Oct. 18—TESUQUE — Several times, Avelino Calabaza has reached out his hand and touched the black granite monument in Washington, D.C., devoted to the memory of American soldiers whose died in Vietnam.
Black panels forming a traveling memorial wall, similar to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial but smaller in scale, have been installed in the Tesuque Casino parking lot north of Santa Fe. On Thursday, as the wind rose up sharply, Calabaza returned to his memories of Vietnam, its landscape.
“And we walk on it,” he said. “And the feeling of that, it’s a memory.”
Calabaza, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War, was clad in a black leather jacket that read, in gold lettering, “Santo Domingo Pueblo Indian Veterans Assoc.” It was a coat covered with various patches, bearing his name in small letters across its front.
“It’s a memory when you see the wall, and you see the faces, you can still see the faces,” he said, of those he served alongside who perished.
The memorial wall has been installed in the main parking lot of the pueblo casino by the American Veterans Traveling Tribute and will be on public display through Sunday. Situated at Exit 171 of U.S 84/285, the memorial wall stands 8 feet tall at its highest and is 360 feet in length, wrapping around portions of the parking lot.
Engraved in the wall are the names of soldiers who died fighting overseas. Near the highway, an American flag waves, above messages of valor.
Over 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War. According to an honorary proclamation signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in 2022, 398 New Mexicans were killed in action, ranking the state third in terms of per-capita casualties.
“It’s an honor that they went through hell,” Calabaza said. “And some of us that survive have a memory of. … They call it PTSD now. It’s an honor to have served that war.”
Veterans from Northern New Mexico moved past the slot machines within the casino on Thursday toward the entrance of a ballroom where a ceremony for the traveling wall was held.
Inviting a sustained wave of applause and generalized ruckus in the ballroom as he stood, Vincente Jimenez, 98, was lauded during the ceremony. The Tesuque resident has the rare distinction of having fought in combat zones in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. In 1943, turning 17, Jimenez signed up to fight.
“What I went through, nobody knows but me,” Jimenez said. And with his characteristic terseness, he added, “I’m supposed to be dead three times but I’m here.”
He described almost freezing to death in Germany one of these moments when he almost died.
“I’m proud of being a Marine,” he said. “Marines don’t talk too much.”
Father and son — Macario Olivas, 83, and Leonard Olivas, 51 — discussed their military service. Marcio was in Vietnam and the Gulf War, Leonard in the Gulf War as well.
“It’s just touching, knowing the sacrifices of the ones the went before myself, like my father, and the ones that made the ultimate sacrifice,” Leonard Olivas said.
During the ceremony, Patricia Finley — New Mexico coordinator for Run For the Wall, which refers to an annual motorcycle from California to Washington, D.C., to honor veterans — explained how veteran motorcyclists had escorted a truck hauling the wall into town.
“We started in the Camel Rock area, got into formation, came here to the Tesuque Casino parking lot, and set that wall up,” Finley said.
In part, the black wall reads: “This tribute is dedicated to the memory of our brothers and sisters who lost their lives in the Vietnam War and to the missing in action and prisoners of war who were left behind in southeast Asia.”
As a hard rain began to pelt down in the ceremony’s aftermath, blocking the nearby mountains, Ross Giego, a resident of Chimayó, walked the wall.
“This is the story of all the wars that we have gone through, the lives that have been lost by Americans just in the belief of democracy,” he said in the rain.
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