You want to buy into New Mexican history, marry a New Mexican or someone with New Mexican roots. That is all it takes. New Mexicans are intricately tied to the history of the area by the blood relationships that developed with living in near isolation from 1598 to 1846. That is 248 years folks, by comparison New Mexico and what was then new Mexico has only been part of the United States since the occupation by the Americans in 1846, that is only 168 years. A small population isolated for that long a period of time become tied together in all sort of ways.
Every hero and every crook of the pre American period is related to us. Related by blood, a bit distant maybe, but all related. Even the "old" Anglos, the trappers, early soldiers and traders as they all married into the New Mexican families. We all know who they are. Their names are salted through New Mexico like pepper on an egg white.
Some folks may not want to be a part our history, some may want to deny it. But in all reality it is there, like it or not. And, this is a big
AND.... It is interesting.
2 comments:
Indeed. I get glimpses now and then of how that works, but just glimpses. I was looking at a new political ad Michelle Grisham (or Michelle Lujan Grisham as she likes to be called -- I myself don't like to spend half my day saying someone's name). Anyway, in her video she says her strength "comes from a long line of Lujans and Romeros."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfQaJB5FFNM
To me that doesn't mean too much. It just means she's appealing to something in New Mexican culture. To someone who grew up here, and who has heard those names over time and in various contexts, and who now has those associations in their memory which are stirred by the mention of those names, it would have a world of meaning. Even someone who isn't of those two families directly has many ties to those families, those names, and they have that lifetime of associations that are brought up at the mention of those names.
I get a glimpse of it, too, times like today when I took another way home for the sake of getting off the main drag through here, Bridge Blvd. where just turning onto that street makes people get in a big hurry for some reason, and took Atrisco, which winds around a little and seems like a very old route. It's not exactly a through street, which is why not many people like me are seen on it, and as you drive along you pass a lot of roads with deadend signs, that lead off to little neighborhoods where I dare say outsiders probably almost never are seen. Maybe once every few years a police car or an ambulance will make a quick trip in and out and then the neighborhood for all intents and purposes closes itself off to the outside world, in many ways, once more. I'd assume there are entire towns and areas in northern New Mexico like that if you get off the main highway, where ways of doing things and all kinds of spoken and unspoken cultural norms are passed on. That's the physical realm. Add to that the psychic realm of things like the histories of the Lujans and Romeros. It is, as you say, interesting, not just in and of itself but to think that that exists, and instead of being overwhelmed by the outside seems more to be perpetual, even growing, to me, as history is added onto history.
You are getting a pretty good read on the matter, sometimes those two "dimensions" you think are present in the dead end street off of Atrisco are present in many integrated parts of some towns too, existing side by side or in reality overlaid on each other.
I have "family" connections with an Indian reservation where white folk and Native Americans live together, side by side. Yet the Indians live on the "Rez" and the white folks do not. An odd thing to someone who is experiencing that who is not from the area.
As far as the Lujans and Romeros...... New Mexicans all have a relative by that name. Just like we all have a close relative by the last name of Padilla, Garcia, Montoya, Martinez, Pacheco, Ortiz, Gonzales etc., etc., etc., etc. You get the picture....
Post a Comment