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1991: the San Ygnacio church fire; it was arson

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                                     1896                                            After 1992-1993 Restoration

SAN YGNACIO – A little after 1 a.m. on February 12, 1991, ten-year-old Henry Martinez III awoke and saw from his upstairs window smoke and flames coming from the sacristy window of Nuestra Señora del Refugio Church across the street. He rushed downstairs to alert his parents, Dora and Henry.

Before long, members of the San Ygnacio Fire Department, Capt. Francisco Botello and Andres Botello, arrived at the church in the 1986 Ford pumper truck and began containing the fire.

Nearby residents who gathered on the street and in the Plaza Blas María Uribe, some weeping and some praying, watched in horror as the fire spread from the sacristy and into the 116-year-old church.

The sacristy lost its doors and windows, stored altar linens, and priests’ vestments. Some of the altar’s historic statuary — much of it pre-dating the late 1800s — was damaged. The modern veneers of vinyl floor tiles melted grotesquely in the heat as did the church’s dropped acoustic ceiling.

Built of hand-hewn sandstone blocks, the structure’s 20-inch thick walls withstood the heat of the fire. Stations of the Cross and pews took on the dark patina of smoke. One of the losses most lamented in the fire was the carved wooden statue of the Virgen de Refugio that had come from Spain in the early 1800s and that many remembered had always been part of the annual Good Friday processional through the streets of San Ygnacio.

Victoria Uribe, who at the time was the school secretary at A.L. Benavides Elementary, was quickly drafted to chair what would become a restoration rather than a repair to the church.

The events that followed the fire revealed the character and devotion of the faithful.

A unified brigade of San Ygnacio residents of all ages, armed with shovels and wheel barrows cleared out what was left of the melted acoustic ceiling and floor tiles.

They worked with dolorous determination and with a reverence rooted in their faith in God, themselves, and each other, believers that their good will and devotion would triumph over the malicious affront exacted on them and on the church that had been the center of many lives, the blessed place of their own rites of marriage and those of their parents and grandparents. It was where they and their own children had been baptized and taken their first Holy Communion. 

From Texas Parks and Wildlife video on Los Caminos del Rio.

The fire revealed, too, what had been hidden beneath the modern veneers of a 1960s  remodeling — the treasure of a forgotten nicho for the consecrated host in the eastern wall behind the altar; massive mesquite lintels over windows and doorways; an elaborately carved load-bearing corbel; and the wooden framework for the church’s original vaulted ceiling.

Parishioners removed the cedar pews from the church floor and moved them to the nearby church hall for upcoming Ash Wednesday services and to make way for those who would work on the floor of the church and for scaffolding for those who would begin work on the walls and ceiling.

The architectural and cultural significance of the historic church drew the attention of the Texas Historic Commission (THC) and others who would guide and inform the decisions of the restoration committee. They included historical architect Dr. Mario Sanchez, director of cultural tourism for the THC’s Los Caminos del Río; Gloria Canseco, also of Los Caminos del Río; restoration architect Elias Reyes of San Antonio; and archeologist Jim Warren and state archeological steward Rose Tarver Treviño.

“The restoration of the church was significant on many levels,” Sanchez said. “For those of us who worked on it, it was a seminal project that showcased historic preservation and restoration. It was a great feat that many of the building’s original features could be repaired and reclaimed. That the community took responsibility for so many aspects of the restoration work was heartwarming and inspiring.”

Sánchez worked with Austin architect Joe C. Freeman to assess damages and to come up with a restoration plan. They consulted frequently with the invaluable tool of a complete history of Nuestra Señora del Refugio Church that had been documented by Father Robert Wright, O.M.I. The detailed document included photographs that provided much detail on changes to the church.

“We saw an 1896 photo of the interior of the church in Father Wright’s book and after visiting with Father McNamara, Viqui, and other committee members we agreed that was the interior we wanted,” Sanchez said.

Los Caminos del Rio donated the cost of its study and restoration plan to the church.

As the scope of the work ahead became more defined, a plan took shape to find the resources and skilled craftsmen who could restore the architectural harmony of wood and stone cut more than a century earlier.

As it turned out, Sánchez said, the chief resource for the funds for the restoration endeavor was the energy and will of the residents of San Ygnacio who generated revenues with repeated plate sales, taco sales, a softball tournament, jamaicas in the Plaza Blas María that featured baked goods, arts and crafts, bingos, cake walks, and raffles; and the sale and auction of the exquisite handwork of the San Ygnacio quilters. Their industry inspired generous donations and grants.

Gloria Canseco advised the restoration committee to approach the Meadows Foundation for funding. She assisted Uribe in compiling information for the request. The Foundation kindly agreed to three $20,00 matches.

The restoration work was completed in 1993 and culminated with a Mass celebrated by Bishop Rene Gracida of the Diocese of Brownsville.

(NOTE: The grainy black and white photos that accompany this story were taken in 1991, long before the advent of digital cameras and cell phones that could take pictures. Most of these halftone photos were screened with a dot pattern for reproduction on newsprint.)

The arsonist:

Honduran national confessed

María Eugenia Guerra

Delmer Javier Leiva Hernandez is pictured with investigator Beto Gonzalez after writing a detailed confession about setting the arson fire inside Nuestra Señora del Refugio Church.

In the course of being questioned on March 26, 1991 about attempting to kick in a door at Nuestra Señora del Refugio Church on March 25 and for leaving a cryptic written note of terroristic threats on the car of a San Ygnacio resident, Honduran national Delmer Javier Leiva Hernandez told Zapata County Sheriff’s investigator Beto Gonzalez, “I have something to tell you. I cannot sleep at night.”

A resident of San Ygnacio, Leiva Hernandez answered in the affirmative when Gonzalez asked, “Is it about the church?”

Gonzalez recalled, “It was a guess on my part. I read him his rights once again, and he told me how much he hated the Christian religion and all churches. He wrote out a very detailed confession. I arrested him for felony one arson. He was magistrated by Judge Gabriel Villarreal who set bond at $150,000.”

The confession provided a narrative that had Leiva Hernandez move from starting the fire in the sacristy and to the altar where he struck at the plaster arms of Christ on the cross with a machete.

Despite the confession, there was a lingering doubt that dogged the case — that he may not have acted alone. That speculation was articulated by lawmen, but not pursued.

“I strongly believe more than one person was involved, and I would guess it was young people. I don’t know if it was drug related, but I do know that arson and not robbery was the motive here, as I think it was also for the break-in at Pepe’s on the same night,” Gonzalez said, adding, “Whoever set the fire in the church, they weren’t from here. They might live here, but they are not from here. We have deep sentiments and traditions about the church in San Ygnacio. This is my hometown. I’d like to see this brought to its right ending. I have worked closely with field deputy Coco Villarreal and investigator Toto Gutierrez.”

Leiva Hernandez remained in the Zapata County Jail until his extradition to Honduras, except for a brief stay in the Jim Hogg County Jail. He had also been questioned by Dimmit County authorities about a church fire in Catarina.

Gonzalez said the confessed arsonist was separated from other inmates for safety reasons. “There are prisoners in the jail who are very indignant about the church fire,” he said.

I met the rail-thin avowed arsonist in a jailhouse interview in Zapata on July 26, 1991. He was wrapped in a white sheet and wore white Reebok running shoes.

He told me he had not set the San Ygnacio church fire.

“It wasn’t me,” he said. “I came here voluntarily for protection from those who are really culpable. It was three armed men who entered the church. I saw them as I rode past on my bicycle. I was on drugs and felt like super hombre. I took a machete from my house and entered the church. They wore bandanas over their faces. One of the men pointed a .45 at me. Another kicked me twice, throwing me to the ground. They threw down my bicycle, and I lost consciousness.”

Leiva Hernandez said the men ordered him to say nothing about their interaction with him. “They said, ‘You will get out of jail, but you won’t get out of the tomb.’ They ran off through the plaza and toward the river. They were Tejanos, maybe Satanicos. No logre identificarlos.”

The 18-year-old recounted some of his personal history. When Leiva Hernandez was a toddler, his father left Honduras to come to the United States. “I was raised in my father’s house by a friend of my father’s. I experienced my infancy alone. I met one of my two older brothers only recently. I did well in school, except for math. I tried to join the military twice, but was rejected because of my age. They accepted me at 15, and I served two years. I had experiences that would serve me later. I learned discipline, courtesy, loyalty, morality, and punctuality,” he said, adding, “I tried college, but I didn’t get any interest from it. I had aspired to learn medicine or computers. I ended up in Chiapas and got a job operating heavy equipment to build a stone wall. When the work ended, I returned to Honduras for 15 days and then took the train to Nuevo Laredo and then crossed to Laredo. I jumped on a train with two other hondureños, and we got off at Cotulla. A rancher named Jack Oldham brought me to Laredo to work on a ranch, and then I ended up in San Ygnacio, which I like.”

Investigator Gonzalez classified the investigation into the church fire as “the most weird case I’ve had. I don’t believe that he acted alone. He changes the story a lot, but when he is telling the truth, he knows the smallest details. He didn’t admit to the burglary at Pepe’s restaurant where the perpetrators made a mess and left cooking oil to boil on a burner in the hope that it would catch fire.”

Leiva Hernandez embellished the story he had recounted to me only minutes earlier.

“I don’t remember well. I was in my house. A fire truck could be heard. I saw some men walking past my house, fast and slow, fast and slow. They are the men who forced me to tell these lies. I don’t know why I signed a confession. There’s no proof,” he said. “A man burned the church. I would like to crucify him in the desert. A woman from a good family broke in and tried to burn the restaurant the same night. I see them all the same. One will pay for all,” he said, adding, “What I am telling you today is the truth. I would like to return to San Ygnacio. I don’t want to return to Honduras. I am an orphan. There is nothing to return to.”

Before the conclusion of the interview, Leiva Hernandez handed me a neatly hand-printed manifesto dated July 25, 1991, a document in which he over-stated his age as 28, declared his principles, listed his military experience, and said that his sergeants, Sylvester Stallone and “Maycol” Jackson, would soon join him in prison.

He said he was a “comandante,” graduate“de Wesht Point, rey de las artes marciales, piloto, experto en computadoras, contra-insurgente, franco tirador, jefe de todos los carteles del mundo,” and one who spoke “siete idiomas, español, ingles, iraqui, alemán, ruso, chino, y japones.”

The manifesto included a shopping list — “un ocho de coca, un guato de mota, un six peck de coca cola, cigarros, Fritos y panes.”

Through Leiva Hernandez’s bluster and posturing about his experiences and the man he said he was, I saw that the person before me was not a man, but a boy whose life had been derailed, perhaps by chance, perhaps by his own bad choices, to travel nearly 2,000 miles to intersect with the lives of the parishioners of a small church on the Texas border with Mexico.

 SIDEBAR I

I have Bankers Boxes filled with folders for stories I have written over the last four or five decades, many of the writings from LareDOS’ 20-year run in print.

Folders for some of the stories, such as this one that appeared in print when I worked for one weekly paper in Zapata and then another, are accompanied by interview notes and photographs.

Many photos in this folder yielded the good memories of the drive and synergy of all who worked to restore Nuestra Señora del Refugio Church. And it yielded one photo I had forgotten I had taken at a huge, aggressive, and terrifying brush fire on the riverbanks just north of San Ygnacio on March 10, 1991. And there he was, the church arsonist, Delmer Javier Leiva Hernandez, looking all deer-in-the-headlights in the foreground a month after the Feb. 12 church fire and 10 days before his arrest for felony one arson — helping volunteer firefighters roll out a hose.

María Eugenia Guerra

Confessed arsonist Delmer Javier Leiva Hernandez is pictured at a March 10, 1991 brush fire on the riverbanks north of San Ygnacio after the Feb. 12 church fire and before his arrest on March 25.

The foray through these boxes of stories — which I am attempting to organize as though to remind myself that my earthly tenure as a writer documented and bore witness to both the evil acts and good deeds of humankind — is an evocative experience that also advises me of markers on the timeline of my personal history: when I found my voice in written words, how I worked, who I was then.

And there in the stories I find, too, the subtle reminder that the stories are not only about the people or events in them or the setting in which the story unfolded.

They are also about the writer. 1991: 15 years divorced, living in utter quietude on the edge of the monte in a rustic 750 square-foot ranch house near San Ygnacio, reading Raymond Carver and Gina Berriault, making sense of the life and relationships I’d left in Wimberley and Austin in walks through the beautiful arroyos that cut through our land, re-setting my life’s clock to sunrise and sunset, adding feeding cattle to my resumé, having no telephone service, save a shoulder-carried cell phone that weighed six pounds and only worked a mile into the ranch.

The boxes hold far more than paper. They are freighted with information I seem to need.

SIDEBAR II

A brief history of Nuestra Señora del Refugio Church

(From The Chapel of San Ygnacio by Father Robert E. Wright, OMI, Oblate School of Theology.)

Rancher Don Blas Uribe donated the land for Nuestra Señora del Refugio Church in 1872. A local collection brought in $49 to start a building fund and to augment a donation made by Bishop Claude Marie Dubuis, the second Bishop of Galveston, to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate missionary priests, a donation that had been collected from marital dispensations (annulments) in the border reach from Brownsville to San Ygnacio. 

The Oblates donated another $80 and with that, construction commenced in 1872. The chapel would cost $887 when it was completed in 1875. Another collection in San Ygnacio paid for a $73.50 bell. Both the chapel and the bell were blessed by Father Pierre Clos, O.M.I, the pastor of Roma on February 7, 1875.

The chapel was dedicated to San Ignacio de Loyola, and the bell to Nuestra Señora del Refugio. Stations of the Cross were placed on the walls of the chapel on August 28. An image of the sacred Heart of Jesus and a copper cross were bought for $7.75 on March 23, 1876.

In June of 1878 Bishop Dominic Mauncy of the Vicariate Apostolic of Brownsville tendered the care of the church from the Oblates to the diocesan priests of Laredo. In July 1883, he returned it to the Oblates who immediately made repairs and added a sacristy that served as sleeping quarters for the visiting missionary.

Under the care of Father Julio Piat the church bought a manger, three frames and three large images for the sanctuary, a funeral pall, cassocks and surplices for the choir children, a tabernacle, a baptismal font, and a blanket for the priest.

The font was carved in stone by a San Ygnacio artist.

Despite a prolonged drought that had put many in San Ygnacio in financial peril, the church had grown and needed to expand. Father Piat promised to expand the church and add a small bell tower. He received a $125 donation from Bishop Peter Verdaguer, 50 pesos from R. Martin, 40 pesos from Antonio Bruni, and 10 pesos from the Mexican consul at Roma.

Two-thousand stones were hauled to enlarge the church by 18 feet. During construction Mass was celebrated at the home of Don Manuel Benavides. Father Piat delivered on the expansion of the chapel, the promise of a bell tower, and the construction of another sacristy on the southside of the altar and a white picket fence.

Under the administration of Father Yvo Tymen, a Waterloo chapel organ and a statue of St. Joseph arrived in 1909. A new set of Stations of the Cross arrived in 1911.

Father Tymen’s successor, Father Centurioni, paid Oblate lay brothers $35 to top the squat bell tower with a conical metal steeple and a cross in 1913. A measurement made in 1916 showed the church to be 61 feet long and 21 feet wide.

A remodeling in the 1960s covered many of the church’s original and architecturally significant features. The restoration that was begun in 1991 as a result of the fire brought much to light, revealing in particular the character of the hearts and hands that first configured native stone and native wood to build so precious, enduring, and formidable a house of faith.

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