Rudolfo Alfonso Anaya was born on October 30, 1937, to Rafaelita and Martin Anaya in Pastura, New Mexico, a small village located on the western edge of the Llano Estacado (the Staked Plains). He was the eighth of ten children (three of them from previous marriages by his parents). Rudolfo was born into a generation of Mexican-American families that experienced the culmination of the displacement of an agro-pastoral, self-subsistence economy by a wage-labor market economy. His father tended to withdraw from this process, while his mother, a devout Catholic, encouraged Rudolfo to explore, adapt, and achieve in the enveloping social world of the Anglo American. Early in his life, his family moved from Pastura to Santa Rosa, where he spent his years as a boy.
In 1952, Rudolfo's family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Already a teenager, Rudolfo found the city exciting and adapted quickly. Barrio life in the Barelas section of the city swept him into the fold of the urban life of Chicano/as. In 1954, a swimming accident left Rudolfo temporarily paralyzed and gave him time and cause to consider many philosophical questions about life and human existence.
