Nosotros: A Study of Everyday Meanings in Hispano New Mexico

Foreword

n vii RUBÉN O. MARTINEZ Foreword Hispanos are the descendants of the Spanish/Mexican families that settled the northernmost province of New Spain and are today indigenous to New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Arizona. La Provincia de Nuevo Mexico became part of Mexico in 1821, when the latter gained its independence from Spain, then became part of the United States in 1848, when the northern half of Mexico was taken over at the conclusion of the American-Mexican War. The earliest Spanish settlement in the region, Ciudad de Nuestro Padre San Francisco, was established by Juan de Oñate y Salazar in 1598, near the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Rio Chama near Caypa, which came to be known as San Juan Pueblo (San Juan de los Caballeros), and which lies just north of present-day Española, New Mexico. This settlement served as the “capital” of the province until 1609, when Oñate’s successor, Pedro de Peralta, established the settlement La Villa Real de Santa Fé de San Francisco (present-day Santa Fe), which became and continued as the capital city of New Spain’s northernmost province. The province included the geographical areas of New Mexico and Arizona and portions of present-day Colorado and Utah. The cradle of the culture that evolved in the region was centered in the area that came to be known as Rio Arriba, or today’s Upper Rio Grande, in contrast to the viii n Foreword Rio Abajo, or the Lower Rio Grande (southern New Mexico, today known as the Middle Rio Grande). Military installations and settlements in the region remained relatively stable, though not without problems or threats, until the Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1680, when the Pueblos killed hundreds and drove out the Spanish settlers, many of whom fled beyond while others only as far as El Paso del Norte, which became New Spain’s northernmost settlement for just over a decade. In 1692, the reconquest by Diego de Vargas brought the region back under Spanish control. Although another revolt was attempted by the Pueblos in 1696, it was unsuccessful. From then on the culture of Hispanos evolved in relative stability, but not without constant threat and conflict, blending somewhat with indigenous cultures, and in relative isolation from the mother culture given the distance to and the difficulty of traveling to the Spanish provinces to the south. For example, the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro extended 1,600 miles between Mexico City and Santa Fe. As a result of this relative isolation, the Hispano culture took on, among others, three particular characteristics: (1) although increasingly clipped as an oral form, the Spanish language remained relatively unchanged until the last century, when the influence of English became more and more pronounced; (2) local adaptation features such as the emergence of penitentes and their political importance once the region became part of the United States; and (3) the institutionalization of communal acequia (irrigation ditch) governance structures. One of the interesting cultural aspects resulting from the relational dynamics of these features is the self referential term “manitos,” which emerged from the penitente brotherhoods, the members of which addressed each other as “hermano,” with the term ultimately being clipped to “mano.” For example, when addressing each other, elder Hispanos in the 1950s would use “mano” as a title preceding a person’s first name (for example, Mano Juan, or Brother John). The brotherhoods emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century to “commemorate the Passion and Death of Christ during the Lenten season and especially during Holy Week” (Espinosa 1993, 455). Engaging in self-flagellation as a form of penance, a practice that swept devout Catholics in Europe in the first half of the second millennium, American outsiders viewed the hermandades (brotherhoods) as fanatical and outdated (although the practice is still found among some devout Catholics across the globe today). Over time, their compatriots in Texas and California, the Tejanos and Californios, referred to them as “manitos” (the diminutive form giving the term several additional meanings ). Indeed, when the United States took over Mexico’s northern region in the middle of the nineteenth century, it incorporated three regional “Mexican” groups: Tejanos, Manitos, and Californios. The longest established settlements were those of the manitos. Foreword n ix This volume is a study of the everyday meanings of “manitos,” particularly those living in the north central region of New Mexico, including the eastern foothills of the...