Brenda Romero
Brenda Romero wasn’t born in Chimayó, but she’s a Chimayosa through and through. Her parents, Ricardo Medina and Consuelo Ortega, were living in California, where her father was working in the shipyards, when she came along. But they were verdaderos Chimayosos, too, and they made their way back home when Brenda was an infant.
Brenda grew up dividing her time between her grandparents’ home in the Chimayó suburb of Centinela and her parents’ place in the placita of Potrero. Her grandparents José Ramón Medina and Sarita Chávez were caretakers of the Santo Niño chapel in Potrero and also owned and operated a small store there, complete with a pool table. “Life was simple and there wasn’t much to do in Chimayó back then,” Brenda says, “but we could hang out at that little store, play in the ditch. And we helped out in the store, too—we didn’t just hang around.”
Brenda’s grandfather on her mother’s side, Felix Ortega, a well-known weaver who grew up in the Plaza del Cerro and was married to another vecina of the plaza, Trinidad Trujillo. Brenda remembers the plaza when it was still mostly inhabited. She passed by there every day on her way to school. “I had a few relatives living there—Melquiades Ortega, Brigida Martinez and Nick Trujillo, and I knew several vecinos— Alfonso and Dorothy Martinez and the Cruz family—and of course, Lawrence Martinez. And I remember watching my Tio Melquiades there in the plaza, tending his garden and also in his weaving room at his house,” she says.
Like many other kids in upper Chimayó, Brenda attended John Hyson school from kindergarten through sixth grade, where she remembers enjoying her time—especially putting on Christmas plays, directed by Miss Julia Hudson (also a CCPA tesoro), who taught generations of Chimayó kids there over her forty years there.
Brenda went on from John Hyson to Santa Cruz High School and then Española High School, where she graduated in 1971. She worked in her teen years at the Rancho de Chimayó restaurant and was working for Rio Arriba County in 1978 when she met taoseño Wilfred Romero. “It was a blind date and, who knew? Here we are 40 years later with two grown children!” she recalls.
Wilfred and Brenda settled in Brenda’s childhood home in Centinela. Brenda was for a time employed as a paralegal for Philip Trujillo in Española and she later worked at Ortega’s Weaving Shop, where she heard about the Chimayó Cultural Preservation Association in the early 2000s. “I just kind of got interested after I learned what they were all about and what they were doing and they wanted to do. I especially liked their idea of cleaning up the plaza and preserving it,” she recalls.
When Brenda joined the CCPA board, she had no idea that she would be elected board president—or that she would remain in that role for 10 years, from 2009 to 2019.
“I enjoyed working with the CCPA,” Brenda says, “interacting with the other board members and meeting a lot of people—the speakers for events and others. And I think the CCPA’s purchase and restoration of a casita on the Plaza del Cerro in 2016 was one of the highlights of my tenure as president. I was happy that I was able to serve as president at the time when we acquired our first piece of property, Casa Martina,” she says. “I thought it was pretty cool. I was happy to get to know the owner, Margaret Jaramillo.
“During my time there, we were getting a lot of help from Mr. Jim Long, from Heritage Hotels and it was a great honor that that we had him on our side. I met with him a few times.”
Brenda welcomed the steady support from outside Chimayó, but she is strong in her conviction that it’s vital to have Chimayosos involved in the CCPA’s efforts, especially in the Plaza del Cerro. Thinking of the future of the CCPA she advises, “I think it’s important, you know, because past attempts to do something with the plaza came mostly from outside Chimayó, and people here didn’t like that. It’s nice to have outside help, but you don’t want to lose local control, you don’t want your efforts to go astray.”
That advice, coming from a woman who led the CCPA with grace and style—and a firm hand—for a decade, carries some weight. She is a firmly rooted Chimayosa with unshakable faith, who is also a stalwart member of El Buen Pastor Presbyterian Church at the Plaza del Cerro.
“Chimayó— I love, I love it here. I’ll tell you that. I mean, my roots are very deep. I don’t plan on going anywhere until my day is here. And then I hope that my Dear Lord will have a place for me. All I have done and all I can still do, is through him. My favorite scripture is Philippians 4:13, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’
“And you quote me on that!”