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New Mexico Hispano/Latino/Chicano History

Acuna, R. (1988). Occupied America: A history of Chicanos (3rd ed.). New York: Harper Collins.

Chavez, F. A. (1974). My Penitente land: Reflections on Spanish New Mexico. Santa Fe, NM: Museum of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-89013-255-0 (pb) My Penitente Land is the formative text for anybody who wants to become a complete New Mexican, who wants to appropriate, to make his or her own, the four centuries of Judaeo-Christian Spanish Franciscan life on the land of New Mexico.

Cobos, R. (1983). A dictionary of New Mexico and southern Colorado Spanish. Santa Fe, NM: Museum of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-89013-142-2 (pb) The first serious attempt by a lexicographer to deal with the variant of the Spanish language which has evolved over the past 300 years in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The dictionary should go far in establishing this speech as a legitimate dialect of Spanish and calling attention to its richness, variety, and historical significance.

De Baca, V. C. (Ed.). (1998). La Gente: Hispano history and life in Colorado
(Vol. 2). Denver, CO: Colorado Historical Society. ISBN 0-87081-538-5 (pb) 13 authors chronicle Hispano history and life in Colorado. Readers will first meet Teresita Sandoval -- who moved among cultures and conflicting attitudes of a woman's place in the West. In early twentieth-century memoirs, vaquero Elfido Lopez writes of his work near Trinidad while Pablo Cabeza de Baca recalls the mischief, tragedies and values of his childhood and the earliest days of Denver's Sacred heart College (now Regis University.) In part 2, authors look at the coal strike of 1913-14 and the subsequent Ludlow Massacre, the living conditions of migrant beet workers, and a Depression-era program in which laid-off miners learned the art of weaving. The final section examines 1960s Chicano activism, a Denver neighborhood's campaign to take control of its own affairs, the life of a modern-day curandera practicing indigenous healing, and efforts in the San Luis Valley to preserve community, self-sufficiency, and the environment.

Ebright, M. (1994). Land grants and lawsuits in northern New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-1468-6 (hb) 0-8263-1461-9 (pb) Ebright draws on his wide experience as a historian and attorney to examine the history of New Mexico's land grants from their antecedents in Spain and Mexico down to present-day land and water lawsuits. A comprehensive and clear account of clashing legal systems in eight new essays and four revised versions of previously published works.
From the un-kept promises of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the legal machinations of Santa Fe Ring attorneys, Ebright documents a pattern of land loss and inequities that remain major issues in current lawsuits. Through his examination of the now largely discredited Pueblo Rights Doctrine, the role of custom in Hispanic law, and the failure of US courts to recognize common land ownership, Ebright helps general readers understand complex problems facing northern New Mexico's traditional communities.

Gonzales-Berry, E., and Maciel, D. R. (Eds.). (2000). The Contested Homeland: A
Chicano history of New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico press. ISBN 0-8263-2199-2 The original essays in this book reinterpret the history of New Mexico's past from a Chicano perspective. Self-determination, resistance, and cultural maintenance are the recurring themes in the lives and struggles of Nuevomexicanos from 1848 to the present. The conflict has been not solely with the customs and institutions Anglos introduced -- though certainly that has occurred. On a more fundamental level, the clash has been over modernization -- how the Spanish language, folk traditions, and land grants can survive as a heritage for future generations amid English, new and secular values, and real estate booms and speculation. Nuevomexiancos have confronted colonialism, ethnocentrism, and racism throughout their history. But as these essays make clear, pride in Spanish descent runs deep in New Mexico and has led to a vibrancy unmatched in any other region in the United States. Nuevomexicanos have not simply survived or endured. They have secured their influence through the highest level of education among all Chicanos in the US, through greater political representation at the local and national level -- and in both major parties -- than in any other state, and through a culture that has simultaneously resisted and adapted to change.

Gonzalez, D. J. (1999). Refusing the favor: The Spanish-Mexican women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507890-X (hb) Tells the little-known story of the Spanish-Mexican women who saw their homeland become part of New Mexico. A corrective to traditional narratives of the period, it carefully and lucidly documents the effects of colonization, looking closely at how the women lived both before and after the US took control of the region. Focusing on Santa Fe, which was long one of the largest cities west of the Mississippi, the author demonstrates that women's responses to the conquest were remarkably diverse and that their efforts to preserve their culture were complex and long-lasting. Drawing on a range of sources, from newspapers to wills, deeds, and court records, the author shows that the change to US territorial status did little to enrich or empower the Spanish-Mexican inhabitants. The vast majority, in fact, found themselves quickly impoverished, and this trend toward low-paid labor, particularly for women, continues even today. The author both examines the long-term consequences of colonization and draws illuminating parallels with the experiences of other minorities. Also describes how and why Spanish-Mexican women have remained invisible in the histories of the region for so long. It avoids casting the story as simply "bad" Euro-American migrants and "good" local people by emphasizing the concrete details of how women lived. It covers every aspect of their experience, from their roles as businesswomen to the effects of intermarriage, and it provides an essential key to the history of New Mexico.

Gonzalez, N. L. (1969). The Spanish-Americans of New Mexico: A heritage of pride. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 8263-0154-1 (pb) The Spanish-Americans of New Mexico are a unique ethnic group that constitutes a quarter of the state's population, a larger proportion than in any other state of the union. Among them are descendants of the original Spanish conquistador expeditions, whose origin in the US predates that of the Pilgrims and whose heritage is one of equal pride. The majority are far more recently arrived, but as a group they have maintained their identity, their language, and their customs to a greater extent than their counterparts in California, Colorado, and Texas. Their presence affects every aspect of life in New Mexico today. A prominent young anthropologist tells the fascinating story of these people from 1598 to the present. With understanding realism and authority, she describes the mounting tensions between their traditional culture and the aggressive Anglo society that surrounds it, with particular emphasis on the problems of urbanization, accommodation to the Anglo way of life, and the maintenance of pride in their heritage. There is a concluding chapter on the rapid growth of political activism in recent years (represented by the Brown Berets, the Caballeros de Nueva Espana, the Comancheros del Norte, Tijerina's Alliance of Free City States, and other groups.

Gutierrez, R. A. (1991). When Jesus came, the corn mothers went away: Marriage, sexuality, and power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-1832-6 (pb) This book gives vision to the blind and voice to the mute and silent. It reminds us that the conquest of America was a dialogue between cultures. This is a social history of one remote corner of Spain's colonial American empire, New Mexico, between 1500 and 1846. Using marriage as a window into intimate social relations, the author examines the Spanish conquest of America and its impact on a group of indigenous peoples, the Pueblo Indians, seen in large part from their point of view.
Marriage reflects the social, political, and economic arrangements of a society. When people marry they create social alliances, establish a new social unit, change residence, exchange property, and gain rights to sexual service. Marriage is also about gender and power -- a representation of relations of domination and subordination in other realms. By carefully interrelating the documentary evidence of courtship, marriage, and sexuality with gender and power theory and the conquerors' records of religious and social reform, the book yields a theoretically fruitful pattern of sociopolitical implications, and of relations between the sexes and between the races. It is also a history of the complex web of interactions between men and women, young and old, rich and poor, slave and free, Spaniard and Indian, all of whom fundamentally depended on the other for their own self-definition.
Integrating knowledge and methods from several disciplines, the book offers important new contributions of interpretation (the rhetoric and imagery of Spanish American Catholicism, the relationship between honor and social ranking, the nature of racial hierarchies) and of empirical fact (marriage and inheritance patterns, generational obligations, sources of conflict, and poignant stories of ordinary people.)

Kubler, G. (1940). The religious architecture of New Mexico in the colonial period and since the American occupation. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-1210-1 The only single volume which treats New Mexico churches from the times of the Spanish colonization until 1940. Originally published in 1940 by the Taylor Museum of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

Lucero, D. L. (1995). The Adobe Kingdom: New Mexico 1598-1958 as experienced by the families Lucero de Godoy y Baca. Pueblo, CO: El Escritorio. ISBN 0-9628974-3-4 History is not only the story of heroic acts but also the story of the more mundane occupations of people, from digging irrigation canals to herding sheep. During the first half of its existence, New Mexico was a raucous colony just living on the fringe of sensibility. In 1641, the niece of Antonio Baca became involved in an affair with Governor Luis de Rosas. Her infidelity resulted in the beheading of eight individuals, four of whom were members of her family, including her Uncle Antonio, who sought to avenge her defilement. Twenty-two years before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Spain established a colony in the high country of New Mexico. In this text Dr. Lucero lets us relive the first three and a half centuries of New Mexico's incredible history as experienced by twelve generations of two of its first families.
The saga of the Bacas and Luceros of New Mexico starts with the progenitors, Cristobal Baca and Pedro Lucero de Godoy, when they first arrived in New Mexico in the early 1600s. The reader then follows these two families through the first three and a half centuries surviving in a harsh environment, fighting foreign elements and establishing the first towns, churches and schools in what is now the United States of America. With the tales of the Baca and Lucero families are also the families they intermarried with, such as the Sena, Santisteban, Martin de Serrano (Martinez), Garcia, Gomez Robledo, Carvajal, Montoya, Montano, Trujillo, Varela, Salazar, Rael, Romero, Valdes, Velasquez, Luna, Rodriguqez, Esquibel, Zamorea and Perez families and more.

Martinez, E. (Ed.). (1994). 500 Anos del pueblo Chicano: 500 years of Chicano history in pictures. Albuquerque, NM: South West Organizing Project (SWOP). ISBN 0-9631123-1-7 (hb) 0-961123-0-9 (pb)Martinez, M. C. (1984). The penitente in fantasy and fact. M.C. Martinez was born in the village of San Acacio, Viejo, in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. The Martinez ancestors were among the first settlers in the area having come from El Coyote, and the Taos area, in New Mexico. This family is the fifth generation living on the same acreage and home.

Meketa, J. D. (Ed.). (1986). Legacy of honor: The life of Rafael Chacon, a nineteenth-century New Mexican. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. 0-8263-0887-2 (pb) This book offers new insights into events in New Mexico history during the Mexican and early territorial periods, especially the Civil War years.

Rafael Chacon (1833-1925) witnessed the end of the Mexican Period and was a participant in commercial, military, and political events during the early decades of the American era. His account represents one of the few surviving documents to record the Hispanic point of view.
Chacon wrote his memoirs in his seventies to record for his family the drama, adventure, and sorrow he had experienced. As a child in Santa Fe, he observed the execution of the leaders of the Rebellion of 1837; as a thirteen year old Mexican military cadet, he served with Manuel Armijo at Glorieta Pass when Stephen Kearney's army marched on Santa Fe. During the 1850's, Chacon was an Indian fighter and trader, surviving several near fatal incidents in the Ute War of 1855 and later in trading caravans onto the Great Plains. During his later service in the Civil War, Chacon repeatedly distinguished himself, even though he never mastered English. He commanded volunteer companies, including one at the Battle of Valverde, fought Indians under Kit Carson, escorted the first officials to the newly established territory of Arizona, and as one of the few Hispanics to attain the rank of major, commanded Fort Stanton at the end of the war. Following discharge, Chacon served several terms in the territorial legislature before homesteading near Trinidad, Colorado.

Melendez, A. G. (1997). So all is not lost: The poetics of print in Nuevomexicano communities, 1834-1958. Albquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. 0-8263-1776-6 (hb); 0-8263-1806-1 (pb) Based on exhaustive archival research, this study spans the history of newspapers in the Southwest's Mexicano communities from the arrival of the press in New Mexico to the last edition of Santa Fe's El Nuevo Mexicano. Part 1 details the education and formation of a generation of Spanish-language journalists instrumental in creating a culture of print in nativo communities. Part 2 offers in-depth cultural and literary analyses of the texts produced by los periodiqeros, establishing them thematically as precursors to the Chicano literary and political movements of the 60s and 7o-s. Melendez moves beyond a simple effort to re-inscribe Nuevomexicanos into history. He sees newspapers as cultural production and the work of the editor as an organized movement against cultural erasure and toward adaptation amid the massive influx of easterners to the new Southwest.

Rebolledo, T., and Marquez, M. T. (Eds.). (2000). Women's tales from the New
Mexico WPA: La Diabla a Pie. Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press. ISBN 1-55885-312-X (pb) Verbal snapshots of a lost way of life: At the height of the 1930's Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt instituted a Federal Writers Project as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of many government programs aimed at getting the populace back to work. Many writers participated through activities such as compiling a series of state guides, gathering folksongs, and recording the oral narratives of still-living ex-slaves. New Mexico was among the states participating in this effort, and the project workers there included two women interviewers, Lou Sage Batchen and Annete Hesch Thorp. Their work placed particular emphasis upon gathering Hispanic women's tales, or cuentos. The two interviewed many native old-timers, gathering folktales as well as gleaning vivid details of a way of life now gone. (The phrase 'diablo a pie,' or "devil on foot," was a bilingual pun sarcastically describing a government worker for the WPA.)  The editors combed through WPA archives to recover these invaluable first-hand accounts. The volume is introduced by an essay delving into some problematic cultural issues surrounding these records.

Sanchez, G. I. (1996). Forgotten people: A study of New Mexicans.
Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-1679-4 (pb) Published originally in 1940, Forgotten People is a classic of Depression-era social protest scholarship. Directly challenging Turnerian frontier history, Sanchez argues that conquest, marginalization, and impoverishment have dominated the history of Spanish-speaking New Mexicans since the Mexican-American War. Ninety years of social and economic marginalization defined Mexican-Americans as a distinct indigenous group. Anglo educational systems culturally discriminated against Spanish-speaking children, while federal and state land policy economically strangled New Mexican families. Focusing his study on Taos County, New Mexico, during 1938 and 1939, Sanchez hold that the federal government should recognize the unique history and place of Spanish-speaking citizens in the Southwest and create educational and economic programs to empower and acculturate them.

Tushar, O. L. (1992). The people of El Valle: A history of the Spanish colonials in the San Luis Valley. Pueblo, CO: El Escritorio. ISBN 0-9628974-6 (pb) The story of colonizers, the first Spanish settlers of New Mexico who became the founders of the first towns, schools and churches in Southern Colorado. Centered in south central Colorado, the author reviews the early history of the southwest and the San Luis Valley; the life of the early settlers, including their homes, churches, schools, dress and occupations; in depth recollections of the authors grandparents and parents experiences in La Plaza de los Manzanares; and a unique selection of folk tales, songs, refrains and riddles.

Wallis, M., and Varjabedian, C. (1994). En divina luz: The penitente moradas of
New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-1547-X Photographs by Craig Varjabedian; text by Michael Wallis The Penitente Brotherhood, formally known as La Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno, is a lay Catholic organization unique to New Mexico and southern Colorado. The book documents moradas, the buildings in which the Brothers meet and pray, and offers an intimate and respectful account of their religious observances. The Penitente Brothers have been objects of intense curiosity ever since New Mexico became a tourist attraction, and they have guarded their privacy fiercely. This book respects the privacy of all members of the brotherhood. Text and photos capture the deep piety of the brothers and their complex relationship with their history and the modern world. These are ordinary people, many of whom have moved away from the mountain villages in order to earn their living in city jobs. For these hermanos, keeping their tie to the morada is to keep alive their history, their culture, as well as to express a deep piety. This is a glimpse into a religious experience absent from the lives of most Americans. This book respects the privacy of all members of the brotherhood.

Annette Wasno