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>Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 07:50:59 -0700
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>From: "Brian W. Kenny" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: more yellow journalism
>
>EUROPEAN INFLUENCE SEEN IN LANDSCAPE, LANGUAGE AND RELIGION
>04/15/98 12:48PM BY LESLIE LINTHICUM ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL
>ESPANOLA, N.M. (AP) _ Every time Nick Salazar digs a fence post hole or
>turns a row of dirt to plant corn on his property north of Espanola, he
>uncovers a chip of Spanish legacy. Salazar built his house on the west bank
>of the Rio Grande on top of the settlement of San Gabriel, the first
>permanent Spanish colony in the New World. Over the years, Salazar has
>uncovered an ornate officer's helmet, daggers and cannonballs buried in the
>river silt centuries after Spanish soldiers, settlers and their families
>landed on the river bank. ``I still find a lot of stuff in my field when I
>plow or irrigate or even when I'm just walking,'' Salazar says. ``It's just
>under the surface.'' In New Mexico, history is never far away. When
>sculptor Reynaldo ``Sonny'' Rivera needed a model for a large bronze statue
>of expedition leader Juan de Onate, he did not have to look far for someone
>with the strong features and high cheekbones that reflected Onate's Basque
>and Andalusian bloodlines. His model was a cement company employee from
>Chilili, a descendant of the 1598 party. The footsteps of Onate and the 500
>Spanish colonists who trudged up the Rio Grande from Mexico in 1598 echo
>today in indelible alterations to New Mexico's landscape. The weathered
>written logs of the expedition show that the Spaniards' wooden carts were
>filled with sickles, axes and
>hoes _ the first metal tools seen in the New World _ along with cannons and
>gun powder, wheat, chile and fruit seeds. The expedition brought sheep,
>goats, horses, cattle and mules from Mexico to the northern frontier. The
>inspection logs do not enumerate the less tangible but equally enduring
>baggage carried by the settlers _ the Ten Commandments, a penitente
>tradition, the Gregorian calendar, a proficiency in building with mud
>bricks, a written language, blue eyes and wavy hair. The enduring effects
>of the expedition have been nearly buried in debate about whether to praise
>or condemn Onate's military actions in this 400th anniversary year. But the
>marks of the expedition have remained fresh on New Mexico. ``It laid the
>foundation of what is New Mexico. Everything starts from that. It is the
>defining moment in our history,''Onate biographer Marc Simmons says.
>Ninety-year-old Alfredo Romero, whose lilting accent reveals Spanish as his
>primary language, has an aquiline profile that could have been traced from
>a drawing of a conquistador. Romero was born and grew up in Las Trampas, a
>250-year-old village tucked into a valley beneath the western slopes of the
>Sangre de Cristo mountains. His childhood, on what tourist brochures now
>call the ``high road to Taos,'' was one of horses and wagons and chickpea
>and pumpkin harvests in acequia-fed fields; of candles and oil lamps; of
>Spanish spoken with Castillian lisps and self-flagellating penitentes
>making their Holy Thursday encuentro procession through
>the village plaza and up to the hills to re-enact the Crucifixion.
>Much has changed in the 50 years since World War II and the atomic bomb
>research project cracked open New Mexico's northern mountains and allowed a
>torrent of modern technologies and influences to pour in. Roads were paved,
>running water and indoor plumbing and electricity followed. Jobs opened up
>at Los Alamos and fields fell fallow. Telephone wires were strung in Las
>Trampas in 1962 and today many adobe farmhouses display television
>satellite dishes.
>``Oh, things have changed, yes,'' says Romero. Children leave to go to
>school and find jobs, many of the most recent generation knowing only the
>Spanish they learn in public school classes. There is little for them in
>terms of jobs or even the simplest conveniences _ banks, restaurants, movie
>theaters. Genevieve Sandoval, who with her husband, Joe, acts as a
>mayordomo for the town church, has a saying: ``Las Trampas is for the very
>young and the very old.'' The expedition's influences are embedded even in
>traditions of the pueblos that had established communities here long before
>Spain set its sights on the New World. Matachines dances, baking white
>bread in adobe ovens, even annual meetings of religious leaders to choose
>governors, are adopted rituals that date to the Onate party's arrival. ``My
>name would not be Garcia,'' says San Juan Pueblo's former governor, Joseph
>A. Garcia, when he tries to imagine how life at the pueblo might be
>different had it not felt the Spanish imprint. ``I wouldn't have been
>raised Catholic.'' Nor would the pueblo be known as San Juan. Pueblo
>residents called their home Ohkay Owingeh, ``the place of the strong
>people'' in their Tewa language. San Juan was a label chosen by the
>Catholic friars and Spanish governor in honor of St. John the Baptist,
>Onate's patron saint. After Onate retreated to Mexico, the Spanish crown
>left the colony alone to develop at its own slow pace. ``The lack of
>population then as now obviously affected the way things developed,'' says
>Thomas Chavez, the director of the Palace of the Governors and a descendant
>of a second wave of settlers in 1601. ``We were an island in the
>wilderness.'' Still, descendants of the settlers feel strong ties to Spain
>today, particularly through language and religion. ``A European legacy
>certainly came with Onate and it's a legacy that lives,'' says colonial
>historian John Kessell. Colonists brought wives and children and they
>multiplied. Thirteen years after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 cleared the
>lands of Europeans, members of many of the original families returned.
>``There really is a continuity,'' says Kessell.``The bloodlines remain.''
>After San Gabriel was established, the New Mexico colony grew to include 14
>new towns in the next 100 years, including Chimayo, which was established
>in 1693. Between 1700 and 1800, only another 30 towns were settled, mostly
>up and down the Rio Grande corridor. While the state's population would
>grow during 25 years under Mexican rule, and in its next 150 as a U.S.
>territory and state, cultural traditions and families' oral histories still
>harken back to Spain. ``People here still see through these centuries back
>to Spain,'' says Chavez. ``The language is still here. The religion is
>still very much alive. What you have are people who have grown up here and
>they've heard their history and it's very
>much alive for them.'' Ronaldo Miera, a retired postal worker who lives in
>Albuquerque, traces his family history back to several of the settling
>families Bartolome Montoya, Maria de Zamora, Pedro Duran y Chaves, Pedro
>Robledo and Hernan Martin Serrano. ``I have always been told when I was
>growing up that I was Spanish,'' says Miera, 55. ``Some of my
>great-great-grandfathers were born when this was still Spain. It's not that
>far back. It's only four generations.''
>
 
Anita Cohen-Williams
Listowner of HISTARCH, SUB-ARCH, SPANBORD
Co-listowner/Manager of ANTHRO-L
Contributing Editor, Anthropology
http://www.suite101.com
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