How Easter defines this Arizona tribe and its spirit: 'Easter brings us all together'
Hundreds of Guadalupe residents and visitors quietly imbued the drizzly, cool night of March 23 with faith traditions passed down from generation to generation within Arizona’s Pascua Yaqui tribe.
Families and neighbors stood, or sat on lawn chairs or atop trucks, waiting for a procession on the eve of Palm Sunday, eyes fixed on the Santa Lucia Pascua Yaqui Temple.
The 110-year-old white adobe and stucco house of worship is the heart of Guadalupe and was erected by the Pascua Yaquis. Many in the tribe, which is also spread throughout the Tucson area, have built a community in the 512-acre town nestled between Interstate 10 to the west and Tempe to the north, east and south.
Carlos Valencia is a 44-year-old Pascua Yaqui and Guadalupe resident who has dedicated himself to promoting the tribe’s culture through his business, Yaqui Pride. He told The Arizona Republic that the town of a little less than 5,300 has successfully thwarted annexation by Phoenix, which looms just past I-10.
Historians have depicted the Yaquis as a warrior tribe and as “rebellious” because of "their legacy of resistance," Valencia said with a smile.
Several Yaqui-identifying Arizonans spoke with The Republic about how Lenten and Easter festivities have helped shape and strengthen a people who have for centuries fought off subjugation.
Never colonized
Santa Lucia stands side by side with Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church on what were the first 40 acres ceded to the Pascua Yaquis by the federal government. Like the temple, the church was constructed by the Pascua Yaquis a decade after Guadalupe’s founding and a few years after the tribe relocated from a settlement in Tempe.
While the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix operates the church, the Pascua Yaquis run the temple whose earth-laden flooring meets the tribe's ceremonial standards.
The Yaquis were never colonized by the Spaniards. They willingly adopted the Roman Catholic faith because its saints aligned with their deities, according to Valencia. The focal point on the tribal flag is a cross, which the Yaquis quickly embraced as it resembled the Earth’s four cardinal directions.
And the Pascua Yaquis outside the temple were there to honor one of their own. The Spanish missionaries enthralled the Yaquis with their stories of a holy redeemer in a desert land not unlike the ones where they lived.
"The Yaquis believe that Jesus Christ was one of them," Valencia said, adding that they believe Christ walked through Río Yaqui, the tribe’s ancestral homeland in Arizona’s neighboring Mexican state of Sonora.
Blood quantum
Federally recognized as a U.S. tribe in 1978, there are 21,307 active Pascua Yaqui Tribe members, according to a Sept. 1 Facebook post by the tribe.
Tribal enrollment benefits include health services and housing. Current eligibility is open to U.S. citizens with minimum one-quarter tribal ancestry, which follows the blood quantum once federally mandated of Native Americans. Membership is also open to direct lineal descendants or siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins of those previously enrolled in the tribe.
In Mexico, the standard of proof to claim Yaqui tribal heritage is being born in Río Yaqui, regardless how much tribal ancestry.
Guadalupe’s Mayor Valerie Molina was elected in 2016. Her father is Pascua Yaqui and her mother is a "Mexicana" not of Yaqui descent, she said. She herself is not married to a Pascua Yaqui.
"The blood quantum will stop with my son, but my dad has made sure that we understand and respect the ceremonies," the 49-year-old Molina said.
Hushed spectators
Growing up the youngest of three, Molina would spend the Lenten period cooking green corn tamales with her mother as her father and two older brothers participated in the procession as part of the tribe’s cultural society. Her father, now 78, retired from the ceremonies after injuring his ankle during a procession decades ago.
"It's a sacrifice you're making. But it's one that you want to make," Molina said about being in the procession.
The 30-minute procession, or konti as the tribe calls it, began at about 10:15 p.m. as male processioners marched within a cordoned area of the temple and church plaza before the gaze of hushed spectators. The rhythmic stomping of the processioners’ feet on the dirt ground and their beating of a cottonwood sword were the only sounds filling the air.
Cellphones were absent from the hands of those watching, as the tribe prohibits photography to uphold the event’s sacredness.
Husband and wife Uvaldo Jecarí, 55, and Virginia Valenzuela, 56, have lived in Guadalupe for 20 years after moving from Río Yaqui. The couple manned their shop selling traditional blouses, deer eye necklaces and other artisanal goods on the procession grounds. They were among about 16 vendors.
The couple who speak Yaqui and Spanish, remember the Lenten and Easter fiestas being different in Río Yaqui as women and men were separated and music and public displays of affection were strictly forbidden.
"It’s something with much respect for us," Valenzuela said.
Holiday affinity
Easter is in the very name of the Pascua Yaquis, as "Pascua" is the Spanish translation of the day celebrating the resurrection of Christ. The tribal name is a testament to the Yaquis’ will to keep their people and heritage from being buried.
Octaviana Trujillo is an Indigenous studies professor at Northern Arizona University. Born and raised in Guadalupe, Trujillo, 70, was the first chairwoman of the Pascua Yaqui tribe.
The economic policies of President Porfirio Díaz industrialized much of Mexico by the early 20th century, but progress excluded Indigenous communities. The Yaquis battled the Díaz regime’s genocide and displacement campaign, with many migrating to the Arizona territory where there was already a tribal presence, according to Trujillo.
She said that before his death in 1998, Pascua Yaqui tribal leader Anselmo Valencia Tori explained to U.S. Rep. Morris Udall, D-Ariz., where the Easter reference started. In his successful 1981 push to apportion state lands to the tribe, Udall listed the tribe as Pascua Yaquis because of its widely known affinity with the holiday, Trujillo said Valencia Tori told her.
"Of all the religious holidays scheduled on the calendar, it's really Easter that brings us all together, and the most significant of all the other religious holidays. That’s where (the Pascua Yaqui name) came from," Trujillo said.
Sense of belonging
Guadalupe is one of five Arizona sites where the Pascua Yaquis’ Lenten and Easter processions occur. A Pascua Yaqui great-grandmother, Virginia Vasquez, 78, observed the processions in the Tucson area as Easter was her favorite holiday. Holy Saturday marks the fourth anniversary of her death from COVID-19. Her daughter, Diana Pallanes, 50, died of the virus three days before.
Both women are buried together, said surviving daughter and sister Cecilia Rodriguez, 53. Rodriguez regularly decorates their gravesite. During this time of year, she adds Easter Bunny dolls and brightly colored flowers to mark the occasion.
At the height of the pandemic, “every couple of days, there was a new burial” at the church and temple grounds, said Carlos Valencia, who lost a cousin, 54-year-old EMT Jose Gomez, to COVID-19 on May 10, 2020, Some days later, COVID-19 would claim Valencia’s Yaqui cultural history mentor, the 63-year-old Sonora educator Juan Silverio Jaime León.
The Pascua Yaquis mitigated the spread during the Lenten and Easter processions by excluding observers.
While the carnival that has been the town's celebration centerpiece is still absent, 2024 marks the first year in which the fiestas have returned to their pre-pandemic levels, according to Pascua Yaqui Tribal Council member Catalina Alvarez, 53.
What remains steadfast for the Pascua Yaquis during the Lenten and Easter season is a sense of belonging.
Trujillo, the NAU professor, recalls the stillness that swept through much of Guadalupe on Holy Saturday, April 11, 2020. As Trujillo visited her cousin’s home, the quietness from the plaza suddenly broke.
"It was the first time in a long, long time that I could hear all the prayers very distinctly," Trujillo said.
Reach breaking news reporter Jose R. Gonzalez at jose.gonzalez@gannett.com or on X, formerly Twitter: @jrgzztx.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How Easter defines this Arizona tribe of 'resistance'
