Rural Church Harbors a Passion for Las Posadas

“OK, the leftover green enchiladas go to my house,” announced Mellie Gonzales, who specializes in red enchiladas. “I can’t make green enchiladas to save my life.”

Sharing the food and song this evening were Gonzales’ parents, José and Elsie Sena, together with some of their 14 children, 40 grandchildren and 40-plus great-grandchildren.

José Sena, 88, still farms corn, hay and chile in fields that line the narrow flood plain of the Upper Pecos.

Marina Salazar bundles up her 6-year-old daughter, Marisol Salazar, in preparation for her role as Mary in Las Posadas as 10-year-old Joshua Gonzales, right, who will play Joseph, waits outside Nuestro Señor de Esquipula Church in Sena. (adolphe pierre-louis/journal)

“We’re all the Senas of Sena,” Gonzales said of the three dozen people huddled in the vintage 1908 church.

The Senas have gathered here for generations to celebrate Mass, weddings, funerals, and Las Posadas, the ritual re-enactment of Mary and Joseph searching for an inn in Bethlehem.

But the gatherings aren’t as large or as frequent as in years past.

Over the decades, many residents of Sena and other villages in the valley have drifted away in search of jobs and urban life.

“You can’t really make a living here,” said Gonzales, 63. “The ones who live here have to commute someplace.”

A retired state employee, Gonzales, 63, used to make a daily commute to Santa Fe.

“It’s really tough,” she said. “The people who stay in these communities are really rooted here.”

Gonzales has six brothers and sisters who have chosen to remain in Sena, including her youngest brother, Peter Sena, who played guitar during the carolling.

“It’s home, and it’s the traditional values,” said Sena, a mayordomo, or caretaker, of Sena’s mission church. “You can’t replace it anywhere else.”

Sena, 46, lived in Las Vegas, N.M., for a few years after he graduated from New Mexico State University, but the lure of home drew him back. “There’s no other place I’d rather be, basically.”

Like everyone here, Sena is accustomed to driving long distances to reach jobs, schools and stores. An electrical contractor, he finds most of his work in and around Las Vegas, which is 70 miles round trip from Sena, much of it on twisting, two-lane N.M. 3.

Children here attend schools in the West Las Vegas School District. The long bus rides can be hard on kids.

“They leave in the dark, and they get home in the dark,” Gonzales said. “That’s the price we have to pay because we want to live here.”

The Sena church is one of five mission churches of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe Parish in Villanueva, another Upper Pecos community about three miles downstream from Sena.

The mission churches once all held Posadas, but tiny communities such as El Cerrito and Leyba have abandoned the tradition because of their dwindling populations, said Marina Salazar, a mayordomo at the parish church in Villanueva.

Christmas is a time that reminds everyone why they choose to live in this rural valley, said Marina Salazar, one of the 40 grandchildren of José and Elsie Sena.

She and her husband, Tommy Salazar, were married here at Nuestro Señor de Esquipula Church eight years ago. In today’s Posada, the couple’s daughter, Marisol, 6, played the role of Mary, perched atop a mule named Jill.

“All year long we’re so busy,” said Salazar, 34, a kindergarten teacher at Valley Elementary School in Ribera, about seven miles north of Sena. “At this time of year we have to stop and get together and be together,” she said. “We make time for it.”