Silvestre Baca, Lifelong Jarales Resident and Family Patriarch, Dies at 91

Silvestre Baca was born in Jarales in April 1934, just 22 years after New Mexico entered the union. He died on April 6, 2026, at 91, carrying forward a surname that genealogical records trace to the valley's earliest preserved census and a life that spanned nearly every significant transformation in Valencia County's modern history.

A Rosary and Funeral Mass are scheduled at Our Lady of Belen Catholic Church, 101-A North Tenth Street in Belen, with interment to follow. The church has occupied its current site since 1860, built under Archbishop Lamy after the original Nuestra Señora de Belén was swallowed by the Rio Grande in 1855. The name itself reaches back to 1740, when Spanish colonists bestowed "Nuestra Señora de Belén" on their land grant and first settlement, giving the city of Belen, population 7,360, the name it still carries. Father Antonio Cellier, who took over the parish after Father Picard in 1917, enlarged the church and in 1927 founded St. Mary's School there under the Ursuline Sisters. A Mass held in that building connects Baca's passing to more than 280 years of continuous Catholic community life in the Rio Grande valley.

The Baca name's presence in Jarales precedes statehood by decades. Virginia Gomez Baca Grace, a genealogist, compiled records from the 1850 Belen de los Jarales Census that document the surname as part of the valley's earliest written civic record, when Valencia County was still part of the New Mexico Territory, confirmed as such in 1852, just eight years after its establishment by Mexico in 1844.

Baca's 91 years tracked the county's two most consequential modern disruptions. In 1981, Valencia County lost approximately 81% of its former territory when the state legislature created Cibola County, redrawing the map of western New Mexico. And over the same decades, the southward expansion of the Albuquerque metropolitan area absorbed communities like Jarales, reclassifying what had been agricultural villages into suburbs. The Valencia Flour Mill, founded in Jarales in 1914 as the Jarales Trading Post and Rolling Mill, stands as one marker of what that transformation erased and what it left intact.

Jarales today has a population of roughly 2,144, with 64.57% identifying as Hispanic or Latino, and Valencia County as a whole counts 76,205 residents in a county whose seat at Los Lunas has served as the center of local government since 1876.

The Valencia County Historical Society and the parish office at Our Lady of Belen, (505) 864-8043, welcome photographs and oral histories from families connected to Jarales and the surrounding valley communities of Tomé, Peralta, Bosque Farms, and Rio Communities.

JARALES AT A GLANCE Population: approximately 2,144 Hispanic or Latino residents: 64.57% Key institution: Valencia Flour Mill, Ltd. (est. 1914) Parish: Our Lady of Belen Catholic Church, 101-A N. Tenth St., Belen, (505) 864-8043 County seat: Los Lunas (county seat since 1876) Valencia County population: 76,205 (2020 Census)