Tall, flickering candles line the dirt floor, their light bouncing off the adobe brick walls. Crosses and flowers are scattered throughout. This marks the unconsecrated grave of a man involved in a tragic love triangle.
Nestled in Barrio Viejo between La Pilita Museum and El Minuto restaurant in Tucson stands El Tiradito. A plaque at the shrine states that El Tiradito means “The Castaway.” The man the shrine is dedicated to died in Tucson sometime in the early 1870s. El Tiradito is the only shrine on the National Register of Historic Places dedicated to a sinner.
El Tiradito was nominated for the registry in an effort to save Barrio Viejo from being demolished for the construction of the Butterfield Express.
The Butterfield Express would have been an east-west expressway through Tucson. The construction was to start after the Urban Renewal project in the 1960s. Tucson’s Urban Renewal project destroyed all of the barrios north of Cushing Street to make room for the Tucson Convention Center and La Placita. To stop this, citizens of the barrio and two other surrounding neighborhoods threatened by the construction formed the El Tiradito Foundation.
El Tiradito Foundation lobbied for the shrine to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. They knew once the shrine made it on the register, it would be nearly impossible to demolish because of its national recognition.
The first site of El Tiradito was at the corner of Simpson and Meyer streets, but the shrine has been at three different, very close, locations. The second site of the shrine was at the corner of Simpson and Main streets. Its present location, 356 S. Main St., is the location listed on the Nation Register of Historic Places. It was accepted to the registry in 1971.
Ray Martinez, a volunteer at La Pilita Museum, says he likes El Tiradito because it is such a large part of Hispanic folklore. While some come only for special occasions, Martinez said many people visit the shrine on a regular basis. Martinez says El Tiradito adds to the neighborhood and he sees it as a positive thing.
“My favorite image of El Tiradito is at night when the candles are glowing. You can almost feel the prayers and wishes of people floating in the dark air,” said Carol Cribbet-Bell, executive director of La Pilita Museum.
El Tiradito is also called The Wishing Shrine. Martinez says many people believe that if you light a candle and it is still burning the next day, your wish will come true. Visitors also place prayers and letters to lost love ones in cracks and spaces between the bricks in the back wall. Many prayers ask for broken hearts to be healed.
There are many stories surrounding El Tiradito. According to the Tucson-Pima Historical Commission, the most popular one involves a gambler who fell in love with the wife of another man. When the woman’s husband found out, he shot the gambler. After he was shot, the gambler staggered away, fell and died. The spot where he died is the original site of El Tiradito.
Martinez says of all the stories, his favorite takes place in the mid 1800s. The story involves a man who falls in love with a woman from a distance. The man saw this beautiful women everyday and eventually, despite never speaking with her, fell deeply in love with her. He decided to talk to her parents to seek their approval to visit with their daughter. On his way to speak with her parents, he found that she had already been promised to someone else.
Upon hearing this, his heart was broken and he killed himself right on the spot. Martinez said the shrine was built because those who take their own lives are considered sinners by the Catholic Church, so they are not buried in the church cemetery. The man was buried in the spot where he died and his family and neighbors brought flowers and candles.
The docents at La Pilita tell a story that involves a woman who was on her deathbed in Mexico, and sent her son Juan Olivares to find her husband, Diego Olivares, who had gone to Tucson many years before looking for work. When Juan made it to Tucson he began knocking on doors asking about his father. When Juan knocked on his father’s door a beautiful young woman answered. She was his father’s new wife. She told him that his father was gone, chopping wood, but she invited him inside to wait. When his father arrived home later that evening, he became jealous when he saw another man in his house with his wife. Before Juan could explain who he was, his father chased him out into the street and killed him with the axe.
Despite the sacred place’s gruesome origins, today the little shrine that saved a neighborhood exists as a place many Tucsonans visit when they are hoping to make wishes come true.
