Melzer Sunshine and Shadows in New Mexico's Past, Volume 3

The Statehood Period, 1912-Present
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-936744-98-5
Verlag: Rio Grande Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 510 Seiten

Sunshine and Shadows in New Mexico's Past has one main goal: to reveal the sharp contrasts in New Mexico history. As with all states, New Mexico has had its share of admirable as well as deplorable moments, neither of which should be ignored or exaggerated at the other's expense. New Mexico's true character can only be understood and appreciated by acknowledging its varied history, blemishes and all. The third of three volumes, Sunshine and Shadows in New Mexico's Past: The Statehood Period represents the New Mexico Historical Society's humble gift to New Mexico as the state celebrates its centennial year of statehood in 2012.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Melzer, Richard

Leseproben

Cultural Consequences

Stanley M. Hordes

New Mexico State Historian, 1981-1985

Many New Mexicans look to the achievement of statehood as one of the watershed events in New Mexico’s history – we all know the familiar demarcation: the Spanish period, from 1540 to 1821; the Mexican period, from 1821 to 1846; the U.S. Territorial period, from 1846 to 1912; and the Statehood period, from 1912 to the present. In administrative and political terms this is certainly true. With statehood, New Mexico was no longer a dependent territory of the United States, where citizens were prohibited from voting for president, and governors were not elected, but rather appointed by the president. After 1912, the full franchise was vested in most New Mexicans (male, white, New Mexicans, that is – suffrage was not extended to women until 1920, and Indians were not permitted to vote in state and national elections until 1948).

But in a more subtle sense, the 1912 transition from territorial to statehood status represented a significant step toward the homogenization of New Mexico culture, resulting in a weakening of native identity, Hispano and Native American, alike. In a certain sense this cultural development was both a cause and effect of statehood. Proponents of statehood trumpeted how progressive New Mexico was – how the region was maturing to become so much like the other forty-six states in terms of cultural assimilation into mainstream American life. At the same time, the post-1912 period witnessed a marked increase in migration to New Mexico from the East and Midwest. The newcomers would come to have a profound impact on the shaping of societal norms over the course of the next several decades, serving to “Americanize” what had comprised for centuries an essentially Native American and Hispano world.

This process did not begin magically in 1912, but rather had its origins in developments over a half century earlier. The transfer of sovereignty from Mexico to the United States in 1846 had a profound impact on the cultural landscape of New Mexico. The early years of U.S. rule witnessed the superimposition of Anglo-American influence over the Territory. New Mexicans had to adjust themselves to a new political elite – governors, administrators, judges; a new religious elite – archbishops, priests, missionaries; and a new economic elite – merchants and lawyers, who spoke a different language and represented an alien culture. But, for the most part, internal affairs within Hispano and Indian rural communities throughout New Mexico remained much the same as they had prior to the U.S. invasion. Spanish remained the dominant language, facilitating the passing down of cultural traditions from one generation to another.

In the early and middle decades of the twentieth century this superimposition slowly and almost imperceptibly transformed itself into a true imposition of Anglo-American culture. The arrival of radio, movies, and later television, plus the participation of New Mexicans in World Wars I and II, all exposed the inhabitants of this remote frontier region to a far greater range of ideas and influences. Moreover, the development and expansion of public schools throughout the state resulted in an influx of teachers from the East, most of whom were neither familiar with Hispano or Native American culture, nor fluent in the Spanish or indigenous languages. Many of the newcomers were committed to the concept of “Americanization,” the doctrine that had worked successfully to break down ethnic cultures among Southern and Eastern European immigrants in the large cities of the eastern United States, and assimilate them into mainstream American society. In an effort to impose English as the dominant language, Hispano students in New Mexico were punished, both physically and psychologically, for speaking Spanish in class and on the playground.1

The combination of positive and negative pressures proved effective. Beginning in the metropolitan areas, and spreading to the more rural communities, English began supplanting Spanish as the primary language spoken in the home, as well as in school. Traditional Spanish given names gave way to Anglicized forms. Francisco was replaced with Frank, María with Mary, Mercedes became Mercy, etc. Distance, too, became a factor in the breakdown of traditional culture. The decline of the rural economy precipitated a migration from small, rural villages to larger population centers, such as Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces. Many Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache children were removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools, in New Mexico and elsewhere. In this environment, the manner in which culture was transmitted changed radically. Grandchildren, separated by distance and language from their grandparents, were not able to learn the traditions and values that had been passed down from their ancestors in the same manner as had their immediate forbears. In just a couple of decades, many centuries-old traditions were lost.2

Linguist Eduardo Hernández-Chávez aptly observed this connection between the loss of language and the loss of culture:

A shared language embodies peoplehood – and in this we can agree with the proponents of official English. It encodes the customs and traditions of ethnicity; it is the means of social interaction in the family and community; it carries with it the emotional attachments of upbringing and the values that give meaning to a shared existence; in short, it is crucial to the notion of culture.

Language loss threatens to destroy these relationships. Communication between different-language community members is weakened; the sense of a shared destiny is lost; intra-ethnic conflicts arise; historical knowledge fails to be passed on; and individuals suffer feelings of alienation from their historical ethnicity. These are some of the consequences, at least in part, of language loss. There are possibly others. Cultural alienation can have as its products poor educational performance, socioeconomic marginalization, and a host of other ills.3

An example of these casualties in New Mexico was the experience of a small subgroup within the Hispano community: descendants of secretly-practicing Sephardic Jews. Having been forced to convert from Judaism to Catholicism in the 1490s in Spain and Portugal, many of these secret Jews, or “crypto-Jews,” sought to escape persecution by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions by fleeing to the New World. Some of them eventually made their way to the far northern frontier of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, including New Mexico, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Here, far away from the center of inquisitorial authority, they were able to practice their ancestral faith, albeit secretly, passing on their traditions from generation to generation.4

On the basis of interviews conducted with descendants of these conversos in the late twentieth century, it appears that, in the case of many families, specific knowledge of the Jewish heritage ceased being transmitted at some point in the early-to-mid 1900s. While certain customs continued to be passed down, such as circumcision, dietary laws, and naming patterns, these practices became disconnected from a larger cultural context. Children growing up in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s witnessed their parents lighting candles on Friday night, refraining from eating pork, or slaughtering their meat with special care not to consume the blood, without being told the reason for these observances. It was only when their suspicions were aroused decades later, and they made inquiry with their elders, that the latter reluctantly would tell their children that “eramos judíos,” “we were Jews.”

But while assimilatory pressures of the mid-twentieth century certainly played a role in this process, according to social psychologist Janet Liebman Jacobs these cultural losses suffered by the descendants of crypto-Jews represented a continuum of those produced by centuries of forced assimilation into mainstream Catholic society:

Throughout this study of hidden ancestry and the recovery of Sephardic roots, accounts of loss and deprivation characterize descendant narratives as the respondents speak with regret of an unknown family history, a forgotten cultural past, or the absence of an ancestral religious tradition. Their expressions of loss highlight the effects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation on ethnic and racial communities that, although learning to adapt, nonetheless bear the consequences of a cultural genocide that leaves its own deep and lasting impression on the collective psyche of the once-colonized group.5

But Jacobs observed another, more pernicious, twentieth-century influence that mitigated against the passing down of crypto-Jewish traditions:

As family narratives kept alive the memory of Jewish suffering and the need for secrecy, the advent of the Holocaust reinforced the fear that the dangers of Jewishness were neither imagined nor historical. According to a number of descendants, the genocide of World War II, coupled with the periodic resurgence of antisemitic attacks on Jews or suspected Jews living in Latin America and the Southwest of the United States, renewed the desire for secrecy and denial among surviving crypto-Jewish populations. . . .6

The questions posed by the descendants of crypto-Jews around the turn of the twenty-first century, and the answers that they have derived from their elders are not dissimilar from those asked by many Hispano and Native American families. Although they witnessed nothing on the scale of the...