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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Bibo, N.M., Setting the Record Straight

By Jim Scarantino
For the Journal
      “We take risks when we step across a threshold into another culture, but the adventure is always worth the price.” So one reader assured me in a note about my last column on the growing Arab economic and cultural presence in New Mexico.
       I needed reassurance because I was beating myself up over errors in the story. I had made some boo-boos about Bibo.
       I had written that this village, named after Lebanese merchants, was located in Grant County. I know better. I was recently in the Bibo Bar enjoying a green chile cheeseburger that rivals the Elkhorn burgers I've wolfed down in Bobby Olguin's café in San Antonio. Bibo and its burgers, to set the record straight, lie in Cibola County, north of Laguna on N.M. 279 between Paguate and Cebolleta.
       But calling the Bibo family Lebanese may have been a more serious infraction. I received a friendly, but stern e-mail from Dr. Gordon Bronitsky. He said I was flat wrong. The Bibos weren't Lebanese. They were German Jews. He sent me a photo of the tomb of Solomon Bibo. I got the message. He's an expert on the Bibo family's history in America.
       “This little Jewish guy,” as Dr. Bronitsky put it when we met for coffee, “was elected leader of the Acoma Pueblo.” Then he told the tale of one of the Old West's most interesting characters.
       Solomon Bibo and his brothers were Jewish merchants working the frontier in the 19th century. They established stores in Grants, Ft. Wingate, Cebolleta, Laguna, San Rafael and Bernalillo. Legend holds the Bibo brothers won the trust of Native Americans by offering the fair prices and dignified treatment denied them by other merchants.
       At one point, Acoma so trusted Solomon Bibo it granted him a monopoly over the commercial use of all its lands and mineral resources. Solomon Bibo solidified his bonds with Acoma by championing its rights against land claims asserted by Laguna Pueblo. He spoke Keresan and other Native American tongues fluently, along with German, Yiddish and English. He married an Acoma woman who converted to Judaism.
       In 1885, Acoma Pueblo elected Solomon Bibo tribal leader. “Don Solomono,” as he was called, was re-elected for an additional three terms. He later moved to San Francisco, where he is buried. Other members of the Bibo family rest in the Congregation Albert cemetery in Albuquerque.
       So where did I get the idea that the Bibos were Lebanese? For starters, in the Bibo village store that was once part of the family's retail empire. Local panjandra insist the Bibos were Lebanese.
       Laguna writer and historian Karen Marmon Silko claims the Bibos were Lebanese. Her family knew them. The Marmons were Presbyterian missionaries and surveryors who took Laguna's side in the land dispute. Laguna prevailed, by the way.
       Also, at least according to Facebook and Google, Lebanon is full of people named Bibo. It is also the name of a Hungarian scholar and patriot who defied Soviet domination of his county. That fits. Dr. Bronitsky contends the Bibos came to Germany from Hungary. But where did they come from before that?
       There is at hand a truly amazing tool for conducting genealogical research. It is called Qwest directory assistance. I located a Philip Bibo in San Mateo, N.M. He is descended from Don Solomono's brother who opened the Grants store. He says the Acoma casino sits on what was once Bibo ranchland.
       The Bibos came from “Lebanon or somewhere near Israel,” he told me. So I was right. But some also came from Germany, he added. So Dr. Bronitsky was also right. But some also came from Belgium, a possibility neither of us had considered. Clearly, another green chile cheeseburger at the Bibo Bar will be required to further this investigation.
       Jim Scarantino spent 25 years practicing law, including time as a prosecutor in Philadelphia and New Mexico. He concluded his legal career as the ACLU-New Mexico's lawyer of the year in 2006. Scarantino also served as executive director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance and Republicans for Environmental Protection. He currently writes a monthly report for the Rio Grande Foundation. E-mail: jimscarantino@gmail.com
       

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