[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 111 (Tuesday, September 19, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1530-E1531]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. TOM UDALL

                             of new mexico

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 19, 2000

  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, Friday, September 15 marked the 
beginning of ``Hispanic Heritage Month.'' Our country's history has 
been richly enhanced by the contributions Hispanic-Americans have given 
us. I am happy to take part in recognizing these contributions. In my 
home state of New Mexico we are proud of our Hispanic heritage, which 
reflects the influence of many cultures.
  Not only has New Mexico's history been shaped in part by its Hispanic 
heritage, but so has the history of our entire Southwest. Indeed, the 
reach of that Hispanic heritage extended into our eastern manufacturing 
centers in the 19th Century. It is sad that this rich contribution to 
our national history is often overlooked. But as the Hispanic presence 
in our country grows, we cannot continue to ignore the part of the 
American heritage that played itself out predominantly in--but not only 
in--the huge territory comprised of what is now the states of New 
Mexico, Arizona, Texas, California, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and even 
Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Louisiana. (I say ``predominantly in'' 
because the first continuing Hispanic presence in our country is 
generally recognized as having occurred in St. Augustine, Florida.)
  To return to New Mexico and my district, New Mexico may have been 
traversed by Alvaro Nunez Cabeza de Baca as early as 1536. However, New 
Mexico became the object of focused exploration in 1540. In that year 
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado led an expedition into New Mexico and 
then out across the Great Plains. This was the first documented 
encounter between New Mexico's Native American communities and Hispanic 
explorers--encounters that varied in the degree of conflict that 
occurred between the members of our indigenous cultures and those 
explorers, but encounters that also began a centuries-long process of 
cultural exchange and mutual adaptation that eventually shaped the 
Hispanic Southwest.
  Unfortunately, the next 400 years of Hispanic history in New Mexico--
and, indeed, in the Southwest--have been neglected and overlooked. And 
this rich history has also been inappropriately obscured under the 
cover of past prejudices. Even the use of the term ``Spaniard'' in 
referring to those early European explorers and settlers ignores the 
fact that many of those Spaniards came from other European countries--
Italy, Flanders, Germany, Greece and even Ireland and England. And 
while some Spaniards undoubtedly visited and explored New Mexico in 
search of riches, and Spanish missionaries were intent on converting 
Native Americans to Christianity, it is clear that most of the early 
Spanish colonists came to find a new life for themselves in a new land. 
And others, it has become increasingly clear, came to escape the 
Inquisition and find a measure of religious freedom for themselves.
  The Spanish Crown's first effort to actually settle New Mexico 
occurred in 1590. Gaspar Castano de Sosa led a wagon train of Spanish 
and Portuguese settlers--many of them possibly Sefarad, Iberian Jews--
from the area near present-day Monterrey, Mexico up the Rio Grande and 
then north along the Pecos River to ``winter over'' at Pecos Pueblo in 
New Mexico. The Jamestown, Virginia settlement was still seventeen 
years in the future. And Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, was thirty years 
away. In the spring of 1591 Castano de Sosa was arrested at Santo 
Domingo Pueblo, New Mexico through the machinations of a rival Spanish 
government official. Castano de Sosa had moved his fledgling colony to 
this location by that time. Following his arrest he was marched back to 
Mexico City, tried, convicted of illegal settlement and then ordered to 
serve a sentence of hard labor on Spanish ships employed in the 
Oriental trade. He was killed in a shipboard uprising without ever 
learning that his appeal of the sentence had been successful and the 
Spanish Crown had ordered him back to New Mexico as its first governor.
  In 1597, after it was clear that Castano de Sosa had forfeited his 
life, the Spanish Crown selected Juan de Onate y Salazar to resettle 
New Mexico. A number of the members of the Onate settlement expedition 
had participated in the original settlement efforts led by Gaspar 
Castano de Sosa. Juan de Onate established his first capitol and 
settlement--named San Gabriel del Yunque-Yunque--at the Pueblo of San 
Juan de los Caballeros, NM. By about 1605 the capitol had been moved to 
the location it has occupied continuously for almost four hundred 
years--Santa Fe, New Mexico. This makes Santa Fe the oldest State 
capital in the United States, pre-dating the landing at Plymouth Rock 
by more than ten years. While its founding has been attributed to Don 
Pedro de Peralta in 1610, more recent evidence indicates that it was 
actually settled at an earlier date.
  Hispanic influence now permeates New Mexico. From the dawn of the 
16th century, supplies and communications came into the area along the 
Camino Real del Tierra Adentro--the Royal Road of the Interior--that 
still stretches 2,000 miles from Mexico City to Santa Fe. For the next 
two centuries and better, caravans periodically made the six-month trek 
northward. They brought new crops and agricultural techniques, which 
were combined with those of New Mexico's pre-historic Native American 
Pueblo communities. They brought cattle and sheep and taught the Native 
Americans how to raise them. They introduced horses and the wheel, 
opening the door to the worlds of transportation, commerce and 
technology. They brought mining and metal-working techniques that were 
used to produce weapons, tools and jewelry. They brought their cuisine, 
which over the ensuing centuries has been synthesized into the unique 
cooking tradition that is so quintessentially New Mexican.
  Over the two centuries that followed this original settlement effort, 
New Mexico found itself increasingly on the fringe of the portion of 
the Spanish empire administered from Mexico City--the portion referred 
to as ``New Spain.'' New Mexico's early economic promise failed to 
develop. It was a frontier long before the pioneers on our Atlantic 
seaboard began their westward venturing, then trekking. And while that 
frontier was
  The descendants of those original ``Spanish'' settlers of multi-
national origin were joined by a second wave of settlers following the 
Native American uprising of 1680 and the resettlement of New Mexico by 
the forces of the Spanish Crown led by Diego de Vargas in 1692. At 
annual trade fairs in Taos, Santa Fe or other locations, the Spanish 
settlers joined with members of the Native American Pueblos to trade 
with the nomadic Comanche, Navajo, Apache, Kiowa, Ute and other tribes. 
Members of those tribes left their tribal communities to settle among 
the Spanish settlers--sometimes willingly, and sometimes because they 
were captured and forcibly kept as servants. Spanish settlers also were 
forcibly patriated to nomadic tribes. And in the process, New Mexican 
culture gained many unique characteristics. And to the degree 
intermarriage occurred between the Native Americans in the Pueblo 
communities and the Spanish settlers there also occurred an exchange of 
cultures. By the middle of the 18th century a new culture was added to 
the general mix as French traders began to enter New Mexico and to 
marry into New Mexico's families.
  In the 19th Century, New Mexico took, for a time, a more prominent 
place in the stream of our national commerce when the Santa Fe Trail 
opened. Hispanic New Mexicans quickly took advantage of this play of 
fortune, and by the time that the United States incorporated the 
Southwest into our national territory, Hispanics dominated trade on the 
Santa Fe Trail. This created the longest continuous trade route in 
North America, extending from East Coast factories and import houses 
all the way to Mexico City and beyond. However, as patterns of commerce 
began to shift around the time of the Civil War, Hispanic New Mexican 
traders found difficulty in shifting to the larger-scale operations 
necessary to survive in an increasingly competitive world of national 
commerce. The place of New Mexico as an important juncture for national 
and international commerce also began to lose ground as the

[[Page E1531]]

Santa Fe Trail began to be displaced by the Oregon Trail and then the 
trans-national failroads. By the late 19th Century, New Mexico had, 
once again, been relegated to a ``frontier.''
  Nonetheless, New Mexico has thrived in spite of its struggle to 
recapture its former place in our national framework. It has slowly 
begun to turn the tide at the same time that it has hung onto a 
treasured way of life steeped in cultural tradition. To this day, 
many--if not most--of the Hispanic communities in my district still 
hold their annual fiestas celebrating nearly a half-millenium of New 
Mexican religious traditions and beliefs. The Santa Fe Fiesta--the 
oldest continuing festival in our country--draws thousands of visitors 
every year. Family and community life and values sustain our 
communities. And cultural traditions and institutions are everywhere.
  This blending of cultures that occurred in New Mexico has followed 
the general pattern of what occurred throughout New Spain--and, indeed, 
throughout the sphere of Spanish influence in the New World. While 
there were many hostile conflicts during that process, what cannot be 
disputed is that the accommodation of ``Old World'' ideas and culture 
to the ``New World'' was nowhere as complete as within the limits of 
the Spanish Empire. Almost nowhere else in our country did so many 
Native American communities manage to survive their contact with the 
settlers of European heritage. Throughout the Hispanic world the 
pervasiveness of the Spanish-flavored outlook of this new blending of 
cultures led to the application of the term ``la Raza.'' While this 
term has often been translated as ``the Race,'' this literalist 
translation misses the meaning--because the term is a predominantly 
cultural, not racial or ethnic reference. And it is a term--like its 
contemporary English twin ``Hispanic''--that expresses pride in those 
whose cultural tradition incorporates this blending of cultures under 
the auspices of the world view inherited from not only the first 
Spanish settlers of the New World, but also of the peoples who joined 
them in expanding and broadening that world view.
  So while New Mexico has its own unique place in the history and 
culture of Hispanics, it also shares so much in common with those other 
parts of the Western Hemisphere that evolved and developed under the 
same process. We celebrate that richness during Hispanic Heritage Month 
every year. It is only fitting. We must recognize and embrace the part 
of our national heritage that not only represents a coming together of 
so many cultures, but that continues to embrace and welcome those who 
want to enlarge their world. And so New Mexico, as one stirring example 
of the history and culture of Hispanics--a mosaic where various 
cultural ingredients intermingle and complement each other, while often 
retaining a basic identity--serves as a model for the highest ideals of 
our society.
  Let us then look toward the future during this time of celebration 
and recognition of Hispanics. As opportunities begin to multiply in new 
and advanced fields, we must assure that Hispanics are afforded the 
education and training that will allow them to continue to contribute 
in much-need ways to our society. And in New Mexico, let us share our 
pride in our Hispanic heritage. We are living proof that people from 
different backgrounds can work together for common goals. I join all my 
colleagues in celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to 
October 15.

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