Álamos.  Among other projects he secured completion of much of the church begun by Bishop de los Reyes.  After his death the Almada brothers formed a partnership named La Union and each contributed half a million (Mexican?) dollars in working capital.  The youngest brother, José María, was appointed manager.  Three of the four brothers had learned practical mining and the essentials of mining operations after secondary school, but the one with the most inquisitive mind, always wanting to know about costs and profit margins, was José María.

       After Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, silver mining went into a slump.  The price of mercury rose from 90 dollars to 260 dollars the quintal and credit facilities were withdrawn.  However, thanks to their partnership and José María’s managerial skills, the Almada mines continued to prosper.  A British naval officer wrote in 1826 about his visit to Alamos:

The mine of the four Almadas [La Balbanera] is, next to that of Cosalá, the richest in Mexico.  The vein is at least thirty yards wide, one half of which is worked, and sixty thousand dollars are said to be taken from it monthly!  Other mines in La Aduana and its vicinity produce about twenty thousand dollars more, which makes the total amount of metal extracted monthly to eighty thousand dollars.  Were the Almadas to employ more miners in Promontorios, it is thought that double or treble the present amount might be obtained….

       José María was twenty-five years when he took charge of the mines.  He had been  married for three years to his cousin Isabel Quirós y Compoy.  The Quirós family motto was “Despues de Dios, Quirós” (After God comes Quirós).  Isabel and the wife of the third Almada brother, Nacho, vied for the top rung in the Álamos social ladder.

       Nacho was the most civic minded of the four brothers and devoted much of his time to municipal affairs.  After independence Álamos was the first town in Sonora to have a municipal council and Nacho was the first president.  He served on the council many times and was twice district prefect.  The other two brothers, besides José María, were also elected president of the municipal council.

       José María built a large mansion on the west side of the Plaza.  It was separated from his brother Nacho’s house by the Palomares house and Calle Madero (once called Calle Aurora).

       José María was always seeking good investments.  He owned enormous cattle herds and much of the choicest property in Álamos.  He bought and sold merchandise and speculated in produce.

       As early as 1830 extraction began to fall in silver mining in the Álamos area. With lower grade ores profits were eroding.  No new ore bodies had been found in Promontorios or La Aduana. José María was averse to prospecting in Chihuahua, for he insisted on personally supervising whatever he owned.  His proverb was, “Shopkeeper attend to your store or sell it”.  He was fascinated by La Quintera, once the richest mine in Sonora.  It had been inoperative since 1806 due to flooding.  The owner of La Quintera was the diocese of Durango.  José María ordered the secret exploration of the mine by his mining experts and engineers.  He studied their reports and worked out the costs of bringing it into operation.  He decided that such an effort would be an expensive gamble, but decided to go ahead if he could acquire the mine cheaply.  Using an agent who kept his identity concealed, José María made a low bid.  After drawn-out negotiations, he got ownership of the mine.  Two of his brothers were willing to go in with him on a fifty-fifty basis.

       It took two years to bring La Quintera back into production, but from 1835 to 1842, the returns were great.  Some years José María’s share along netted him over a million dollars.  In 1842 La Quintera ceased to be productive, but the old Almada mine, La Balbanera, was proving well through the discovery of black ores at a depth of 600 feet.

       There had been a rebellion of Yaquis and Mayos in 1740, but since then these groups had been cultivating their fields more or less peacefully and some had served as auxiliaries to face fighting forces from northern Sonora.  In 1825, however, there was a Yaqui uprising.  This was a revolt against payment of taxes.  The post-colonial constitution of 1824 had changed the status of native Americans from wards of the Spanish crown to citizens of the Federal Mexican Republic.  Surveying parties arrived to measure and assess tribal lands and town in order to establish valuation for rural and municipal taxes.  One of the Yaqui caciques, leaders, led a revolt against payment, saying that under these circumstances the Yaquis should disassociate themselves from the republic.  They were not Mexican, but Yaqui.

       The uprising started in the fall of 1825.  Early in 1826 José María’s ranches near Navojoa were raided, with houses burned and livestock stolen.  After a raid on the hacienda Tapizuelas, Nacho Almada, the prefect of the district, called up the militia commanded by José María.  It was a force of 400 men.  All four Almada brothers served as officers.

       In mid-April word came that a large party of Indians was moving toward the Álamos area and José María and his troops were asked to come to the mining camp Promontorios.  Indian lookouts warned the Yaquis at the camp of the approach and they withdrew.  Though, a score of houses and stores were burned down and plundered.  José María was glad to find that the employees of the mine and the Indian workers in the mine were unharmed for the most part.  He and two captains from the militia were invited to dine with one family and spend the night. One of the daughters in the family, a lively twelve-year-old names Mercedes, made an impression on José María.

       The next morning a cavalry column from El Fuerte arrived and after a stop at Promontorios, moved on to Navojoa.  The rebellion lasted until the spring of 1827.  The Almadas decided from the beginning of the rebellion that in the future they would store the bulk of their silver in their houses in Alamos where it would be safer than at the mines.  It is worth noting that the Yaquis who worked in the mines did not choose to side with the rebels.  The Almada brothers did not ask them to take arms, only to remain calm and keep working.

       An outcome of the raid on Promontorios was that José María made increasingly frequent visits to the family of Mercedes where he witnessed her development into a lovely 16-year-old.  He brought lavish presents for Mercedes, her sisters, and mother.  When the girl was about 17, he installed her in one of his haciendas, which he named Las Mercedes.She quickly started producing children, five in number before José María’s wife died in 1840.  José María married Mercedes with what some thought was unseemly haste after the death of Isabel and he proceeded to have their five children made legitimate.  Nine more children were born to the couple.  Nineteen of Isabel’s twenty-one children survived her.  When each came of age José María gave him or her $50,000 in cash and a well -stocked ranch.

       From 1824-1831 Sinaloa and Sonora were joined in the state of Occidente.  From 1828 to 1831 Alamos was the capital of the state.  The city had a population of 7,000 at that time.  José María became Governor.  During his tenure he pushed through the state Congress a bill which became known as the Almada Law.  Its official designation was “Law for the Distribution of Land to the Indian Villages and Converting it to Private Property”.  Indigeous people were to receive title to their land and restitution of what they had lost by force or fraud.  In twenty-two articles of law, the state government was standing forth as the protector of Indian communities and promising to restore to Indians land which had been taken from them illegitimately.  It was a complicated piece of legislation which involved protecting community lands.  The law was to come into effect one year after publication in the state capital.  The Almada Law did not accomplish all that José María intended.  The protection promised did not come into effect.  The reason why I mention it here is to try to come some way in clearing up what seems to be some misunderstandings about Alamos in state politics.

       For one thing, they did not all share the same political and social convictions .  Bishop de los Reyes had adopted sympathetic attitudes toward native Americans during his years as a Franciscan missionary.  His nephews Antonio and Father José both shared broader views compared to other peninsular-born Spaniards.  Father José preached continuously in his sermons in Álamos that the rich had an obligation to aid the poor and he ended up devoting himself to running the church school in the town.  He insisted that the majority of the students in the school come from poor families.  Antonio, from the beginning of his arrival in Mexico, noticed that peninsular-born Spaniards were arrogant toward the creoles, Spanish descent people born in Mexico.  He chose to identify himself with creoles rather than his own country-men.  This attitude made him enemies of peninsular-born Spaniards who were jealous of Antonio as he acquired great wealth.  Antonio, according to Albert Stagg, also acquired from his Franciscan uncle sympathy for native Americans.  His son José María may have been at least partly affected by these influences in the legislation he sponsored to protect Indian communities and Indian rights to land.

       Another point to clear up in trying to make some sense of Álamos elites in Sonoran politics in the 19th century is the difference between the two ideological blocks in Mexican politics at this time.  There is a limit as to how much Sonoran politics was influenced by this ideological divide, but some influence seems to have been there.  One block was known as the Conservatives.  The clergy and the army favored that party, which was also composed of landed and professional classes.  The Conservatives advocated a strong central government and maintenance of the status quo.  That meant that fueros, privileges, which had their roots in the colonial period would still support the power and status of the clergy, the military, and professional and corporate bodies.  The Liberals (also called Federalists) constituted the other position in Mexican politics.  They sought the lessening of the power of the Catholic church, reduction of its enormous land holdings, and elimination of the privileges, fueros.  They also sought social reforms for the betterment of the underprivileged.  The Almadas were Liberals.

       The history of Sonora from the late 1820’s to the 1860’s (the closing point of our discussion) shows that ideological positions could play a role in deciding which side a member of the elite chose in a conflict.  However, powerful elite figures could be dangerous rivals for status and influence, such that choosing sides could have more to do with personalities and political equations than political principle.  Unfortunately for the Almadas, being Liberals did not protect them from the successful attempts of another Liberal to extract their wealth and diminish their power.  I refer here to General Ignacio Pesqueira, (1820-1886), Governor of Sonora on four occasions between 1856 and 1875.

       I get the sense, on reading about 19th century Sonoran politics, that the collapse of colonial rule in this frontier region left not a power vacuum, but an authority vacuum.  Powerful men struggled to create their own regimes of rule in Sonora.

       First we need to backtrack a bit.

       By the 1830s the balance of power in Sonora had shifted to the northern part of the state.  The Almadas, however, still played important roles in the south.  The governor appointed one of the four brothers political prefect of the Álamos district and José María was prefect of Salvación district.  José María was also colonel of the local militia and had the task of maintaining peace in the Mayo and Yaqui regions.  The Almadas sided with the Liberals in the conflict between two powerful rivals in Sonora, José Urrea and Manuel María Gándara and suffered having a number of their ranch houses burned down, crops destroyed, and cattle stolen.

       Brother Nacho died in February, 1851, and in the 1850s José María was the only survivor of the founding Almada’s four sons.  He divided his time between his big house on the Plaza and Las Mercedes, where his wife continued to reside.  When Mercedes came into Álamos to shop, she would stay at the Bishop’s Palace.  The younger generation of Almadas and their close kinsmen were prominent and powerful citizens of Alamos.  One of Nacho’s seventeen children, Bartolo, served as mayor of Alamos and district prefect.  He also served in the national Congress three times.  Chuy Almada, another son of Antonio, had had ten children by two marriages.  One of his daughters was married to a Urrea kinsman, Miguel.  Miguel was, next to José María, the largest landowner in Sonora.  His mines in Chihuahua were among the richest in that state.  Antuco Almada had had fourteen legitimate children – and many others besides.  One of his sons, Gregorio, served a term in the state legislature, but was most appreciated in Alamos for establishing a boys’ high school for both boarders and day pupils.  José María had thirty-three children, the most outstanding of which was a son known as Chato, born in 1822.

       Chato is known for his military exploits and fierce opposition to the Liberal, General Pesqueira.  Pesqueira attempted to extort money from the Alamos elite, after large sums had already been granted to him.  He dismissed Chato from his command of a force and ordered the execution of an Almada youth who had turned against him and fought for an opposing party.  Pesqueira went so far as to order in 1861 the arrest and imprisonment of José María, on what appear to have been trumped up charges on involvement in a revolt against the Liberal government in Sonora.  José María was in his seventies and his health took a turn for the worse while he was lodged in cavalry barracks.  He was released with the payment of $10,000, after five months imprisonment.

       Chato’s hatred of Pesqueira was so intense that he sided with the party supporting French forces and Maximilian during the attempt to establish the second Mexican Empire, the Imperium.  In 1866 Chato was shot and killed while trying to escape Republican forces, while crossing the Sea of Cortés.  His sixteen-year-old son and a nephew were executed five days later.  José María died shortly thereafter.

       Many Almadas and their kinsmen left Álamos during the Imperium and few returned.  In 1866 republican forces attacking Chato’s forces had sacked the town, showing particular animus toward the homes of sympathizers with the French cause, including the Almadas.  The church on the Plaza was stripped bare and left a shell after a huge bonfire was made out of whatever was not carried off.  It would seem that those who left Álamos could not bear the thought of trying to reconstruct their former way of life after such losses.