Oregon Voices: "Know Who You Are": Regional Identity in the Teachings of Eva Castellanoz

Abstract

OREGON VOICES "Know Who You Are" Regional Identityin the Teachings ofEva Castellanoz byJoanne B.Mulcahy ON A STEAMY JULYNIGHT IN 2005,1 sit with Eva Castellanoz inback of her house inNyssa, on theOregon Idaho state line. In white jeans and an embroidered floral top, she looks far younger than her sixty-six years. Black curls spliced with gray cascade to her shoulders; her smooth skin seems unmarked by years of labor in the onion fields that surround us. Eva gestures toward a huge locust tree in the yard. "This tree that does not talk taught me the biggest lesson of my life. Itwas sick and dying; ithad no leaves_An oldMexican man toldmy husband todrill a hole in itstrunk,soak a stake with a special recipe, and drive it through thathole."AfterEva's husband followed the old man's directions, the healing solution soaked through to the root. In less than a month, Eva says,"the tree started toheal. Then the limbs began toproduce all these leaves. I learned thatwhen the root is ruined, the limbs are sick, likeour heritage that has been stripped and bitten away." In Eva's work as a traditional artist and a curandera (healer) she often tells people: "Know who you are. Never leave the root. Because once you do, you start todie toyourself." "Knowing who you are" is deeply cultural, the metaphor of the root reaching back to Eva's Mexican childhood and her identity as indigenous. But themeta phor extends intoher present life,too, as other roots of the treehave stretched to place her firmly in eastern Oregon. These notions of place and identity were inchoate in the teachings of Eva's father,Fidel Silva.When we leave Eva's house and drive into town, she sweeps a hand toward the sugar beet fields, saying, "This was my daddy's dream, tohave a home here. Iwant to be part of the realization of that dream." She likes to quote two of her father'smost frequent pronouncements. He used to say, "I'd rather be a poor man in theU.S. than amillionaire in Mexico." She also recalls the statement thatSilva made when he moved his family to 444 OHQ vol. 108, no. 3 ? 2007 Oregon Historical Society s f& . C g These imagesofEva atfourteen and her husband-to-be, Teodoro Castellanoz, were taken inPharr, Texas, and juxtaposed intoa single frame byIdaho photographer Jan Boles in the1990s.Copies now hang inbothEva and herdaughterGhana's houses in Nyssa. our madrina," she tellsme. "That is called depositar ? they deposit you at the home. You are not seen by the to-be groom until thewedding." Eva participated in her own wedding with the sense of having little choice, squeezed between traditional notions of a woman's worth and the anger of two men. Tensions with her family eventually resolved. When Eva was nineteen and pregnant with her firstchild,Diego, her fatherdecided to move the family. Eva agreed to go. Fidel Silvahad had his sightssetonNyssa sincehe first came to Oregon. Perhaps the Owyhee Mountains of eastern Oregon echoed the hills beyond his home town inMexico. Maybe he had grown fond of lifenear the Rio Grande, making the nearness of Oregon's Snake River boundary alluring. Whatever the reason, Eva's father was determined to live inNyssa. The first settlements inNyssa date to 1883,when theOregon Short Line railroad ran through the eastern edge of the state. The city was incorpo rated in 1903, drawing population as itevolved from a railroad way station to an agricultural area.A1911 brochure hailed Nyssa as a "progressive and growing city"on the Idaho state line. It urged readers to consider the region's farming potential, claiming "There is room for all of us." Space was plenti ful but water scarce until 1932when the government completed work on the 417-foot-high Owyhee Dam. As agricultural land expanded, Mexican workers filled labor shortages, cul minating in the bracero program that brought Fidel Silva north. Mulcahy, Regional Identity in theTeachings of Eva Castellanoz 451 In 1957,Eva arrived inNyssa with her parents, her sister Maria, and her brothers Manuel and Fidel. They lived in a migrant camp at Parma, moving into other parts of Oregon andWashington towork...