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I dont know why i have been always curious about the region of New Mexico. I have a book which said that in cesus of 1790, the 60% of the popullation where "criollo" which means pure white descendant of spaniards.
In this book, and comparing with other data, New Mexico was the region with the highest percentage of white during the New Spain.
I would like to know that if i go to places la Española, Pueblo in CO. or stuff like that i will find pure descendant of spaniards in that region, and if they still speaking spanish in their community,
For me is very instersting to know that.
thanks!
I found some pictures from an instituto of north new mexico, and i would say that this examples could be very close to a real spaniard phenotype
I'm not sure if I understand your question, but yes New Mexico has two types of Latinos living here.
1. Those who trace their history back to Spain with little ties to Mexico. These people including myself have been here for many generations long before New Mexico even became a state.
2. Then you also have those who immigrated from Mexico. These people are relaitivly new to the state in comparison.
Yes, There is many many families in Northern NM that are of direct Spaniard lineage. My family being one of them. My family is from up in the mountains near Villanueva NM. Have been there for a couple of centuries now. There are several books out about the history of families in Northern NM. It is very interesting.
A lot of my family is very light skinned. Many are blue and green eyed along with a fair amount being red heads. Spanish is still spoken in most of the homes.
Oh wow! That is pretty cool. For example, in South Texas you may find a big number of mex-americans, but most of them speak only english. I have met many of them, who speak to me in English and after 3 o 4 minutos of conversation, they told that were born in Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi or Coahuila. I think many of them feel ashammed of speaking spanish,
I feel that people from NM have been forgotten from the memories of mexican and spanish people in Mexico. I have never read an article of stuff talking about the "mexican that the border crossed them".
Do you feel spaniards, mexicans or what? Looking for pictures from de North New Mexico Institute of Española in NM i found that maybe the 80% of the people who appear in photos, looks like typical mexicans from central mexico, but a small number looks like spaniard.
I dont know if Española received immigration from central Mexico or what. Maybe which is the town of NM that keeps the original "mexican/spaniard" popullation!
I would like to know to tell to friends and for me in "coffee conversations", and maybe people from other places could know more about you.
Central New Mexico here but most of us younger Spaniard's don't speak fluent Spanish. The older generations like grandparents speak both Spanish and English but for some reason it was never passed down or taught to the more recent generations. I'm not sure why this is the case but I'm fairly certain this is true form what I've seen in my area of the world.
In my view us New Mexican Spaniard's have quite a different culture and norms than those of Mexican descent. Its hard to describe but the culture is very unique to this part of the world.
I lived rural Rio Arriba county for a few years when I was a kid (I spent 7th through 9th grades in the Gallina/ Coyote area between Abiquiu and Cuba). Most of those residents were not of Mexican decent but were light-skinned descendants of the original Spanish settlers. Some were directly related to some of the original land-grant families. Most were fluent in Spanish and English. What was interesting is that they still spoke "Spain-spanish" and not "Mexican-spanish." They're similar in most words but other words were completely different. It's really two different dialects.
I learned Spanish living there but when we left and I spoke Spanish with immigrant co-workers from Central America, we had a hard time understanding each other.
Of course, the Colonial Spanish population in New Mexico also included many settlements founded by genizaros, who were former Indian captives (either ransomed from other tribes by the Spanish, or taken by the Spanish and their Indian allies in war) who were given land grants on the outskirts of the New Mexico colony after working as domestic servants in Spanish households for some period of time. Pueblo Indians who for whatever reason had left their pueblos sometimes joined these communities as well. (Genizaros were thought to be good fighters, so their settlements were placed on the fringes of the colony with the idea that they'd help protect Santa Fe, Albuquerque and other central areas from raiding by Comanches, Apaches, Utes, Navajos and other potentially hostile tribes).
Many communities in northern and central New Mexico, including Tome, Belen, Placitas, and (especially) Abiquiu, were initially settled by genizaros or by groups that included some genizaro members. Over time many genizaros eventually assimilated into the mainstream New Mexico Hispanic population, although some New Mexico Hispanics are still aware of their Native American roots. This is especially true in Abiquiu, which is still to some degree organized as a hybrid Native American pueblo and Spanish land grant community.
In addition to the genizaro population and the communities they founded, Colonial New Mexican "Spanish" society also included many captives taken from the Comanches and other hostile tribes who then became household servants. Because New Mexico servitude was household-based, many of these servants or their descendants later married into Hispanic families or otherwise joined Hispanic bloodlines. The tribes took captives as well, many of whom were later ransomed or rescued and brought their mixed-race children back with them.
The point of all this is twofold. First, quite a few northern New Mexicans who look like "typical Mexicans from central Mexico" may actually have New Mexican Hispanic roots going back 300 years, but ancestors who were ultimately Pawnee or Paiute or Navajo or Apache rather than Spanish. Second, many old "Spanish" families have multiple Indian ancestors in their family trees as the result of captive-taking on either side.
Here are a couple of links about genizaros that you may find interesting. I also recommend the excellent book "Captives and Cousins," by James Brooks, which examines this phenomenon and its impact on New Mexico between the 17th and 19th centuries in detail. It is available from the University of North Carolina Press and can be purchased online.
Regarding the Spanish traditionally spoken in New Mexico, it is neither entirely "Spanish" nor "Mexican" but includes a wide variety of elements that are found nowhere else. Much like the English spoken in the Appalachians and other out-of-the-way places back east retains elements of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English speech, New Mexican Spanish includes many words and grammatical structures that are seemingly unchanged from the Spanish spoken by Cervantes that are long out of use elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. It also incorporates a lot of borrowings from Pueblo languages and other indigenous New Mexican languages as well as English. My Spanish teachers in high school - who were usually of Mexican or Cuban ancestry - could always spot the kinds from the Rio Arriba country as soon as they opened their mouths.
In the villages of Truchas and Córdoba, there are some folks who still speak Spanish as it was spoken when the Spaniards arrived. Fascinating culture.
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