FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY AND A HALF, a diminutive Christ Child has been the focus of prayers from visitors to the small village nestled between the Río Grande and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. His depictions are surrounded by regional stories that continue to spark wonder, faith, and an understanding that not everything is as it appears to be.
Chimayó’s revered sanctuary draws pilgrims from far and wide. Among the many beloved saints housed in the Santuario de Chimayó, none is more visible than the Santo Niño de Atocha. According to a legend that emerged in 16th-century Atocha, Spain, Christians imprisoned by Moorish conquerors in the 14th century were visited by a child dressed in pilgrims’ clothing who snuck into prisons and fed the captives bread and water from his self-replenishing basket and gourd. He became known as the Santo Niño de Atocha, patron saint of pilgrims. The devotion migrated to Mexico and other Spanish-speaking places—including New Mexico, and specifically Chimayó.
A statue at the 1911 Santo Niño Chapel in Three Rivers.
Photograph by Alamy/M L Pearson.
In the Santuario, adjacent to the area that houses the pocito—the hole of purportedly healing earth—stands a larger-than-life statue of the Santo Niño. Clad in a pilgrim’s cloak and black-plumed hat, the statue once resided in a nearby chapel dedicated to the saint, where stories began circulating of miraculous healings and of the Niño’s mysterious wanderings. He was said to vanish in the middle of the night, returning before dawn, his little shoes worn thin or even missing. Pilgrims began leaving offerings of baby shoes at his feet in gratitude, along with pairs of crutches that were evidently discarded after sudden healings.
My great-grandmother Ciprianita Trujillo was born in Chimayó and lived most of her life there. My father, Emilio Romero, would sit in her kitchen during the 1920s, listening to at least one tale from her childhood that showed how central a role the Santo Niño played. Each fall, parishioners remudded the floor of the Santuario, after which it would be closed for two days. When the workers returned to open the doors, Ciprianita said, they found tiny footprints in the mud, leading into and out of the church. Where had the Santo Niño gone on these midnight journeys?
Healings from the Santuario’s holy earth were also attributed to the saint. Writer Larry Torres has referred to him as Kris Kringle, since on Christmas Eve it was traditional to pray the rosary in the saint’s honor. Praying the novena for nine nights meant that when you woke up on Christmas morning, the Santo Niño would give you the best gift of all: family.
A retablo by José Rafael Aragón with decorative pattern at bottom.
Courtesy of Marie Romero Cash.
One of the most notable testimonies of devotion came in 1945 from Corporal Conrado Vigil, a New Mexico native and survivor of the Bataan Death March during World War II. While held in a Japanese POW camp for more than three years, beginning in 1942, he vowed that if he survived, he would make a pilgrimage to Chimayó. On April 9, 1946, he fulfilled that promise during Holy Week, walking 125 miles from his home in Belén to thank the Santo Niño de Atocha for sustaining him and other New Mexican prisoners. His pilgrimage inspired many fellow Bataan veterans and their families to follow his example.
But where did local artists find a prototype for this unusual saint? Colonial santeros, whose craft flourished between 1760 and the late 1800s, relied on images in prayer books and holy cards from Franciscan priests. We have one new clue: While studying retablos of the Santo Niño by New Mexico santero José Rafael Aragón (circa 1796–1862), the Albuquerque-based contemporary santero Brandon Maldonado recently noticed an unusual foliage pattern repeated in more than a dozen paintings that didn’t appear elsewhere in Aragón’s works. “I was certain it meant something,” Maldonado says.
FACT-CHECK
How are Chiricahua Apache legends written in the skies?
“When you hear Thunder Beings and you see Lightning Beings, Gahe/Gaan (Mountain Spirits) are dancing in the mountains, dancing Ceremony to protect Naya (White Painted Woman), Nde (The People), and our sacred Nde-Benah,” says Joe Saenz, council member for the Chiricahua Apache Nation. “The beginning of our Creation stories, from Child of the Water with Rain and Killer of Enemies with Lightning, brings peace, harmony, and balance.” —Michael Abatemarco
He traced it to its source—a detail from an altar cloth design in the first printed image of the Santo Niño, made in Mexico in 1848. This significant date shows why earlier regional santeros had not depicted the child saint: They had simply not yet seen a visual model this far north in the Spanish colonies. “This discovery was integral in helping shed a bit of light on where some of those unusual designs came from,” Maldonado says.
Maldonado’s discovery doesn’t just offer a clearer timeline of Aragón’s work. It deepens our understanding of the Santo Niño’s rise in both the traditional art and the spiritual life of northern New Mexico’s Hispanic villages.
