Joanne Marie Ocaña, 1965–2009
NM State Road 554
The white metal square at the center of the descanso is decorated with tinsel for Christmas and holds a photograph of the remembered mother of two children. Photographs are rarely incorporated into descansos. This one, however, was taken from the cover of Joanne Marie Ocaña‘s funeral program.
oday roadside memorials are scattered across America, but only in the rural state of New Mexico are they present in such large numbers and tied to the long Hispanic custom of erecting a cross to mark a death on the road. In an age when the larger Christian culture tends to minimize death rituals, descansos, Spanish for “resting places,” are part of an enduring tradition of communal grief marked in a most public place. While the original memorials were made of simple wooden crosses, for the last forty years a profound change in the design and appearance of descansos has taken place with the availability of new commercial construction materials and store-bought objects and decorations. The sites of remembrance have become singular creations in design, materials, and objects, with the result that no two are alike.
José E. Valdez, dates unknown
NM State Road 554
The descanso sits on a slope surrounded by hills and mesas—landscape typical of Northern New Mexico. It is decorated with bright orange and pink fabric flowers, common colors for the descansos, making it easy to see from the road below.
Finalino Romero, 1950–1968
NM State Road 96
The young man is remembered with two metal crosses that stand adjacent to ranchland where cows graze. The front cross, with its large, colorful metallic wreath, obscures the taller one in the rear.
Benito Ortega, 1966–2002
NM State Road 68
This simple white, welded metal cross with flowers of vivid red and pink marks the spot where the car went off the cliff. The location is also one of the dramatic vistas on the road from Embudo to Taos.
Bonnie, d. 2001
Dirt road off NM State Road 554
Bonnie’s first name and death date—large capital letters chiseled on the rough-hewn horizontal wood bar—create a feeling of power and simplicity around this descanso. A black metal hinge holding fabric flowers becomes a piece of the decoration
Gonzales Lucero, dates unknown
US 285
The descanso is one of the beautiful older crosses with remains of white paint bleached by the sun, standing against a hillside of cactus. It has hand-carved patterns on the edges and a typical Northern New Mexico center design motif. Someone climbed the steep hill to place white and pink roses at the base.
Carlos Iban Molina, 1985–2009, Donovan Molina, 1990–2009
NM County Road 155
Carlos and Donovan Molina were cousins driving together on a narrow road, most likely at high speed. Their families erected identical crosses in their memory of them with an inscription in Spanish, Descansa en Paz, or “rest in peace.” On Carlos’s they also inscribed the Spanish words Nació and Falleció, or “born and died.” The crosses frame a large statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Angelo Lopez, 1974–2006
US 84
She, a woman of 90 years, remembers the flowers at the descanso were crepe paper,but she always put silk flowers on her sister’s grave.
