Colonial New Mexico - Colonial New Mexican Families: Community, Church, and State, 1692–1800. By Suzanne M. Stamatov. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 256. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $55.00 cloth.

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 694-695
Author(s):  
Erika Pérez
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Mexican Families ◽  
New Mexican ◽  
University Of New Mexico ◽  
Community Church

The Cuna: An Expression of Cultural Preservation and Creole Identity in Nineteenth Century New Mexico

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 260-265
Author(s):  
Kathy M. Milazzo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
The United States ◽  
Santa Fe ◽  
Mexican Families ◽  
Old Spanish ◽  
New Mexican ◽  
Creole Identity

Spanish dance history begins in Roman times with the puellae Gaditanae, the temple dancers who expressed eastern Mediterranean fertility rites through a legendary sensuality. Nineteenth-century accounts of dance in New Mexico that allude to highly sensual movements suggest a continuation of this representation of the female dancing body. In an 1846 diary detailing her travels on the Santa Fe Trail, Susan Magoffin offers a report of the cuna as witnessed in a gambling hall in Santa Fe. Her descriptions echo accounts of notorious Spanish dances from previous centuries like the zarabanda and the zorongo—dances created at crossroads in the Spanish Americas where Spaniards, black Africans, Native peoples, and other Europeans intersected. Studies show that the Spanish language spoken by old New Mexican families contains many archaic elements that have been lost in other Spanish-speaking countries due to the State's isolated geographic location. Like Spanish terminology, were the cuna and other dances remnants of dances forgotten in other Spanish lands?  In the first half of the nineteenth century, New Mexico progressed from a Spanish colony to the northern frontier of independent Mexico, before it was absorbed into the United States. Building on narratives found in eyewitness accounts, this paper will explore the role of dance as a preservation site of old Spanish practices as it was shaping a unique New Mexican creole identity.

Historic Churches of New Mexico Today

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Graziano
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
San Jose ◽  
Pueblo Indians ◽  
New Mexican ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Attachment To Place ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Church ◽  
Previous Scholarship

Historic Churches of New Mexico Today is an interpretive ethnography based on fieldwork among hispanic villagers, Pueblo Indians, and Mescalero Apaches. The fieldwork was reinforced by extensive research in archives and in previous scholarship. The book presents scholarly interpretations in prose that is accessible, often narrative, at times lyrical, and crafted to convey the experience of researching in New Mexican villages. Descriptive guide information and directions to remote historic churches are provided. Themes treated in the book include the interactions of past and present, the decline of traditions, a sense of place and attachment to place, the church as a cultural legacy, the church in relation to native traditions, resistance to Catholicism, tensions between priests and congregations, maintenance and restoration of historic buildings, and, in general, how the church as a place and devotion as a practice are important (or not) to the identities and everyday lives of individuals and communities. Among many others, the historic churches discussed in the study include the Santuario de Chimayó, San José de Gracia in Las Trampas, San Francisco de Asís in Ranchos de Taos, the village churches of Mora County, St. Joseph Apache Mission in Mescalero, and the mission churches at Laguna, Acoma, and Picurís Pueblos.

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