PVT Mariano García
Born: 23 October 1894, Atarque, New Mexico
Died: 8 November 1920, Ft. Bliss, Texas
Burial Site: FBNC, Section D, Row G, Site 17
Mariano García was born in Atarque, New Mexico on 23 October 1894. He was described as “the servant and legally adopted son of Patricio García and his wife.”[i] The caveat that García was legally adopted points to his likely status as a genízaro—a term usually taken to mean a “detribalized Indian” and one that was sometimes used as a euphemism even as late as the mid-20th century to avoid description of an Indian as a slave.[ii]
At the age of 23, he was drafted into the U.S. Army on 14 January 1918 while living in Zuñi for service in World War I. He had been a farmer at the time and had identified himself as an Indian on his registration card. García served in Company G of the 157th U.S. Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division which was deployed to France. The 45th Infantry Division included National Guard units from New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Arizona.
In the 1920 census, García was recorded as a cowboy living with his extended family in Gallup. García died on of tuberculosis at Ft. Bliss on November 8, 1920. He is buried at Ft. Bayard National Cemetery, Section D, Row G, Site 17.
Notes:
[i] Abe Peña, Atarque: Now All Is Silent… (Los Ranchos de Albuquerque: Rio Grande Books, 2007), 88.
[ii] Moises Gonzales and Enrique LaMadrid, Nación Genízaros: Ethnogenesis, Place, and Identity in New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019); Thomas D. Hall, “Genízaros,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ha.014, accessed June 4, 2023.
iii. Photo, courtesy of Fort Bayard National Cemetery, July 2023.
Compiled by Dr. Andy Hernández