Legend has it that Rogelio Bustamante built it back in 1861, moving in with his new bride, Leticia Villareal, immediately on completion. It was an idyllic home for the Bustamante and Villareal families until 1938, when the rebellious Ignacio “Nachito” Villareal of Boca Raton, the great-nephew of Sra. Leticia, moved into town, saddled with gambling debt, and intent on hiding from the sordid affairs of his Floridian past. Nachito brought to the home cattle rustlers, rum-runners, stuffy bureaucrats, stuffed turkeys, and a penchant for malarkey and flim-flammery. The original family fled by train to the Loaf-n-Jug in Raton to escape the ignominy, ill repute, and danger to which the hapless village was subjected by Nachito’s worldly ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learning of the “Bustamante Exodus”, as it would come to be known by the locals, Monseigneur Alvaro Fuentes de Loera, rector of the local parish, came to the home to intervene and implore Nachito to repent of his worldly ways or depart the area post-haste. While engaged in a heated exchange on the second-floor balcony, the poor clergyman slipped on a wet bar of Ivory soap that “just happened” to be placed in a convenient spot on the balcony floor, plunging backwards over the railing, and Nachito, inebriated on dandelion wine, followed suit. Just then, providence would intervene, and the very hands of the Virgin of Guadalupe reached down and cushioned the Monseigneur’s fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Nachito was impaled through the heart in a wickedly overgrown thicket of nopales, and died instantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The land and house fell into the hands of Lucas Don Velour, notorious New York mobster and Nachito’s largest gambling debtor, who used it as a stop on his rum-running line until 1961, when Velour left the rum-running business and abandoned the property to the wiles of nature and the erosive forces of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some say the ghost of Nachito still wanders the nopales thicket, wailing for revenge against the Monseigneur and forgiveness from his family. However, we all know that such apparitions are just the result of X-rays bouncing off distant planets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Legend has it that Rogelio Bustamante built it back in…<\/p>\n