New Mexico

Tanya with Mayor of Santa Fe, David Coss, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2007

A short Historical Perspective of New Mexico

The State of New Mexico was historically a part of Mexico, which in turn had been a part of New Spain a few generations ago.

The present states of Texas, Arizona and California had also been a part of this older country until the United States seized or purchased them from the neighbor to the south as a part of the young North American nation’s imperialistic expansion program.

The earliest human inhabitants of New Mexico were probably Mongolian travelers on their generations-long migrations from the steppes of Asia.

The present remnant of these folk are probably the “Indians” who still thinly populate the area, mingled, as humans always will, with sojourners from many other races and times.

By my generation, the original “Indian” inhabitants of New Mexico were practically a vanished mythic tale, though boys from the Government Indian School in Albuquerque came to dance their exotic “Hoop Dance” for we gringo Boy Scouts occasionally at our meeting place in the basement of Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church, also in Albuquerque.

The half acre “ranch” that my father was always buying in Albuquerque--making monthly payments for years and years--had a deed going back to a Spanish land grant two hundred years ago.

The Rio Grande, The “Great River”--“too thick to drink and too thin to plow”, as they say, was a highway of commerce for time out of mind.

“Mexica” traders from pre-conquest Mexico City (Tenochtitlan) had exchanged manufactured goods and feather-craft for the silver and turquoise mined in this area.

Traces of a trade route path have been found leading all the way from Mexico City (and points south) to the ancient Indian village of Taos (and perhaps points north).

In my generation, Taos is famous for the “high rise adobe apartments” of old Taos Pueblo, the thriving art colony of new Taos and the condos and good skiing at very new Taos Ski Valley.

Today Wealthy Americans from the east who retire to New Mexico to enjoy its novel cultural ambiance and its healthy climate own the high priced homes near Taos.

Some Taos land is still owned by “Mexican-Americans” who can trace their genealogy back to the conquistadors and the Taos Indian Tribe owns the largest tract of land communally.

Land “ownership”, in New Mexico as elsewhere, has always been a function of racial features (such as skin color and so forth) and cultural characteristics (language, political system, etc.), with the temporarily strongest or most numerous race owning the land and ruling the rest of the humans. This program has not changed. The dominant race presently appears to be the “white European race” and the land ownership is changing to reflect this reality.

Tomasito, 2008

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