The New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces pays tribute to women making a difference in New Mexico agriculture with a current, rotating wall display in the central corridor of the Museum’s main building.
The exhibit is called “Her Land: Women in Agriculture” and the new, featured exemplar is Aqueda Salazar Martinez.
“Museums typically focus on the stories of our ancestors and their incredible accomplishments,” said Heather Reed, executive director of NM Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum. “We often forget to look around to see that history is unfolding right in front of us within our communities and our state. Her Land spotlights the amazing feats and contributions of modern-day women and showcases the young women working on the future of agriculture. This ongoing project will rotate every few months and will allow us to record history in real time for generations to come.”
The Museum created the exhibit space in 2021. Previous honorees in the exhibit were Fita Witte of Las Cruces, Felicia Thal of northeastern New Mexico and Sophia Moreno of La Union, N.M.
More about Aqueda Salazar Martinez
“As long as I can move, I will continue to weave,” may have been an understatement by Agueda Salazar Martínez. With more than 200 descendants and students, Doña Agueda’s influence continues far beyond her own loom.
Agueda began weaving as a girl, making rag blankets from scraps of cotton fabric. At 23, she refined her weaving under the teachings of Chimayó weaver Lorenzo Trujillo. She produced thousands of weavings in her lifetime, most of which were sold to provide for her family.
Agueda and her husband Eusebio Martínez raised ten children on a small subsistence farm in Medanales, New Mexico. The family grew nearly everything they needed on the farm, leaving only sugar and shoes to be purchased. Everyone contributed to the family business of weaving, collecting plants to create dyes, carding and spinning wool, and working at the loom.
“I take the design from my head, no two of my serapes are alike.” Doña Agueda created her elaborate woven designs through intimate knowledge of Chimayó, Rio Grande Hispanic, and Navajo style motifs and techniques.
Doña Agueda was awarded the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1975 and has had her work exhibited at countless museums and galleries including the Smithsonian Institution. Her daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren continue the tradition, earning awards and honors for their weaving into the 21st Century.
Doña Agueda kept one of her homemade treadle looms in the
kitchen, allowing her to keep an eye on her work and her family saying, “in the
winter I get out of bed, I eat breakfast, and I get on the loom and weave. I
get down from the loom at night and go to bed. The next day I do the same,
weave, and nothing else.”
