Notes
153 Foreword 1. See the glossary at the end of the book for terms, phrases, and names related to La Sociedad; translations of Spanish words are also provided within the text. Introduction 1. See Hernández, Mutual Aid for Survival; Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors; and Krainz, Delivering Aid. 2. See Peter Kropotkin’s classic work Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, especially his discussion in chapters 3 and 4 about the tribal origins of human society and how the evolution of the village community necessitated the development of new forms of organization. In chapter 5 (171–74), he describes the 1785 statutes of a Danish guild as typical features of brotherhoods among various professions and trades in medieval cities that often lasted for centuries. Kropotkin was one of the founders of modern anarchism, but as a social theorist he influenced trade union movements across the world by his advocacy of solidarity, reflected in one of the organizing principles of the SPMDTU, the mobilization of trabajadores unidos (united workers). 3. Foster, “Cofradía and Compadrazgo,” 11–16. 4. Wirth, Ghetto, 138, 148, 160. 5. Gist, Secret Societies, 39–40; Gist “Fraternal Societies,” 172–73, 180–81. For a history and the current activities of the major fraternal benefit societies in the United States and Canada, see the National Fraternal Congress of American Web site at http://www.nfcanet.org. These nonprofit fraternals adhere to the principles of mutual aid by providing welfare services and other charitable works, but they also operate under a system of local lodges and offer various forms of insurance to their members and families. 6. Katz and Bender, “Self-Help Groups in Western Society,” 276. 7. Martin and Martin, Helping Tradition, 39–42, 54; Pollard, Study of Black SelfHelp , 49–90; Stuart, An Economic Detour, 7–9, 35. 8. See Hernández, Mutual Aid for Survival, and Rivera, “Self-Help as Mutual Protection.” The largest mutualista society in the American Southwest was the Alianza Hispano-Americana, founded in Tucson, Arizona, in 1894. The Alianza NOTES 154 notes to pages 9–11 offered low-cost life insurance and other services until 1965, when it ceased issuing new certificates and then disbanded. At its peak in the late 1930s, it had approximately eighteen thousand members in eight states and northern Mexico, with the leadership centered mostly in Arizona and New Mexico. The Alianza’s fundamental principles were prototypical of other late-nineteenth-century and turn-of-the-century Hispanic mutual aid societies, expressed in the motto “Protección, Moralidad, e Instrucción” (Protection, Morality, and Instruction). See Briegel, “Alianza HispanoAmericana ,” and Arrieta, “Alianza Hispano-Americana.” 9. Deutsch, No Separate Refuge, 34–39; Forrest, Preservation of the Village, 110–11. 10. Arellano, “La Querencia”; Nostrand, The Hispano Homeland, 24–25; Rivera, Acequia Culture, 172–73. In his article, Arellano depicts the strong attachment of Nuevomexicanos to the upper Río Grande bioregion as the essence of querencia: “El que pierde su tierra, pierde su memoria” (He who loses his land, loses his memory). For hundreds of years prior to annexation into the United States in 1848, the region was a distant outpost on the northern frontiers of Spain and Mexico. Insularity from Mexico City and other centers of population made possible the development of a distinctive Hispanic culture in the Americas, as reflected in the regional Spanish dialect described by linguists as sixteenth-century “[t]raditional Spanish” (Bills and Vigil, The Spanish Language of New Mexico and Southern Colorado, 29–47). During the early period of expansion, the SPMDTU Superior Council described itself as a “Gran Logia compuesta de aquellos que hablan el Bello y Dulce Idioma de Cervantes ” (Supreme Lodge composed of those who speak the beautiful and sweet language of Cervantes). See the Certificate of Honor presented by the Superior Council to the Alamosa Council. Sociedad de Protección Mutua de Trabajadores Unidos (SPMDTU) Records, Box 1, Folder 1, MSS 696 BC, Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (hereafter “SPMDTU Records”). 11. Deutsch, No Separate Refuge, 26. 12. While still a territory in the 1880s and into 1912, New Mexico developed early forms of public social welfare, but these initiatives were limited to the care of institutionalized persons such as orphaned children, the mentally disabled, and the speech and hearing impaired. Finally, in 1915, just a few years after statehood, the New Mexico State Legislature passed a law that permitted counties and municipalities to provide minimal levels of assistance to families in...
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