The 47th state exists for many as scenery out a window, car or airplane. For others, it may as well be an appendage of Mexico, of no extra significance. The state is far more complex and beautiful than assumptions grant. Native Americans, Spanish, Mexican and American influences formed and still form the outlooks of the New Mexican people, producing a colorful agglomeration of cultures. Collisions of worldviews are not without their conflicts: the heart of the state is etched with memory of struggle.
What lessons does New Mexico offer? Can the paradox be reconciled and the mystery explored? Summoning the experience of a multitude of peoples, I hope to furnish those answers.
Introit: The Ancient Ones
Coursing down from the Bering Strait thousands of years before the birth of Christ, the Native Americans of old populated two unknown continents. Across different time periods, several of these groups made their homes in New Mexico.
The Anasazi were the first major group to leave a lasting mark on the state. Building a sophisticated society out of the decentralized communities of their predecessors, the Anasazi constructed cities across the western part of New Mexico. Chaco Canyon, two hours northwest of present-day Albuquerque, became an important center for the civilization. Struggling to draw a living from the dry land, the Anasazi constructed elaborate irrigation and trade networks to support their lifestyle. Trees for construction arrived from hundreds of miles away, bands of traders from far off central Mexico brought luxury goods up wide paved roads to sate the cravings of the Anasazi elite.
For hundreds of years the Anasazi moved with the rhythms of the earth, resisting the harsh climate and unpredictable rainfall. But, around 1200 AD, the rains did not come. Irrigation systems failed, deforestation spread and the foundations of the culture shook. What seemed unconquerable quickly fell to ruin, and the proud Anasazi warred and emigrated. Some of the survivors resettled along the great Rio Grande in the center of the state, joining the Pueblo cultures. A similar fate befell the cliff dwelling cultures that also lived in the area both before and during the time of the Anasazi.
The Pueblo cultures coalesced as agrarian societies living primarily in the fertile land of the Rio Grande valley. Speaking a close family of languages and derived from several ancient heritages, Pueblo cultures weathered New Mexico's harsh environment and developed a powerful bond with the natural world around them. From the mesa-top perch of Acoma Pueblo to the secluded hill country of Zuni Pueblo to the riparian strongholds of Pojoaque Pueblo, these diverse communities form the backbone of Native New Mexico.
One of the deepest connections to the land exists among the Navajo people, who occupy the northwest part of New Mexico. The Navajo have lived in their homeland so long that their myths assert they have been there since the dawn of time. Bound by four holy mountains in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah, including Mount Taylor near Grants, NM, the Navajo people farm and herd sustainably under the watchful guardianship of a pantheon of nature deities. Across the Navajo Nation, echoes of divine invocation resonate beneath the sun-washed desert sky. The Dine, as they are known, continue on.
Native peoples of New Mexico, who also included Apache and some Comanche, coexisted in a general state of peace in their separate spheres with established trade networks. The ritual struggle to survive would become even more difficult, however, with the arrival of foreigners committed to imposing their culture on the weathered land.
Franciscans and Footholds
Environmental conditions did their work in limiting New Mexico's population to only the hardiest and best adapted. The delicate minimalism of the native societies did not appeal to proud Spaniards, who arrived on the scene in the middle of the 16th century. The defeat of Moctezuma and the Aztecs in 1521 spurred both Spanish dreams and horses across the hemisphere. In the Spanish mind, if gold, fertility and economic success lay in central Mexico, so too would those riches exist elsewhere.
Endorsed by the papacy with the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, Spanish adventurers, many on privately financed operations, swept toward New Mexico. Francisco Coronado, drawn by the legends of Cibola, the Seven Cities of Gold, led the first major Spanish expedition to the region. Coronado found only the minimalist Pueblos, with no gold and very little glory to add to the Spaniard's name. The expedition instead declared sovereignty over the region both for the monarchs and for Christianity. While the search for gold and glory was futile, an important precedent was set: Spanish and Christian influences would soon be ubiquitous.
Successive Spanish conquests used superior weaponry and Franciscan priests to overcome physical and spiritual resistance from Pueblo Indians. Battles such as Acoma led to functional Spanish control over the region. Juan de Onate founded a capital at San Gabriel, but later moved it to present day Santa Fe for safety from restive Pueblo peoples. The Hispanicization of New Mexico continued into the 17th century with the systematic reordering of Pueblo lifestyles through feudal economic structure and relocation to missions for religious conversion.
Spanish occupation, however, was ultimately fragile. The fissiparous Pueblo peoples rose in revolt in 1680, usurped their Franciscan monk and Spanish landowning overlords and maintained a fractious government for over a decade before Spaniards returned to end the last days of native control over New Mexico. In the ensuing years, Hispanic norms became deeply embedded in the New Mexican landscape. Catholicism, ranching, music, dress, and political leaders became part of the transference with the colonial government in Mexico City. The Spanish thus successfully enforced their own ideologies on a foreign land.
History's Periphery: 1800-1950
With the twin threads of Hispanic and Native culture established, New Mexico's uneasy confluence of culture endured through continual upheaval. The wayfarer's haven of El Morro, or Inscription Rock, in western New Mexico served as the narrative for this chaotic time in New Mexico history. Used by time immemorial by forerunners of the Puebloan people, the rock bears tales of Spanish, Mexican and American travels across the state.
The state fell under Mexican jurisdiction in 1821, only to have its eastern half claimed by Texas in 1836. In 1845 it became part of the United States as a territory, solidified by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Settlers, venturers and vagabonds alike streamed into the state on the Santa Fe Trail as the American West beckoned. Personalities such as Kit Carson of Taos became famous for their reflection of the frontier spirit. In 1862, the Confederate States of America flew its flag over the capital at Santa Fe for a brief time before being repelled by Union volunteers at the Battle of Glorieta Pass.
Following the Civil War, surveyors permeated the state's natural wonders, clearing logistical barriers to settlement. The last vestiges of native control were purged in the name of Progress and positivism, as the Navajo Nation was rapidly defeated and exiled to Fort Sumner in the southeastern part of the state. "Indian Schools" sprang into existence across the state, teaching American values to thousands of malleable native children. The state's heritage was emasculated, its oldest residents shunned. El Morro, the proud Inscription Rock, fell away unnoticed with the construction of the railroad forty miles to the north. Cattle drives passed through the eastern part of the state, drawing their share of conflicts along the way. The Lincoln County War, made famous by the outlaw Billy the Kid, demonstrated the prevalence of deep economic restructuring. As the American dream blazed new trails in the West, so too did it erase the careworn trails of peoples past.
New Mexico gained statehood in 1912, and became the site of a proxy conflict to the First World War with the raid of Pancho Villa on Columbus in 1916. With the Second World War, the state became a key supporter of the American war effort with the development of the Manhattan Project at isolated Los Alamos. Spearheaded by Robert Oppenheimer, the U.S. atomic program culminated with the first nuclear test of a plutonium implosion bomb near Alamogordo at the Trinity site in 1945.
As irradiated clouds bloomed over first Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, New Mexico climaxed its role as a supporter of the worldly and human. Focused outward, the state could not have deviated farther from its roots. Where were the pastoral Navajo, the peaceful Pueblo, and the love for natural wonder? Where were the careful synchronizations with the rhythms of the earth? As if to resoundingly declare man's dominance, the blasted sands of Trinity turned to glass in a fiery crucible of human design.
Painted Desert
New Mexico since World War II bears onward the conflicts that typified the first four hundred years of the state's history. Much of the state does not pass the muster standard presented by liberalized America. Poverty and corruption are rampant, mostly attributable to lack of development and lingering cultural barriers exacerbated by poor conditions. Because of a shared border with Mexico, the state is especially vulnerable to drug trafficking and related crime. Illegal immigration presents ongoing legal challenges to the state's identity as ostensibly Hispanicized.
However, the combination of federal money and an intelligentsia staffing federal installations such as Los Alamos National Laboratory bring opportunity and human capital to the state. New industries such as film production offer jobs and economic growth. Progress, while destructive of old cultures, brings tremendous constructive benefits. Yet Progress too has its practical foil. New Mexico now is beset with a host of environmental problems including unsustainable water use, biodiversity loss, forest mismanagement and cleanup difficulties from mining, especially of uranium.
The Third Way
The very landscape is riven. On one side sits the austere cultures of Pueblo and Navajo, dwelling semi-autonomously as shadows of their former influence. This side is rich in history, diversity and understanding of the land, but is benighted. Destitution and crime too often characterize their existence. On the other side sits development, first offered by Spain and then by the Americans. Romantic and inviting, this side too often fails to recognize its own limitations and too often accedes to the cultural vices elsewhere in the United States.
Each of these competing forces in New Mexico has what the other does not. Instead of tearing the state apart, they can bring it together. Instead of contrast and polarization, there can be reconciliation. In small ways such unification already occurs. The Navajo Code Talkers in World War II were a harbinger of change even in New Mexico's most outwardly-focused hour. The work and life of late artist Georgia O'Keeffe represents the integration nature and the human world in a New Mexican context. The Santa Fe Opera sits as a focal point of both human sophistication and intimate encounter with nature overlooking the Tesuque Valley. The high desert, especially in Albuquerque, begets a synthesis of the mysterious spirit with professionalism. Far less ephemeral than the Hippie movement that offered its own strange synthesis, the synthesis spoken of here is one of deep cultural understanding and trust.
Thus, out of the paradox and mystery of New Mexico comes truth. Both the people and the land, diverse and seemingly irresolvable, find their greatest hope in this third way. For out of their differences come their solutions. The Navajo, guardians of the ancient soul of New Mexico, understood the meeting place of this dualistic reality:
"With the balance of earth and sky we walk in harmony"
