http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pwxQAgsVRoQ

Click on the link above for information on a New Mexican dish started years ago at the Woolworth's on the Plaza in Santa Fe. If you are not close to Santa Fe today, view and weep. Or if you have and know how to make New Mexico red chile you can make your own.....

Tying it all together?

Tying genealogical records together is an interesting practice by a lot of folks researching their New Mexican roots. And most are tied together if your ancestors were Hispanic and in New Mexico prior to the American occupation. Many Native Americans were assimilated into the group, as were a few  Anglos" who were here in the era.

We are all connected way back if you subscribe to one of the many beliefs as to the origin of the human race. Adam and Eve? The primordial ooze? The coyote crawling out of a New Mexican hole?

We in New Mexico have a unique ability to do this in part because of church records left behind by the Catholic priests of days gone by. There were some mistakes to be sure. Seems like sometimes instead of asking who the "abuelos maternos" were they guessed as to who they were. Sometimes they documented it from memory a few days later and made errors.

Then along comes Archbishop Lamy and he ends up defrocking the native New Mexican priests for what ever reason. Lamy is proof positive that even smart folks can make stupid mistakes and he made many.

He imported French, and later some Itilian, priests to replace defrocked native New Mexican priests. Some of these native priests continued doing what they were doing before being defrocked. That is holding services, marrying, baptizing and administering Catholic sacraments.

Anyway, these imported priests kept up the practice of recording sacramental happenings which facilitate genealogical research of our New Mexican ancestors.

Here is a funny post by Jill Gatwood on the matter of tying family members together. Click on the site below;

http://jillgat.blogspot.com/index.html#4956249936023802355

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.

New Mexicans Have Been Through This Before.......

Click on the image to make it larger

 

Used to be "Spanish surnamed".... before that it was either Spanish or Mexican. Then came "Chicano". I remember Reyes Lopez Tijerina calling us Indo Hispanos. Now "Hispanic".

 

Way in the past there was the term Genizaro for some of us. Mestiso has also been used for some others.

 

Back in the 1950's there were just us (Mexican or Spanish) and the Puerto Ricans in the United States. So it was easy to identify. We were one or the other. Now there are a whole slew of nations/peoples who are Hispanics of one hue or another.

 

The people associated with the founding of New Mexico by don Juan de Onate can best be described today as a mixture of Spanish and various Native American groups. This mixing occurred very early, don Juan de Onate's wife was Isabel de Tolosa Cortés de Moctezuma the granddaughter of Hernan Cortes and the great granddaughter of Aztec Emperor Moctuzuma.

 

In New Mexico proper between the time of the Onate entrada and the American Occupation of the area much mixing had gone on with the Indian tribes residing in the area. Not just the Pueblo's either. The Genizaros mentioned above were detribalized "Indios Barbaros" who had been taken into New Mexican Hispanic households and Christianized.

 

These Indios Barbaros were of the savage Indian nations. In particular Navajos, lots n lots of Navajos. Comanches too, lots of them. Apaches and Utas (Ute) also. Pawnees, Cheyenne and not a few Arapaho's. All of these were incorporated into the "New Mexican Hispanic" community. And this happened over a period of centuries.

 

So when I am asked the question "where did my ancestors come from" I tell them for the last 400 years + they have come from right here in New Mexico. Which used to be part of Mexico and before that it was part of the Spanish Empire. So I am a New Mexican, plain and simple.