Like many stories in New Mexico, this one begins more than 400 years ago.
It starts with Cristobal Baca, born in 1567 in Mexico City. He arrived in what is now Northern New Mexico around 1600 with his wife, Ana Ortiz, and a group of reinforcement soldiers sent to defend the Spanish colony newly established by Juan de Oñate at Ohkay Owingeh. The couple would be the start of generations of families who have lived throughout the state.
Surviving descendants of the Bacas were forced to flee south after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
But children of their grandson Cristobal Baca II (about 1635-1697) and his wife, Ana Moreno de Lara (about 1637-1693), returned to Northern New Mexico following Don Diego de Vargas’ reconquest of the territory. One of Cristobal II and Ana’s sons, Manuel Baca, had nine children with his wife, Maria Hurtado de Salazar.
This line of the Bacas would multiply, becoming a “founding family” of New Mexico, said Henrietta Martinez Christmas,cq a genealogist and past president of the New Mexico Genealogical Society. Their descendants would carry a secret, likely passed down from Manuel or Maria — one that affects thousands of people today.
A genetic variant of a rare disorder known as cerebral cavernous malformations is more prevalent than usual in New Mexico; genealogists believe one of the Bacas was the starting point of the genetic mutation behind CCM1, or the Common Hispanic Mutation, which has been passed from parent to child for generations.
The condition causes small blood vessels with abnormally thin walls to cluster together in the brain and spinal cord, often leading to chronic headaches, seizures and stroke-like symptoms.
Martinez Christmas describes members of the Manuel Baca family as “the bottleneck … everybody seems to go back to.”
At least four of Manuel and Maria’s children, including Cristobal Baca III, probably had the CCM1 mutation, genealogical research shows.
Today, descendants of the Bacas are all over New Mexico, said genealogist Joyce Gonzales,cq a CCM patient who has been studying the family’s history and its connection to the disorder for years.
A long family history in the state, she said, indicates a possibility of inheriting the condition.
“If we’re Hispanics with a 400-year history here,” she said, “we all go back to the Bacas.”
‘I think this is the family’
Gonzales’ symptoms started more than three decades ago, when she was in her early 30s.
She started to feel a “pins and needles” sensation, running from her little finger to her elbows. The feeling appeared and continued for a few months, while Gonzales visited doctors and underwent tests trying to determine its cause. A few months later, with the tingling gone and no answers from her doctors, she moved on.
But the sensation came back after a few years. After another round of tests and doctor visits, she still had no answer.
It took some 15 years to receive an official CCM diagnosis, she said. Treating the lesions in her brain, she added, has required doctor visits and surgery out of state, though the pins and needles in her left arm have never gone away.
A self-described “researcher at heart,” Gonzales’ love of genealogy predated her CCM diagnosis. She visited cemeteries, spoke with family members and traveled elsewhere in the state to map out her family tree.
“Curious minds need to know,” Gonzales said of her genealogical research. “It just really was sort of a passion of mine.”
To Gonzales, her experience with CCM — an inherited condition — and her genealogical research fit together.
About 20% of CCM cases are genetic. The mutation is what’s known as autosomal dominant, meaning there’s a 50-50 chance a parent with the condition will pass it on to their child, said Dr. Leslie Morrison,cq she/her a retired pediatric neurologist and professor emerita at the University of New Mexico.
On her mother’s side, Gonzales traced her family history straight back to Manuel Baca and two of the three Cristobals.
Over the course of years of research and through collaboration with Martinez Christmas, Gonzales followed the lineages of other CCM patients back to the Bacas, too. Her research has identified Manuel and Maria as the likely “founding grandparents” of CCM1 in New Mexico and throughout the Southwest.
One of the essential clues in their research: Short life spans, Martinez Christmas said.
Because brain bleeds from CCM can lead to seizures, paralysis, strokes and even death, adults dying in their 20s and 30s and children dying at an early age — patterns that would pop up in vital records, though they wouldn’t have been particularly uncommon during the time period — could point to the condition.
The union between Manuel Baca and Maria Hurtado de Salazar marked a notable expansion in clues that pointed to CCM, Martinez Christmas said.
“That’s when we really started seeing these bigger family groups descending [with] this malformation,” she said.
Affected families also developed their own parlance to refer to CCM, Morrison said. She recalled one family that called it “the curse.” Another referred to seizures as los fríos, the chills.
“A lot of those characteristics started falling in place with this family, along those lines,” Martinez Christmas said of the Bacas. “And so, between what Joyce and I did, we were able to say, ‘I think this is the family.’ ”
Resources for modern descendants
Identifying the Bacas as the likely source of the CCM1 mutation in New Mexico isn’t about placing blame, Gonzales said. It’s about ensuring the family’s modern descendants know they have a possibility of having the condition.
“We’re not trying to label people. … We are trying to maybe help both the medical community and families that may be having or have had symptoms for many years,” Gonzales said.
Even if they no longer have the Baca name, the family’s descendants are now all over the state, with some estimates indicating the Bacas have some 5 million modern-day relatives.
Gonzales’ research has traced more than two dozen surnames — prominent among them are C’ de Baca, Campos, Casaus and Padilla — to the Baca line.
However, she recommended families pay closer attention to a history of CCM symptoms, such as seizures and chronic headaches, to determine whether to seek genetic testing.
The genetic component of CCM is an important discussion point for doctors treating patients with the condition, Morrison said, with doctors discussing the risk of inheritance with their patients and offering testing for family members.
The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center has been designated a center of excellence for treating complex cases of CCM and operates a clinic for people with the condition.
Free screenings — which can help determine whether a patient requires further evaluation for CCM — are available through the center.
Because the condition runs in families and communities, part of UNM doctors’ work on CCM is community-based, Morrison said. For example, in addition to researching treatments for the disorder — like conducting drug trials and analyzing patients’ blood and medical imaging — UNM doctors host an annual “family conference” for people with the condition.
The annual conference typically brings together about 100 participants from throughout the state, who gather to learn about the latest research on CCM and what lifestyle changes they might implement in the absence of a cure.
The next statewide family conference is scheduled for June 6, and researchers are planning visits in the coming months to Taos, Las Vegas, Las Cruces and Farmington to meet and share information with CCM patients.
“We realized that if patients were willing to participate in our research study that we owed it to them to give them information that we were generating from the study,” Morrison said.