This article originally appeared in Ajo, Arizona – The People and The Legends by Charles J. Gaetjens, a publication of the Ajo Historical Society Museum. It is reproduced here with permission. You may obtain your own copy of this book by contacting the Ajo Historical Society Museum at P.O. Box 778, Ajo, AZ 85321
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Dona Liberata Rodriques
Piedras Negras lay in the Rio Grande Valley, southward of what was to become the state of Texas. Don Juan Rodriques and his spouse arrived there in 1860. They became wealthy, owning much land, stores, hotels, and other types of businesses. A baby girl was born to them in 1872. She was the sixth child in a family of four boys and two girls. She was named Liberata.
A Family friend, Don Faustino Garza, had a son, Ezequiel, and both families desired that he would wed Liberata. Each family was of noble blood. This marriage took place when the children became adults. The marriage did not work out and Liberata fled with her daughters to the Gulf of Mexico, where she boarded a ship and sailed around the Horn of South America, arriving in Guaymas four months later. She established a homestead in a place called La Cieniga.
Using an inheritance from her father, she bought eight wagons and teams of horses to pull them. She hired drivers and filled the wagons with many types of merchandise to sell in areas where she established a freight business. It was 1896, at the age of 24, that she started north from La Cieniga, which remained her home base. She traveled to ranches and towns, buying, selling, and trading. Her established routes finally touched Hermosillo, Santa Ana, Nogales, Caborca, Sonoyta, and after 1900, Old Ajo and Clarkston.
Lady Liberata was a beautiful Spanish woman. She traveled the southwestern deserts for 28 years without once being attacked by Indians of bandits of any race. Even the fierce Apache gave her safe conduct and traded with her. She was an honest trader, receiving respect from all and giving it.
Towns like Ajo, far off the beaten routes, looked forward to Lady Liberata’s arrival with her loaded wagons. The staples and merchandise that she provided made living in Ajo a little bit better. Her trips lasted several weeks each, longer if she met bad weather, broken wagons or dying horses.
Mexican home brew was carried in her wagons during prohibition. It was legal in Mexico, and she never was arrested for furnishing the stuff to the miners in Ajo, or in other towns that she served. Any lawman would have been run out of town had they tried to arrest her. The lawmen liked her booze, too!
Dona Liberata made her last trip to Ajo in 1924. She died quietly at her home in La Cieniga in 1925. She was the grandmother of the Eberling family, who live in present day Ajo. Her life span of 52 years would fill a dozen interesting books.
