OVERVIEW
Every community has a unique history, including the dominant narratives that reinforce hierarchies of race, class and gender. Española is no exception and in fact provides one of the most interesting examples in the broader context of communities throughout the nation that are challenged by the intersection of race and memory. Currently, cities across the United States are engaged in processes to address how monuments in particular serve as reflections of an approach to history that is not only infused with nostalgia, but celebrates domination.
By fore-fronting historic trauma and a framework of restorative justice as well as truth, racial healing and reconciliation — a model that has been used globally to redress harms wrought upon a community, I believe it is possible to creatively raise consciousness toward the work of fortifying the community of Española.
The following document has been developed to address the challenges regarding the annual event that is referred to as the Fiesta del Valle de Española. The Fiesta was first invented in 1932 and now, almost nine decades since, the community has the opportunity to reimagine it, creating a renewed promise for what it can represent, now and for future generations. (1) It first provides historic context and by means of recommendation, two potential options as pathways moving forward.
CONTEXT, CHALLENGE & IMPERATIVE
Historic trauma is defined by the cumulative spiritual, emotional and psychological distress and wounding that is passed down from generation to generation. This comes from cataclysmic events or experiences such as conquest, subjugation and the loss of land, language and cultural traditions, as well as the obfuscation and erasure of truth from the historical narratives. In New Mexico, these experiences are largely defined by colonialism, patriarchy and all levels of supremacy.
The tangible and intangible manifestations of historical trauma are often embedded in a community’s symbols, monuments, festivals and the mythologies that largely define its narrative and identity. The annual Fiesta del Valle de Española is no exception, where harm continues to exist in the vocabulary and framework, particularly as revealed in the narrative and the symbols underlying this event. The following section provides context for understanding the contemporary Fiesta del Valle de Española:
Underlying Narrative of the Fiesta:
Underlying the Fiesta del Valle de Española are elements of a dominant narrative. As clearly articulated in the Fiesta Bylaws, the purpose of the event is to preserve “the historical, cultural and faith, of the colonization Don Juan de Oñate and the first families . . .” (2) Understanding the core narrative embedded in this purpose is critical.
Conquest and Domination
Set within the language of empire, power and dominion, by emphasizing the colonization, the narrative force is thus focused on the concept of celebrating conquest. Taken at face value, this concept fails to recognize the harm that has come from domination, and not only at the moment it happened, but it a theme that for many will resonate in the present. Like much of northern New Mexico, the Española Valley is beset with a multitude of challenges, economic and social. There are struggles over resources (e.g. water and land), challenges that are often largely defined by race and class, dividing not only Native Americans from Hispanics, but rich from poor. In this way, it is hard not to see the present also reflected in a narrative pageant that celebrates dominance.
First Families
The concept of ‘founding families’ is one that countless communities have adopted globally to commemorate the experience of individuals whose efforts led to the settlement of a site. Its draw seems to be based on asserting a sense of belonging, perhaps understandable in a nation where the lives and experiences of Hispanos and Latinos generally are marginalized and even rendered invisible. However, rather than responding to that alienation and erasure with a more critical understanding and complex narrative, a static framework of identity surfaces wherein the stories of población, or the peopling of this area, are fore-fronted. However, it is important to understand that población often comes hand in hand with despoblación, the dis-peopling of an area. An entire field of study has emerged from this notion — “settler colonialism” — defined by a set of key features, including “asserting false narratives and structures of settler belonging.”(3)
By evoking the concept of ‘founding families’ the narrative of settler colonialism is precisely what is fore-fronted in Española’s commemorative effort. While the impetus, on the surface, appears to positively recognize ancestors, it wholly fails to comprehend the underlying meaning it brings forth, as well as to capture the elements of a living community. What is complicated in places like the Española Valley is that, in reality, things are much more complex. Honoring only one set of forebears in a very particular period, 1598 for example, promotes the false idea that ancestry is a singular linear structure that follows one patriarch. The story that is often told is ‘I am Spanish, since my ancestor came from Spain in 1598.’ This narrative is incomplete at best. In calculating back 15 generations to 1598, a Hispana/o descends not from a single patriarch from Spain, but from 16,384 individuals, including indigenous people. New Mexican records alone reveal that even by the mid 1700s, the population of the area was largely mixed, with over 70% of people having a parent or grandparent that was indigenous.
Finally, aside from the fact that this concept premises a framework that is exclusive and perhaps even elitist, the idea of ‘first families’ fails to account for the fact that the settlements of the Española Valley were constantly in flux and wonderfully dynamic. First, the inevitable mestizaje that followed colonization resulted in generations of racial and cultural mixture realized and defined as much by amicable unions as by coercive relations. Also, settlements like Santa Cruz de la Cañada actually became a predominant point of origin in the 1700s for the movement northward from Mexico for many colonists creating community settlements.
A Contradiction in Terms
The phrase, “Where Cultures Unite” is highlighted in the 2017 Fiesta Bylaws at the top of the page, though interestingly enough, is not defined anywhere in the document. Contrary to a multicultural, place-based concept that the phrase evokes, the reality is that the Fiesta (as defined in its bylaws and as implemented) actually promotes a static, singular perspective and not a convergence of cultures. By deconstructing this phrase, it is clear that the concept draws upon the tri-cultural narrative which is a 20th century invention of three distinct symbols of identity — Anglo, Indian and Spanish — an enduring and yet deeply flawed mythology that continues to conflate distinctions between sovereign tribes, erasing entire groups of people and obscuring the reality of centuries of mixture. Lost in these three classifications are the ways in which Whiteness has served and continues to define a sense of identity in the Valley. In terms of those groups erased from the narrative historically, it also would include African and Asian American peoples, and even in more contemporary sense, in the Española Valley, the ethnic and racial background of its residents today include the American Sikh and the emerging Mexican national and Filipino immigrants. The phrase also forefronts a notion of a harmonious conviviality, thus further obscuring the reality of historic and contemporary tensions.
1598 - An Origin Story
According to the bylaws, the Fiesta is held to “commemorate and celebrate the initial conquest of New Mexico by Captain Juan de Oñate, and the establishment of his capital at San Gabriel de Los Españoles, at the confluence of the Rio Chama and the Rio Grande del Norte.” While other expeditions and even attempted settlements predate this event, the expedition led by Oñate was the first to be royally sanctioned. It included 129 soldiers and several hundred colonists - women, servants, children and priests (emphasis added to several hundred). Notably, at the time, there was a politics governing the racial identities of those on the expedition that was also subject to a racial hierarchy and that culminated in the erasure of people of color, in spite of clear evidence of the colony being racial diverse. (4) In the journey up the Camino Real, the expedition stopped in Pueblo communities, where Oñate proclaimed Spain’s dominion over land and people. Finally the expedition culminated at Ohkay Owingeh, which Oñate renamed San Juan de los Caballeros, and while the party occupied the village’s dwellings, they eventually moved to a more spacious village across the river, San Gabriel. By failing to uncritically assess this entire narrative in the context of the domination of land and people, is problematic.
When the Fiesta was created, other communities across the nation also were developing their own founder’s days that were tinged with both nostalgia and mythology. Santa Fe’s Fiesta had already been established. In creating a fiesta, Española, however, had the opportunity to predate Santa Fe’s founding and tell a story older still. That the date of 1598 was chosen is not surprising, since the narrative force that it carried allowed early 20th century City officials and other promoters to claim this moment as the ‘birth’ of a community, one that also predated any other European settlement in what is now called the United States. Understanding these narrative choices means recognizing what early 20th century Hispanos in Española were framing as critical, a sense of belonging to a place. That this ‘birth’ excluded indigenous communities which were infinitely older is also not surprising. Equally as troubling, however, was that the narrative froze time. If the metaphor of birth can be used, then everything that follows, the evolution of a being, including that of a community, is absent, failing to account for over four centuries of history, both violent and joyful, filled with events that dramatically transformed place and people alike.
Underlying Symbols of the Fiesta
Perhaps deeper even than the narratives, there are challenging symbols embedded in the Fiestas del Valle de Española, accentuating both figurative and literal representations.
El Conquistador Oñate
At the center of the Fiesta is the symbol of ‘the conquistador,’ a product of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.(5) In the Fiesta, however, the symbolism is clearly defined in the person of Juan de Oñate himself, the conqueror who led the first permanent colony into New Mexico in 1598. There is a fair amount of research that has been done on Oñate. It is known for instance, that within the first decade of the 17th century, Oñate was accused of excessive violence, found guilty in 1614 of cruelty, immorality and false reporting, and permanently banished from New Mexico. (6) The revival of this individual, who inexplicably is credited as the bearer of culture and a symbol of memory, identity and heritage for the most vocal New Mexican Hispanos, did not occur until the 20th century, and continues to exist to this day. (7) Romantically, he symbolizes for some an imagined and iconic point of Spanish origin and presence in the region, and yet, for others, the essence of colonial violence.
Contemporary Responses to Oñate
In 2001, as part of other changes implemented in the pageant, and using an incremental approach, the Española Fiesta Council stripped Oñate of traditional sword and battle gear.”(8)
In a 2014 opinion piece published in Green Fire Times, Historian Dr. Matthew Martinez highlighted the banishment of Oñate and encouraged the Council to consider thinking of his exile as an important feature of the Fiesta.
In 2017, in an unprecedented act of humility, Ralph Martinez, who was portraying Oñate, participated in the Fiesta of neighboring Santa Fe, walked with Dezmund Marcus, who was portraying the Native Scout; and without armor, including sword, they both knelt to pray “in solidarity with indigenous brothers and sisters,” toward “promoting unity.” In a symbol act, Martinez also helped plant trees at the Tewa Women’s United’s Healing Food’s Oasis.
Royal Court
Set within a hierarchy of race and class, one of the salient features of the Fiesta adopted into the pageantry was that of a representative “royal court,” including the personage of ‘La Reina.” The issue of a “representative” court that is often premised is interesting, in that historically, royalty is not representative in the democratic sense. In general, the literal meaning of a royalty court is defined by a small select group of individuals whose lineage is not only one of purity, but of a sovereignty that rules over others and is often articulated as God given. Revealing the class-based hierarchy, the so called royal assemblage of the Española Fiesta includes other militia based conquistadores, two priests, a Native American Scout, and both Spanish and Native American Princesas.
Aside from the militaristic and aristocratic frame in which the “royal court” is portrayed, the representations in the pageant emerge as stereotypes of both Hispanic and Native Americans in which people are not only depicted as static and frozen in time, but that also fail to fully capture the complexity of New Mexican identity in history or as it evolved over time. In this way, Native Americans can only exist as Scout or Indian Princess. The image of the Indian Scout is not only a figure that comes to be incorporated in colonial enterprises, wherein a male from an indigenous tribe is incorporated as a soldier or paramilitary operator, but also a symbol of how conquest required both indigenous cooperation and ultimately, betrayal to his own natal community. In terms of the “Native American Princesa,” the fact that Pueblo inclusion is only made possible within this framework of Spanish royalty is problematic. Like her counterpart the Scout, she is also symbolic and set in a context of the historic portrayal of Native American women as either Queens or Princesses, particularly from the 16th to the 19th century, by European and American artists. (9) In these depictions, Hispanics also can only exist as colonial agents: the Spanish Queen and court, priests, soldiers, and conquerors, each flat and debilitating.
Aside from the overt hierarchies of race and class, a gender analysis should not be overlooked in assessing the design and implementation of this segment of the Fiesta, for these portrayals are also subject to proscribed expectations of how men and women should be represented. It may be necessary to evaluate the different selection processes for each of the key figures, such as for the Oñate or La Reina figures, which the Fiesta Bylaws only note shall be selected on a “competitive basis.” Anecdotally, however, practice seems to suggest that the portrayal of Oñate is usually by an older man, while La Reina is often portrayed by a younger woman. It is clear that the entire representation of the court is set within a patriarchal framework, which is also part and parcel of harms on both men and women.
Contemporary Responses to La Reina
In 2001, the Española Fiesta Council, led by youth members calling themselves La Verdad, changed the title of “La Reina” to that of “La Señorita Valoria La Mestiza,” a shift that accordingly recognized the area’s bloodlines, including Spanish and Indian, to which Laura Vigil, the 24-year old who was portraying ‘La Mestiza,’ remarked, “We’re all mixed.” According to media coverage, Vigil “wore a simple white peasant blouse with matching skirt and silver and turquoise crown.” At the time, the council was led by then 19-year old Carlos Trujillo, who recently communicated with me indicating that the response from leaders at Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo was that the action taken by the new Council was “mediocre at best,” and so with little will in the new Council, the position was reverted two years later back to ‘La Reina.’ (10)
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With all of this, the Fiesta del Valle de Española fails to elevate consciousness of the past honestly in order to generate transformation through discussions about the present and future. It also does not focus on the imperative of building cohesion and fostering a sense of community, one that recognizes the beauty, complexity and even embedded trauma, which when unnamed, continues to deepen the distress.
VISION
The necessary work to recover and transcend what the Fiesta has been for almost a century will require not only decolonization, but a more imaginative remembering. The primary objective of this vision is the health, wellbeing and vibrancy of all of its residents. Thus, the focus of this vision is to implement a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation initiative in Española, as well as to re-imagine an event that celebrates the depth and breadth of a cultural history, truthfully and yet, still in a way that allows people to appreciate what it means to belong to the beautiful valley communities. This will require assessing the viability of removing harmful elements and replacing them with authentic commemorations of a legacy that truthfully defines the complexity of the people of the Española Valley.
CHARTING A PATH FORWARD: RECOMMENDATIONS & STRATEGIES
I am confident that Española has the creative capacity to reimagine its Fiesta to strengthen, rather than divide. No single event or discussion will address the challenge, but instead, a dedicated process will be required. No matter the direction, it should be expected that making a change of this nature will inevitably cause discord in the community. Making space for peaceful protest is an imperative, however, for civic discourse has always depended upon it, as a necessity for transformation.
Based on the proceeding context and vision, I envision two potential pathways forward, each leading toward transformation.
Pathway 1:
Immediate Reimagining of the 2018 Fiesta Followed by a Two Year Truth & Healing Initiative
One possibility is to immediately reimagine the event known as Fiesta del Valle de Española scheduled for July 2018, a transformation that would necessarily be followed by a concerted effort to recognize any ruptures that emerge as a result of these changes. The objective is the expeditious redesign of a Fiesta that strengthens the whole community. Here are some potential steps toward this end:
Assessment
Using the contextual effort developed in this document as a foundational basis for assessment, the City of Española would initiate the removal of all harmful symbols and mythologies at the heart of this annual event even before the event takes place in July 2018. A critical part of this assessment must be focused on what the ‘new narrative’ will be in 2018. Taking the themes and possibility that exist in re-imagining, this new beginning (a new Mayor, a new Fiesta) offers the opportunity to reset the focus of Fiesta. It is important to recall why Fiesta was created in the first place — a community responding to its story rendered invisible and its people subjected to both overt and and systematic racism. While the original design for the Fiesta created and sustained for nearly a century is inaccurate and troubling, the marginalization remains an imperative to address for the Española Hispano and Native American communities.
Legal & Regulatory
As necessary, revise the Fiesta Bylaws to affirm the new vision. It may be as simple as the City Attorney reviewing whether the event, as defined by the bylaws, could be suspended. It should also be determined if the City could then institute a different event, absent harmful narrative and symbols, that celebrates the community.
Reinvent the Council as a Commission
Depending on legal regulations, reinvent the current Council by revising existing Fiesta Bylaws or by creating an entirely new body, which ultimately may be a more streamlined approach. The objective would be to create a Community Relations Commission instead, charged not only with reinventing the Fiesta, but also for its members to serve a two year term dedicated to designing and implementing a 24-month process of healing and heritage. In this way, the Commission will serve as an advisory role to the Mayor and Council.
Develop a Communications Plan
Working to support the efforts of this new Commission, the City of Española should develop a communications plan that will include the changes being implemented for the 2018 Fiesta as well as the process that will follow in the next 24 months and beyond.
Design and Implement a dedicated process for Truth and Healing
Beyond the implementation of a reimagined 2018 Fiesta, the work of the Commission will be focused on healing in the shift from an old Fiesta paradigm to a renewed one. This is not only about healing any rift that may come from this dramatic change, but from re-centering the notion of celebrating the entire community, including highlighting what it means to belong to the Valley.
There should be several elements to creating this process. One could focus on talking through the harm and another could be work that would accentuate the healing. Efforts to accentuate decades of harmful representations could take the form of surveys, and efforts to surface truth telling (e.g. residents providing testimony, historians engaged to reveal more truthful accounts of Oñate). (11) Initiatives toward healing could include accentuating complexity and fullness of cultural legacy which in multiple forms (e.g. community -based genealogies, storytelling, identifying affirmative symbols of identity).
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Pathway 2:
Implement Incremental Change for the 2018 Fiesta and establish a Dedicated Process for Truth and Healing that Leads to a Transformed 2019 Fiesta
A different possibility would be to develop short and long term goals for reimagining the annual Fiesta as one component of the overall effort to heighten consciousness and strengthen community. The short term goals would focus on making some key modifications for the 2018 Fiesta, but not completely reimagining it. The longer-term goals would be to create a process, with key milestones identified to engage the community in this effort. The goal would ultimately be situated in the transformation of the Fiesta by 2019. Here are some potential steps toward this end:
Short Term Recommendations for incremental change for the 2018 Fiesta
o Appoint Council Members that are representative of the entire Valley’s population and individuals who agree to focus on short term goals.
o De-center the role of Oñate in the Fiesta pageantry, removing elements of militaristic power (shield, arms and horse).
o Use the pageant to prototype the role of different icons from Española culture and history (e.g. curanderas (healers), parteras (midwives); mayordomos de las acequias (ditch caretakers), maestas (teachers) and many other figures who have contributed as cultural ambassadors, including the youth.
o Implement a focus on elders as living legends. Abuelos are keepers of culture and an effort could be designed to identify elders living in the community who are 85 and older and featuring their story in some way.
o Perhaps even more important than a focus on elders would be a commitment to an intergenerational initiative. Fiesta is currently imagined as ‘preserving culture,’ but culture is like water, it necessarily flows and must pass from one generation to the next, which is ultimately, how it is sustained.
Long Term Recommendation
As with the first option, the longer term work will focus on making the changes to Fiesta for the future. The only difference is that the effort is not an immediate shift, but one taken by February 2019.
o Legal & Regulatory: As necessary, revise the bylaws of the annual Fiesta del Valle de Española to affirm the vision noted above. It may be the City Attorney simply needs to oversee a rewriting of the bylaws to affirm the vision noted above.
o Reinvent the Council as a Commission: Depending on legal regulations, this could be either accomplished by revising existing bylaws of the Fiesta or by creating an entirely new body, which may be a more streamlined approach. The objective would be to create a Community Relations Commission, charged not only with reinventing the Fiesta by 2019, but for its members to serve for a two year term dedicated to designing and implementing a 24-month process of healing and heritage. In this way, the Commission will serve as an advisory role to the Mayor and Council.
o Develop a Communications Plan: Working to support the efforts of this new Commission, the City of Española, should develop a communications plan to that will include the changes being implemented for 2019 Fiesta as well as the process that will follow in the next 24 months.
o Design and Implement a dedicated process for Truth and Healing: Beyond the implementation of a reimagined 2019 Fiesta, the work of the Commision will be focused on providing a community engagement platform. In the long term, the focus will be moving from harm to healing. There should be several elements to creating this process. One could focus on talking through the harm and another could be work that would accentuate the healing.
Work to accentuate decades of harmful representations could take the form of surveys, efforts to surface truth telling (e.g. residents providing testimony, historians engaged to reveal more truthful accounts of Oñate).
Initiatives toward healing could include accentuating complexity and fullness of cultural legacy which could take multiple forms (e.g. community based genealogies, storytelling, identifying affirmative symbols of identity). In this way, these commemorations should also be about beauty and joy. Expressions of this beauty should necessarily incorporate the creative expressions of its residents that could be manifest throughout the elements of a reimagined Fiesta (e.g. parade, community gathering to ‘break bread,’ and other programmatic activities).
CONCLUSION
The story of Española, New Mexico is one of astonishing complexity. It is set within a magnificent landscape that is both ancient and modern. Its people are the heirs to unique and richly woven histories, traditions and a depth of wisdom, all manifest in the physical and social landscape. Yet, it is a place — and perhaps a convergence of places defined by a variety of events and people — that is beset with a multitude of challenges, economic and social. This report makes the case that these present day realities are bound to something much deeper, a trauma that has evolved from historical experiences that have been impacted by representations of history, manifest poignantly in the annual event known as Fiesta del Valle de Española .
As Maori scholar, Linda T. Smith, has cogently observed, “In order to decolonize our histories, we must revisit site by site.” (12) Efforts to transform the impact of this trauma will actually require a concerted effort to contextualize and reimagine site-by-site, event-by-event and story-by-story. Ignoring this imperative and the opportunity before Española is unwise. It is, in fact critical to creating new possibilities, including a healthy, vibrant and even more resilient communities. By reimagining the annual Fiesta, the community holds the opportunity to recover and transcend what the Fiesta have been for almost a century and to re-create an event that celebrates the depth and breadth of a cultural history that is based on the beautifully complex stories of identity and inspires new narratives, cultural expressions and a sense of pride in being and belonging to the valley of Española.
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REIMAGINING THE ESPAÑOLA FIESTA was researched and written by Dr. Estevan Rael-Gálvez. Editorial support and content review was generously provided by Dr. Patricia Trujillo, Mr. Roger Montoya and Ms. Cindi Malinick.
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NOTES
1. According to Robert Naranjo, the Fiestas were started by Delfin Salazar in 1932. From 1932 to 1969, the Fiestas only occurred 6 times, in the early 1930s and from 1948- 1950. See Robert Robert A. Naranjo, “History of the Fiesta del Valle de Española y Oñate,” http://valleydailypost.com/history-fiesta-del-valle-de-espanola-y-onate.
2. See Fiesta del Valle de Español, Chapter 45; Bylaws of the Fiesta del Valle de Española, passed, approved and adopted by the Governing Body of the City of Española, March 28, 2017.
3. See https://globalsocialtheory.org/concepts/settler-colonialism/
4. In her writing and research, historian Martha Menchaca has noted that there was a racial politics to the settlement of New Mexico, wherein detailed information was specifically recorded on White soldiers, while there was concerted erasure of people of color on the expedition. In spite of the erasure, the registries actually reveal that the most of the colonists were not actually Spanish born peninsulares. These records also give us a glimpse of a few of the woman, another category of individuals that is often erased in these early records. See Martha Menchaca, Recovering History Constructing Race: The Indian, Black and White Roots of Mexican Americans. (University of Texas Press: Austin, 2001, pp. 81-88.
5. The Spanish word conquistador is translated to the English and means “conqueror.” The historical figure behind the word, is associated with males who were mercenaries of the Spanish or Portuguese Monarchies charged with the conquest of the Americas. Technically, conquistadores constitute all military officials and could very well be extended to include all first European settlers of a region. The use of the word in official documents and even in popular culture was most likely limited to a very particular era—the 15th and 16th centuries. In New Mexico, the use of the term emerged in the 20th century, particularly as a moniker of the overarching frame of Nuevomexicano identity in singular Spanish terms. For instance, in a letter from Elizabeth Boyd, writer, artist and the first curator for the Spanish Colonial Arts Museum of New Mexico, to anthropologist, Charles Briggs, in 1973, she noted, “As I have told you before – they (northern N.M. Spanish) are great people but most of them have lost historical background behind grandparents—when it merges into myths on los conquistadores.” Here, the figure of the conquistador is often depicted in both colonial and mythological terms, in what Alicia Romero has called “heroic figure of whiteness and grandeur in the tri-cultural fantasy.” So ingrained in consciousness and narrative is the conquistador that, many New Mexicans continue to frame their sense of identity in simple terms, as the “descendants of conquistadores.”
6. Marc Simmons wrote the biography of Oñate, and though it lends itself to a more positive than critical assessment, Simmons does document (without citation) the accusations, trial and sentencing. Also included in the biography are the final years of Oñate’s life working to unsuccessfully exonerate his name. See Marc Simmons, The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 1991, pp 187-195.
7. In 1901, poet, novelist and lawyer, Eusebio Chacón, gave a speech at a rally to protest an inflammatory article by Nellie Snyder in which she articulated her aversion to Hispano Catholicism. In the speech, Chacón not only spoke to the issue of degradation noted by Snyder, which evidently articulated a negative illustration of mestisaje (racial mixture), but countered, “No blood runs through my veins other than the one Don Juan de Oñate brought, and the one later brought by the illustrious ancestors of my name.”(En mis venas ninguna sangre circula si no es la que trajo Don Juan de Oñate, y que trajeron después los ilustres antepasados de mi nombre.”) See La Voz del Pueblo, November 2, 1901, reprinted in Anselmo Arellano, “El Discurso Elocuente Nuevo-Mexicano,” New Mexico State Records Center and Archives.
8. See Stone, Marissa, “Changing of the Guard: Española crowns La Mestiza,” Santa Fe New Mexican, Santa Fe, July 9, 2001, page 1. Also, editorial, “Fiesta Changes Boost Community,” Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque, July 8, 2001, page?
9. See: http://clements.umich.edu/exhibits/online/american-encounters/american-encounters-women.php.
10. Communications with Carlos Trujillo by text took place on March 25, 2018.
11. A campaign will be developed to survey the residents of the Valley to determine how they think of identity and history, including the aforementioned symbols. The overarching goals is raise awareness, but also to gather data. This survey could be accomplished through social media, radio, and by actual physical interfacing in places where community gathers (e.g. Walmart).