Spanish-language Newspapers in New Mexico, 1834-1958


Book Description

For more than a century, Mexican American journalists used their presses to voice socio-historical concerns and to represent themselves as a determinant group of communities in Nuevo MŽxico, a particularly resilient corner of the Chicano homeland. This book draws on exhaustive archival research to review the history of newspapers in these communities from the arrival of the first press in the region to publication of the last edition of Santa FeÕs El Nuevo Mexicano. Gabriel MelŽndez details the education and formation of a generation of Spanish-language journalists who were instrumental in creating a culture of print in nativo communities. He then offers in-depth cultural and literary analyses of the texts produced by los periodiqueros, establishing them thematically as precursors of the Chicano literary and political movements of the 1960s and Õ70s. Moving beyond a simple effort to reinscribe Nuevomexicanos into history, MelŽndez views these newspapers as cultural productions and the work of the editors as an organized movement against cultural erasure amid the massive influx of easterners to the Southwest. Readers will find a wealth of information in this book. But more important, they will come away with the sense that the survival of Nuevomexicanos as a culturally and politically viable group is owed to the labor of this brilliant generation of newspapermen who also were statesmen, scholars, and creative writers.







The Spanish Language of New Mexico and Southern Colorado


Book Description

This linguistic exploration delves into the language as it is spoken by the Hispanic population of New Mexico and southern Colorado.




The Language of Blood


Book Description

A discussion of the emergence of Hispano identity among the Spanish-speaking people of New Mexico during the 19th and 20th centuries.




Hidden History of Spanish New Mexico


Book Description

New Mexico's Spanish legacy has informed the cultural traditions of one of the last states to join the union for more than four hundred years, or before the alluring capital of Santa Fe was founded in 1610. The fame the region gained from artist Georgia O'Keefe, writers Lew Wallace and D.H. Lawrence and pistolero Billy the Kid has made New Mexico an international tourist destination. But the Spanish annals also have enriched the Land of Enchantment with the factual stories of a superhero knight, the greatest queen in history, a saintly gent whose coffin periodically rises from the depths of the earth and a mysterious ancient map. Join author Ray John de Aragón as he reveals hidden treasure full of suspense and intrigue.




Querencia


Book Description

New Mexico cultural envoy Juan Estevan Arellano, to whom this work is dedicated, writes that querencia “is that which gives us a sense of place, that which anchors us to the land, that which makes us a unique people, for it implies a deeply rooted knowledge of place, and for that reason we respect it as our home.” This sentiment is echoed in the foreword by Rudolfo Anaya, in which he writes that “querencia is love of home, love of place.” This collection of both deeply personal reflections and carefully researched studies explores the New Mexico homeland through the experiences and perspectives of Chicanx and indigenous/Genízaro writers and scholars from across the state. The importance of querencia for each contributor is apparent in their work and their ongoing studies, which have roots in the culture, history, literature, and popular media of New Mexico. Be inspired and enlightened by these essays and discover the history and belonging that is querencia.




The Spanish Archives of New Mexico


Book Description

In what follows can be found the doors to a house of words and stories. This house of words and stories is the "Archive of New Mexico" and the doors are each of the documents contained within it. Like any house, New Mexico's archive has a tale of its own origin and a complex history. Although its walls have changed many times, its doors and the encounters with those doors hold stories known and told and others not yet revealed. In the Archives, there are thousands of doors (4,481) that open to a time of kings and popes, of inquisition and revolution. "These archives," writes Ralph Emerson Twitchell, "are by far the most valuable and interesting of any in the Southwest." Many of these documents were given a number by Twitchell, small stickers that were appended to the first page of each document, an act of heresy to archivists and yet these stickers have now become part of the artifact. These are the doors that Ralph Emerson Twitchell opened at the dawn of the 20th century with a key that has served scholars, policy-makers, and activists for generations. In 1914 Twitchell published in two volumes "The Spanish Archives of New Mexico," the first calendar and guide to the documents from the Spanish colonial period. Volume One of the two volumes focuses on the collection known as the "Spanish Archives of New Mexico, Series I," or SANM I, an appellation granted because of Twitchell's original compilation and description of the 1,384 documents identified in the first volume of his series. The Spanish Archives of New Mexico was assembled by the Surveyor General of New Mexico (1854-1891) and the Court of Private Land Claims (1891-1904). The collection consists of civil land records of the Spanish period governments of New Mexico and materials created by the Surveyor General and Court of Private Land Claims during the process of adjudication. It includes the original Spanish colonial petitions for land grants, land conveyances, wills, mine registers, records books, journals, dockets, reports, minutes, letters, and a variety of other legal documents. Each of these documents tell a story, sometimes many stories. The bulk of the records accentuate the amazingly dynamic nature of land grant and settlement policies. While the documents reveal the broad sweep of community settlement and its reverse effect, hundreds of last wills and testaments are included in these records, that are scripted in the most eloquent and spiritual tone at the passing of individuals into death. These testaments also reveal a legacy of what colonists owned and bequeathed to the next generations. Most of the documents are about the geographic, political and cultural mapping of New Mexico, but many reflect the stories of that which is owned both in terms of commodities and human lives. Archives inevitably, and these archives more than most, help to shape current debates about dispossession, the colonial past, and the postcolonial future of New Mexico. For this reason, the task of understanding the role of archives, archival documents, and the kinds of stories that emanate from them has never been more urgent. Let this effort and the key provided by Twitchell in his two volumes open the doors wide for knowledge to be useful today and tomorrow.--From the Foreword by Estevan Rael-Galvez, New Mexico State Historian"







U.S. Mexican Spanish West of the Mississippi


Book Description

U.S. Mexican Spanish West of the Mississippi proposes a macro-dialect of the most widely spoken Spanish variety in the western United States from a number of social and linguistic angles. This book is unique in its focus on this one variety of Spanish, which allows for a closer investigation of the social context and linguistic features through a number of different topics. Comprised of 13 chapters divided into two sections, this textbook provides insight into the history, demographics, migration, and social issues of US Mexican Spanish in the first section and its lexicography, phonology, and structure in the second. Useful for scholars interested in Spanish in the United States, dialectology, and sociolinguistics, this is also an ideal resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of Spanish.