Distorted United States (New Mexican) History

The history of the country needs to be revised, especially New Mexican history. The New Mexico history available now takes too much sifting to come up with an accurate picture of events.

New Mexican History was written by the folks who lived it. What survives of New Mexican history was written by our forefathers. And I do not mean Benjamin Franklin or George Washington. I mean our ancestors like don Juan de Onate and Padre Jose Antonio Martin(ez).

All of this history was written down, not published so much, but it was written down for sure. There are no doubt some gaps, some of which came when the Indians drove the Spanish out of New Mexico in 1680 and destroyed everything they could get their hands on that was Spanish or had a Spanish tint to it. Not all things Spanish were destroyed, but most of the historical records that the Indians could get their hands on were destroyed. So there is a gap there.

And other destruction of historical records happened when the Americans got here and they destroyed as many records as they saw fit. Their objectives were numerous, primarily to destroy land records  so as to facilitate their take over of the state.

Both of these gaps in the historical record hurt the New Mexico history.

But even greater damage was done to New Mexican history by the early published documents, journals and books authored by a people who hated our New Mexican ancestors. They hated them personally, they hated them because of their religion, they hated them because of their racial makeup, they hated them because of their government, they hated them because New Mexicans possessed what they wanted and saw as theirs by right of conquest. Suffice it to say that they hated our ancestors and everything they stood for.

Today folks writing new documents and books on New Mexican history are battling this mountain of bad history left behind  by those folks who hated everything New Mexican other than the land. Current historians have to contend with what people have been taught since the Americans got here. We have all been taught this bogus distorted history of our ancestors.

There is no need to list the authors of this bogus history, suffice it to say that the authors are in the majority of those who wrote about New Mexico in the first century after the occupation by the Americans.

It is disheartening to read so much of these distortions. It illustrates the distaste and disgust these folks had for our New Mexican ancestors and the way they lived and what they stood for. And their works are still there and still available and still read and quoted and still used to make arguments. I know whereof I speak having paid good money and am currently the owner of many of these books and documents.

The only saving grace is the history being written now by folks with out the racial hatred who are aware of past errors that crept and colored previous writings.