Scarred by Past Racial and Ethnic Battles, State Boasts of Its Multicultural Harmony
By Leslie Linthicum Journal Staff Writer It is a strange stew that bubbles in this pot we call New Mexico.
For nearly 500 years, the people who have walked the land here have argued with each other, fought with each other, killed each other and lately, using more modern weapons, staged news conferences and sued each other -- all in the name of race and culture.
At the same time, in tourist slogans and boasts to our friends, we tout our land as a place of harmony, a multicultural mix that defies America's racial unrest and unease.
Where is the truth?
It is probably as impossible to settle as New Mexico's other perennial debate: Red or green?
But with President Clinton's call for a nationwide racial dialogue, there is room here for an inquiry, for some introspection.
At a table in the corner of Abuelita's, the kind of place where the chile stains your napkin red and the coffee keeps coming, the unofficial breakfast club convenes at 9 o'clock most mornings.
Abuelita's sits on the main street of Bernalillo, Albuquerque's smaller, older neighbor to the north. Bernalillo -- Coronado's campground, the cradle of pueblo culture and a permanent way station for Anglo traders at the turn of the century -- is one of those New Mexican medleys of culture and race, where moccasins walk next to cowboy boots in the aisles of the old-time grocery, and Spanish, Keresan and English mix easily at the Pizza Hut buffet. Here around the table at Abuelita's is Swede Hill, an Anglo import from Silver City, who has lived in Bernalillo since 1940, Sandia lab retiree Rubel Romero and Ignacio Zamora, who traces his family from Spain to Bernalillo in " '02." "Which '02," he says, "I'm not really sure."
Then there is Richard Collins, a retiree from West Virginia and Dan Lobato, who grew up in Albuquerque's South Valley and now lives in Placitas. A friend from San Felipe Pueblo usually attends, but a death at the pueblo keeps him away.
It is a group that represents Bernalillo's 8,500 people -- largely Hispanic, about one-quarter Anglo with a sizable population of Native Americans living in the pueblos that border the town.
Each of those groups has a deep history of conflict, beginning with Spaniard Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's stopover on the banks of the Rio Grande here in 1540, which set off a wave of settlement that would change the area forever. It is the same issue, this time a largely Anglo settlement, that spills down the hills from Placitas and Rio Rancho and, townspeople fear, threatens to change their quiet town.
"It keeps a real good nucleus for a fight," acknowledges Hill, a rangy 73-year-old who drives around town in his pickup wearing a big gray hat. "But," he says, "look at us."
Most of the men grew up together, back in the days when none of the town's streets was paved. They have stayed friends based on their fellowship, and not in spite of their backgrounds.
"When I see Swede, he's Swede," says Romero, an elegant 75-year-old with an appetite for pancakes and sausage. "We're just persons."
Many disputes bitter "You wouldn't have to have this notion of multicultural harmony if it was not for the amount of disharmony and conflict that has been a large part of our historical picture." FELIPE GONZALES The maxim of New Mexico's multicultural harmony grew out of bitter interracial and interethnic fights. Felipe Gonzales, director of the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute at the University of New Mexico, has traced the myth to the early 1900s, when conflict and tension in territorial politics was boiling toward an eruption.
Race relations through the years
Some key cultural events in New Mexico history. 12,000 to 10,000 B.C.: Sandia people leave evidence of earliest human existence in what is now New Mexico A.D. 1200 to 1500s: Pueblo Indians establish villages along the Rio Grande and its tributaries 1539: Fray Marcos de Niza and Estevan the Moor lead expedition to find the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola and reach present-day Zuni, where Estevan is killed 1540-1542: Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado continues Estevan's quest. He attacks and subdues Zuni Pueblo 1598: Don Juan de Oñate leads colonizing mission into "New Spain," establishing his first settlement on the east banks of the Rio Grande on what is now San Juan Pueblo 1599: Avenging the earlier deaths of several Spaniards, Oñate's troops attack Acoma, destroying the pueblo, killing hundreds, capturing hundreds and punishing each male over the age of 25 by chopping off a foot with a chisel 1680: Reacting to enforced labor and suppression of their religion, the pueblos revolt, driving the defeated Spanish to Mexico 1680-1692: Indians rule from the Palace of the Governors until Don Diego de Vargas recolonizes Santa Fe for Spain 1837: Indians and New Mexicans rebel against taxation in Chimayó Revolt; Gov. Albino Perez killed 1846: General Stephen Watts Kearney raises the U.S. flag in Santa Fe in Mexican-American War 1847: Northern New Mexicans loyal to Mexico and Taos Pueblo Indians revolt in Taos, killing Gov. Charles Bent 1848: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican-American War. Mexico transfers New Mexico to the United States along with responsibility for honoring land grants issued to New Mexicans during Spanish and Mexican rule 1862: Navajos and Apaches relocated by the U.S. Army to Bosque Redondo as punishment for violent resistance to westward expansion by U.S. interests 1948: Indians granted right to vote in New Mexico elections 1950s: Postwar development boom in Albuquerque increasingly draws Anglos from other states 1967: Armed land grant activists storm the Rio Arriba County courthouse to make a citizens arrest of the district attorney Late 1970s-early 1980s: National media rediscover Santa Fe, helping to fuel a new influx of affluent Anglos 1980s: With their numbers reaching 2 percent of the state's population, blacks take issue with New Mexico sloganeering about its "tricultural" mix 1995: Courts rule Indian gambling casinos in New Mexico illegal; tribal governors threaten to close roads through their reservations 1997: State Legislature legalizes Indian gambling
The rate of Hispanic participation in the Legislature and political nominating conventions was eroding as Anglo influence climbed. Traditional Hispanic grazing land was being encroached on by newcomers brought by the railroad. And Indians, who would be denied the right to vote for another generation, were powerless to participate in decision-making that would seal the future of their reservations.
With statehood in 1912, the stakes of inclusion or exclusion picked up and the fight over control of the pie intensified.
"A lot of the conflict came to a head between 1930 and 1933," Gonzales says. The proposal for coexistence and cooperation over conflict was first expressed as a political strategy, Gonzales says.
"It was, 'Listen, this is the way it should be. This should be the land of harmony.' It reflects an accommodation between the groups. It was that it had to be this way or we're going to end up in a race war."
From that ideal grew the myth. And it lives through troubled modern times.
Just in the past year in New Mexico:
* An Albuquerque radio talk show host was fired for using the term "wetback" on the air to refer to illegal immigrants from Mexico.
* Only weeks later, a Valencia County Commission meeting erupted in shouts when the director of an animal humane association complained that cockfights attract "wetbacks."
* In Hobbs, blacks charged that police used excessive force and the word "nigger" in breaking up a crowd of mostly blacks at a football game. The Justice Department concluded the police did not violate federal civil rights laws.
* In the debate over legalized gambling in New Mexico, race emerged as a secondary but emotional issue. Some pueblo leaders complained opposition was fueled by racism, while some gambling opponents disparaged special treatment for tribes and bristled when pueblos threatened to shut down roads.
Race and ethnic identity are sometimes so complicated here that it takes a scorecard to follow controversies.
In Vaughn, two school teachers are fighting their suspensions for teaching a "Chicano pride" curriculum in the high school that touts the accomplishments of Mexican-Americans. The teachers as well as their students are Hispanic as are the school officials who suspended them. The argument there is between Hispanics who trace their roots and loyalty to Spain and those whose ties are to Mexico.
And in Albuquerque's South Valley, a dispute about moving a 77-year-old Hispanic woman from her lifelong home to make way for a Hispanic Cultural Center has seen many of the woman's Hispanic Barelas neighbors lining up in favor of condemnation and Hispanics and Anglos who don't live in the neighborhood arguing she should stay.
Then there was Gov. Gary Johnson and the lowrider controversy.
Johnson, an Anglo from Albuquerque's Northeast Heights, was ridiculed when in his first year in office he said he felt threatened in Santa Fe by youths passing in a car with tinted windows.
To make amends, he declared "Lowrider Day" in Santa Fe, donned wraparound sunglasses and took a spin with a 15-year-old in the youth's low-slung vintage car.
The next day, the kid was arrested for firing a gun during a fight in Española.
Johnson's sweep into office was thanks, in part, to another classic race controversy. In the fall of 1994 incumbent Gov. Bruce King's running mate, Patricia Madrid, cast the election in us-and-them ethnic politics.
Speaking to a largely Hispanic crowd in Las Vegas, N.M., Madrid warned that, if elected, "Gary Johnson will surround himself with nothing but Anglos. The newcomers to this state don't appreciate your values. They don't appreciate Hispanics. Are you going to let them have leadership that reflects them instead of us?"
When King was unseated weeks later, pundits said King was hurt by Madrid's remarks.
"You wouldn't have to have this notion of multicultural harmony if it was not for the amount of disharmony and conflict that has been a large part of our historical picture," UNM's Gonzales says. "I don't think that the day is going to come that we arrive at our idyllic harmony. It certainly is not today."
Ethnic mix shifts "This little middle school thing is like a microcosm of what's going on in the whole world." SHARON SHEA Looming above Bernalillo to the east is Placitas, a booming collection of high-end housing developments that attract retirees and double-income professional families. On the horizon to the west is Enchanted Hills, a middle class subdivision of tract houses with gravel front yards.
Both sides of the valley are growing like mad and their influence is changing Bernalillo.
Jack Torres, a Bernalillo native, has seen it all from behind the counter of his T&T Supermart, the only grocery store in town.
"It's really changed dramatically in the past 10 years," Torres says. "Bernalillo used to be very insular, very homogeneous and it's not that way anymore."
Focus the picture on Bernalillo Middle School, which two out of three Placitas parents avoid when their children graduate from the little elementary school in the village.
White flight from the predominantly Hispanic and Native American school has prompted a task force study, based in part on the suspicion that parents worry about the school's ethnic mix as much as the quality of education.
Torres, who sits on the school board, has suggested that the study go beyond test scores and gangs into a discussion of a topic that he acknowledges "people are very uncomfortable talking about."
"I certainly am not saying that all the parents in Placitas are racist or everyone in Bernalillo is not racist because I know that's not true," Torres says. "But I think it's something that we've talked about behind closed doors and we need to open it up."
Torres, who graduated from Bernalillo High School in 1975 and went away to Harvard for college, still counts Hispanic, Indian and Anglo high school classmates among his best friends.
He returned to Bernalillo 16 years ago to run the grocery store partly because he missed the easy give-and-take among an ethnically diverse population. So he hesitated before raising race as an issue in the middle school discussion.
"It's easy to get branded as a racist if you bring it up. And it's so vague, it's hard to express," Torres says. "But I think the issues are out there and they're sometimes harder to deal with because they're so hidden here."
Sharon Shea moved to an adobe house in Placitas 10 years ago from San Jose, Calif., when her husband was hired to manage an Intel fabricating plant in Rio Rancho.
When it came time to send their older daughter to middle school, the Sheas chose an out-of-district transfer to the new Mountain View Middle School in Rio Rancho -- on the edge of the Enchanted Hills subdivision and with a minority enrollment of 34 percent -- over Bernalillo Middle School. They were scared away from Bernalillo by lower test scores and reports of fights and ostracism, Sharon Shea says.
Bernalillo Middle School's enrollment is 87 percent minority. Placitas' school-age population is largely Anglo. Shea said that on an orientation visit, several Anglo students were ditched by their middle school escorts and she knows of Anglo students who have been beaten up.
But Shea isn't ready to point only to prejudice as the cause.
"They just haven't mixed enough by the time they get there," Shea says. "They don't know each other and they pick on the ones that are different. This little middle school thing is like a microcosm of what's going on in the whole world."
Because she believes diversity is important, Shea is considering transferring her younger daughter into a Bernalillo elementary school for her remaining four years so that she is not an outsider when she begins middle school.
"I just believe that the fact that she's Anglo won't matter once they get to know her," Shea says.
Viewpoints vary "I think we are far more integrated than other places." DICK TOMASSON When he moved to Albuquerque from Urbana, Ill., 30 years ago, Dick Tomasson found a pretty interesting place, one he might even have applied that elusive multicultural harmony label to.
"There was much less ethnic consciousness then than there is now and there was more harmony," says Tomasson, who chaired UNM's sociology department before retiring to Santa Fe.
Today, Tomasson rails against what he believes is a splintering of New Mexico.
"I think we are far more integrated than other places, and I think most people do get along," Tomasson says. "But do we have to make such a big deal out of these classifications?"
As the chairman of the board of the New Mexico Association of Scholars, Tomasson has weighed in against affirmative action, which he disputes as an unnecessary role of government, and the profusion of associations at UNM geared toward racial or ethnic groups.
"Twenty-five years ago, do you think you ever would have seen something called El Centro de la Raza funded by the university?" Tomasson says. "That never would have happened. And now it's even considered indelicate to criticize it. You couldn't say I'm white and proud of it. It only works for the so-called victim groups."
At UNM, Jimmy Shendo runs the Native American Studies Center, and does not buy Tomasson's call for individualism and inclusion.
Shendo is a native of Jemez Pueblo, and that heritage, he says, defines him. "My values tell me that I am responsible for my community, that I am to look out for my people," says Shendo. "My identity is with my pueblo and my people. I am not No. 1."
Shendo, who is 41, says everyone needs that primary identity.
"I think that we would just be nomads," Shendo says. "Somewhere, there's got to be a base for people. That's the way we have always been."
Often lost in discussions about race in New Mexico are blacks, a minority whose population here is eclipsed by Hispanics and Native Americans.
Van Sanders, a history teacher at Harrison Middle School in Albuquerque for the past three years, has seen women pass up the elevator he is in and has felt scrutinized "when you walk into the mall and you're the only black male there."
"From where I stand," Sanders says, "I see the same problems here as everywhere else in America. We're no different here."
Clinton's call for racial dialogue has been framed largely as a black-white discussion, which Sanders dismisses as foolishness unless the dialogue is broadened to include other groups and even extend beyond race.
"Nobody in any of this has really said what racial harmony is," says Sanders, a 52-year-old native of New York. "Is it my definition or your definition? Do you want everybody to live one black in this house, one white in the next house, one Hispanic in the next house, one Native American in the next house? We're going to be going around in circles talking about this.
"Instead of talking about racial harmony," Sanders suggests, "we need to talk about what really divides us. It's economics, it's race, it's sexism. We need a dialogue on how to be people and how to trust each other."
Park the racism issue "We've got a parking problem; it's not a race problem." JACK TORRES Five years ago, Tom Fenton and Matt DiGregory, both Anglo and neither residents of Bernalillo, took a leap of faith into business on Bernalillo's main drag. They opened a restaurant, designed for the locals, with a high-quality menu not dominated by Mexican food.
The Range was an immediate hit. The old boys who now gather at Abuelita's every morning gave it a try and began nursing their coffee there. It became a popular after-church spot on Sundays.
"For two white boys coming into town," says Fenton, 45, "we were embraced."
Two locations and five years later, the Range is still booming, but there have been growing pains.
The breakfast club moved to Abuelita's when the Range outlawed smoking; Fenton and DiGregory were discovered by people from Placitas and Albuquerque and Santa Fe and they began to hear rumors.
"We hear that we're prejudiced against Hispanics and Native Americans," says DiGregory, who lives in Placitas.
A Bernalillo second-grader on a field trip told Fenton that his mother told him the Range was just for rich people. They have heard that townspeople are put off by the Mercedes and Range Rovers parked outside.
"That hurts me," DiGregory says. "But I don't know what we can do about it except welcome everyone."
Torres, who runs the supermarket across the street from the Range, counts the accusations as another symptom of the town's growing pains.
His only beef with the Range has been some of those Mercedes and Range Rovers taking up space in his parking lot.
Torres laughs at that dispute, now solved by a chain-link fence and several large signs.
"We've got a parking problem; it's not a race problem," he says. "Let's keep it that way."
It is a strange stew that bubbles in this pot we call New Mexico.
