When in my very early teens I was spending a summer in Denver and at a shoe shop/shoe shine stand across from and a few blocks east of the State Capitol building/grounds on East Colfax Avenue between the Pink Elephant Bar and the Cathedral. There was a huge ball of string on display. The guy who owned the establishment had a huge ball of shoelaces on display in the window facing East Colfax. I used to see/admire the ball every time I walked past. One day as I was walking past he was standing in the doorway and I asked him what would happen if you cut the ball in half. He replied that there would be a million pieces of shoestrings but that some would still be attached to others. He said you could not undo what it had taken him a lifetime to accomplish.
That ball of shoestrings is very much like our New Mexican family. It serves us well to remember that we are one huge family stretching back 400 years in New Mexico.
As newcomers came into the area, they too were incorporated into this huge family. Frenchmen, American fur trappers and merchants all got entwined in this huge family. The remnants of this is everywhere in evidence.
It has only been in the last few years, maybe 1900 or 1910, that others came in in sufficient numbers to avoid getting assimilated into the society that came in 1598 and still exists today. And even then, a lot did get assimilated. Just look around us today.
Reminds me of the Stark Trek Borg cube ship.... Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated...
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