This study describes two earthern buildings and their special furnishings—humble but unique documents of Spanish-American culture. The two structures are located in AbiquiÚ, a rural, Spanish-speaking village in northern New Mexico. Known locally as moradas, they serve as meeting houses for members of a flagellant brotherhood, the penitentes.

The penitente brotherhood is characteristic of Spanish culture in New Mexico (herein called Hispano to indicate its derivation from Hispanic traditions in Mexico). Although penitential activities occurred in Spain's former colonies—Mexico, Argentina, and the Philippines—the penitentes in the mountainous region that extends north of Albuquerque into southern Colorado are remarkable for their persistence.

After a century and a half of clerical criticism[1] and extracultural pressures against the movement, physical evidence of penitente activity, although scattered and diminished, still survives. As intact, functioning artifacts, the penitente moradas at AbiquiÚ are valuable records of an autonomous, socio-religious brotherhood and of its place in the troubled history of Spanish-American culture in the Southwest.

This paper maintains that penitentes are not culturally deviant or aberrant but comprise a movement based firmly in Hispanic traditions as shown by their architecture and equipment found at AbiquiÚ and by previously established religious and social practices. Also, this paper presents in print for the first time a complete, integrated, and functioning group of penitente artifacts documented, in situ, by photographs.

My indebtedness in this study to local residents is immense: first, for inspiration, from Rosenaldo Salazar of HernÁndez and his son Regino, who introduced me to penitente members at AbiquiÚ and four times accompanied me to the moradas. The singular opportunity to measure and to photograph interiors and individual artifacts is due wholly to the understandably wary but proud, penitentes themselves. The task of identifying religious images in the moradas was expertly done by E. Boyd, Curator of the Spanish-Colonial Department in the Museum of New Mexico at Santa Fe. The final responsibility for accuracy and interpretation of data, of course, is mine alone.