History is history, no matter what happened or whose fault it was. It happened!

Some folks gloss over the reason recorded history is what it is. The belief that "victors write the story". While that is common, it is not always true, not by a long shot. What is true is that the literate person with the means wrote history. The literate person with the means writes history. Not the illiterate person with all of the paper and ink in the world. The literate person with the means wrote it, writes it! The non literate person/persons/peoples were, and are, left on the sidelines unable to read what others wrote. That is a fact today and that was a fact in the past.

New Mexico history is a perfect case in point. The "original" history was written by the Spanish, next by the Americans and lately by anyone with a computer and a weblog. It does not matter if they are  Hispanic, Native American or some other genre of folks. The only thing about this, the good thing, is that current "historians" cannot really lie successfully. The original history that is being written about is very well documented, in several languages, but well documented non the less. If someone takes liberty with the truth, they are soon called on it. There may be interpretations, but that is the extent of the differences allowed in today's world.

Illiterate peoples have never written history, they will never write history. Not then, not now and not in the future. That is a fact of life that everyone must live with. The degree of literacy determines the degree of the historical narrative that a person or group writes. History, like time, rolls on. Someone may document it if they can, but it rolls on non the less. We, in the current time, can yell and scream about the history that has been written, but the only thing we can do is to highlight the error and document the truth.

And, this is a big AND, we do have hindsight now. We can correct the narrative by documenting the truth of what was written about in the past. And/or we can write about the past in a new light as documents are discovered about events in the past which no one had written before.

The bottom line is that you have to be able to write about it to leave a trail. A trail that can be looks at as new information is gathered. "Oral history" is a joke, a big funny joke. If that is what you will hang your hat on, good luck.

One other thing, be careful that what you write you can verify. If not you will be called on it. The documents you use as source material can be contested, but they are there. No more cowboy history! Please.....