New Mexico Hispanics

...they were a people from the rural villages of New Mexico, who found their common origins in the Spanish colony’s slave trade with the nomadic tribes of the region. Silences have grown from their history because its historical and ethnic complexity does not fit into the narrative of the United States, and the trauma associated with the violent memories of human trafficking and servitude are not easily reconciled. Genízaro identity was created from marginalization. The aim of this essay is to locate the silenced Genízaro peoples in history and track the existence of their personal and collective identities as they struggled to survive throughout history and into the present.

The Spanish colonization of New Mexico brought together populations with different perspectives on space and landscape, each drawing upon extensive cultural and historical roots. While in some cases Spanish and Pueblo attitudes exhibited considerable tangency, in other areas these perspectives clashed, contributing to painful processes of culture contact and change. Drawing on recent work at Paako, a seventeenth-century Pueblo village and visita, this paper explores the articulation of Spanish and Pueblo concepts of space and place at multiple scales, successively examining these processes within the village, the broader Paako community, and the New Mexico colony as a whole.

The Spanish colonization of New Mexico brought together populations with different perspectives on space and landscape, each drawing upon extensive cultural and historical roots. While in some cases Spanish and Pueblo attitudes exhibited considerable tangency, in other areas these perspectives clashed, contributing to painful processes of culture contact and change. Drawing on recent work at Paako, a seventeenth-century Pueblo village and visita, this paper explores the articulation of Spanish and Pueblo concepts of space and place at multiple scales, successively examining these processes within the village, the broader Paako community, and the New Mexico colony as a whole.

People of Mexican Origin lacked broad based mobilization for civil rights during the midtwentieth century and failed to gain attention with national leaders unaware of the unique conditions in the Southwest. In the absence of these factors, elite leadership and issue networks filled the gap. In this paper I explore the case of New Mexico. I argue that the elite leadership of New Mexico Senator Dennis Chavez helped to shape national debates regarding fair employment and other civil rights legislation and led to passage of a strong fair employment law in 1949. However, a lack of national legislation, policy implementation and the rise of backlash politics prevented the creation of a strong policy and strong agency. I argue that this lack of national mobilization and backlash politics at the state and federal level have continued to hinder the creation of policies to assist and incorporate people of Mexican origin and explore ways other moments in the history of civil rights policy are related to the efforts of Senator Chavez.

With the Columbian Quincentenary just a few years off, the Society of American Archaeology (SAA) puzzled its role in anticipating the inevitable events that would surround the 500th anniversary of European-Native American interactions. I was a member of the Executive Committee of the SAA at the time, and the president asked me spearhead the society's efforts for observing the Columbian Quincentenary. Thanks to the support and encouragement of key SAA officers Don Fowler, Prudence Rice, Bruce Smith, and Jerry Sabloff, we were able to develop a plan. After exploring a number of options with the board, we settled upon a series of topical seminars that we dubbed Columbian Consequences. These nine public seminars, to be held over a three-year span, were designed to generate an accurate and factual assessment of what did-and what did not-transpire as a result of the Columbian encounter. We specifically tasked ourselves to probe the social, demographic, ecological, ideological, and human repercussions of European-Native American encounters across the Spanish Borderlands, spreading the word among both the scholarly community and the greater public at large. Although sponsored by the SAA, the Columbian Consequences enterprise rapidly transcended the traditional scope of archaeological inquiry, drawing together a diverse assortment of personalities and perspectives. We invited leading scholars of the day to synthesize current thinking about specific geographical settings across the Spanish Borderlands, which extend from St. Augustine (Florida) to San Francisco (California). Each overview was designed to provide a Native American context, a history of European involvement, and a summary of scholarly research. The structure was fairly simple. Each of three consecutive SAA annual meetings (in 1988, 1989, and 1990) hosted three Columbian Consequences seminars. The resulting three volumes were published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, which remarkably published each volume less than a year after the seminar papers were presented. The initial book, entitled Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands West (Thomas 1989), tackled the European-Native American interface from the Pacific Slope across the southwestern heartland to East Texas, from Russian Fort Ross to southern Baja California. The archaeologists involved addressed material culture evidence regarding contact period sociopolitics, economics, iconography, and physical environment. Other authors attempted to provide a critical balance from the perspectives of American history, Native American studies, art history, ethnohistory, and geography. In the intermediate volume-Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands East (Thomas 1990)-nearly three dozen scholars pursued a similar agenda across La Florida, the greater Southeast, and the Caribbean.

Aunque este texto no se despliega en la plataforma (ignoro la razón) el pdf sí está guardado y se puede bajar y leer.

Se trata de una reflexión metodológica sobre el recorrido de mi trabajo por diferentes momentos de la historia de Nuevo México y los espacios relacionados con él, desde el siglo XVI hasta el siglo XXI.

Como un reducto de la cultura española en los actuales Estados Uni-
dos, los santos de madera elaborados hoy en Nuevo México nos hablan de
unas comunidades hispanas en busca de los símbolos de su identidad, de la
esencia de su cultura, frente al movimiento uniformizador de las modernas
sociedades industrializadas y a la cada vez menos hegemónica cultura
anglosajona de los Estados Unidos. Los santos de Nuevo México, tras una
época de recesión e incluso de manipulación por parte de los angloamericanos, se han convertido en uno de los puntos centrales de las reivindicaciones culturales de los hispanos de Nuevo México. La colección de imágenes religiosas del Museo de América, realizadas por Max Roybal, santero contemporáneo de Albuquerque, y realizadas de acuerdo con los patrones tradicionales, ilustran este nuevo significado que la sociedad hispana de Nuevo México ha sabido dar a uno de sus productos culturales y religiosos más significativos.

Este capítulo documenta y analiza el desarrollo de la ocupación territorial como característica fundamental de los dos procesos de conquista que han ocurrido en la historia de Nuevo México, el español y el estadounidense, desmenuzando la complejidad de las relaciones  interétnicas que resultaron de este largo proceso a partir un estudio de caso. Basado en investigación etnográfica (trabajo de campo realizado en 2003, 2004, 2005 y 2007) y de archivo, el capítulo se concentra en los conflictos territoriales y formas de cooperación y convivencia entre dos comunidades que comparten un mismo valle: la reservación india de Picurís y la villa hispana de Peñasco. En particular explora cómo se reflejan estos conflictos en las transformaciones que  experimentó la fiesta patronal de San Lorenzo a finales del siglo XX y principos del XXI.

Este artículo discute los retos metodológicos que involucra el análisis de colectividades marginadas dentro de los contextos multiétnicos típicamente derivados de procesos de colonización y conquista. Propone una aproximación transdisciplinaria que combina la historia, la etnografía y la sociología, complementadas con el estudio de los sistemas jurídicos en los que éstas han estado inmersas. Para ello utiliza como ejemplo el caso de las comunidades hispano-mexicanas de Nuevo México, cuyo origen está en el pasado colonial de México y que quedaron integradas a los Estados Unidos de América al término de la guerra que sostuvieron ambos países entre 1846 y 1848 cuando, en virtud del Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo, México cedió la mitad septentrional de su territorio a su victorioso vecino