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The more one studies and explores New Mexico's history the more fascinating the place becomes (enchanting?). The history, post-contact, flows south to north rather than east to west as it does in most other states. It was first a conquest by Spain in the 1500s and then a target (victim?) of America's imaginary Manifest Destiny -- yet was always held at arm's length either by its remoteness or due to the language and make-up of the population. That gave it some autonomy. Even today a sizeable segment of Americans think it is part of Mexico -- people who should know better. Pre-contact we now know that the state was inhabited perhaps over 22,000 years ago. The tribal cultures of today are all unique, and sometimes at odds with each other. Non-Hispanic "Anglos" have contributed to the state only in the last 200 years. A significant part of the population speaks only or mostly Spanish. In 2020, 49.3% of the state's population (of 2.1 million total) was Hispanic.
The term "Spaniards" is a rather loose category. They are here and survive as Hispanos and those old families probably contribute to most of the state's Hispanic family trees after a couple generations. Some recognize that ancestry and some don't and some few keep the old Spanish dialect going. Among them there are crypto-Jews, some with Moorish/Moriscos family ties, some Genizaros, some Hispano-Zacatecans and many have Spanish ancestors. The first Spanish governor, Oñate, was born in Zacatecas and was descended from conversos. He married Montezuma's granddaughter. The "Mexico" in the state name refers to the Aztec empire and not the later country by that name. But Oñate died in Spain as a Spaniard. It seems that most of these labels that we know of today were not very important centuries ago in New Spain. A more rigid caste/status system developed in later times.
This is all part of the cultural DNA mix of New Mexico and cannot be expunged or ignored.
Indian Market used to bring in the Europeans in droves. Gotta check out the "real Indians", you know! Plus Santa Fe is still somewhat of a resort town with high-end exotic shopping, so that, too, was a draw for the moneyed classes from Europe. And the pueblo-style architecture was exotic for Europeans, too. I used to hear German and the Scandinavian languages around town during that ceremonial period bracketing Indian Market. I don't recall hearing French. But that's rare nowadays.
As to outdoor recreation replacing art, I don't see it for Santa Fe. Maybe for Taos. The Santa Fe area already has archaeological sites like the Puye cliff dwellings and Bandelier, for people who are into that. And the high-end spa scene in town with the fancy shopping around the Plaza still attracts wealthy tourists from around the US. I don't envision that Santa Fe has much to offer, outdoor-recreation-wise, except winter skiing. Summers are too warm for much outdoor activity, though locals do hike in the mountains outside of town.
Taos has the rafting companies in the gorge, and there's probably good hiking all over the area. Maybe if some of the pueblos were to open camping sites, they could benefit from some tourism, but that can be a double-edged sword; I'm sure some wouldn't want to expose themselves to that, and potential accompanying issues.There's also the high risk of fires, leading the state and national parks to close for summer and fall camping.
Interesting! Maybe Mexico ate some of that for the indigenous Americas market?
Great to hear about the traffic as well. I thought Santa Fe was pretty awesome from my 1 day visit so far . I would have picked it if it was closer to COS and same price as Taos.
Santa Fe is just as good as Taos for outdoor options - the Truchas peaks are the sexiest mountain clump in the Sangres. Valle Caldera has a heck of a lot to do and beautiful scenery in that whole mountain blob, moreso than the Tusas mountains west of Taos. People will get out and about wherever there's good scenery, that's why the Sangre's just north in CO are some of the favorite hikes in the state, despite not much being there besides the Sand Dunes otherwise. The outdoor rec in Santa Fe and Taos is a whole notch better than Colorado Springs - and that's seen as an outdoor mecca. Look how much it's advertised as a reason to move there.
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Originally Posted by pathrunner
Good post and ideas, but if it were going to happen it would have happened already. Just don't see it happening. Not even in Taos. Where really is the winter skiing except Angel Fire and a little bit Taos Ski Valley? Sipapu has had a really tough time in recent years, it's not really viable as a profitable ski resort. They do get some tourists renting the local cabins.
It's already happening. Taos Ski Valley is doing their largest lift expansion in a good while and adding a bunch of structures, big upsizing in resort capacity. Bottom line is it takes some money to do it (someone pays 800 employees), and Sipapu is in the about as small and affordable as you can get stage, it's hard to scrape by. Taos is a good middle price range. Cuchara on the other side in CO is starting back up / and who knows, Ski Rio may even get revitalized.
There's van life people everywhere around here, they didn't exist much before covid. E-bikes are out and about on the trails, there's lots of snowmobiling. Even wineries are probably picking up. You apparently have missed out on the massive boom in outdoor rec CO had from 2010 to 2023, it's literally like tripled in usage. NM will catch some of that - though not as much cause there's no DIA funneling them all in.
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Originally Posted by aries63
Not even close. Taos Pueblo is a UNESCO World Heritage site, one of the oldest continually-inhabited communities in the US, there is nothing that compares to it in Colorado. It's either disingenuous or clueless to suggest otherwise. There is nothing sacred about a white suburb of Colorado Springs. All the land is sacred to the original inhabitants, but Taos is unique and you fail to recognize it. Not just the Pueblo land, but the historic Spanish, Mexican, and Territorial history, and later the Taos Society of Artists are all part of what makes Taos worthy of protection from wanton development. Nothing like this ever existed in Black Forest, which has zero architectural, artistic, or literary interest. There's a reason I've never heard of it before.
This is what disturbs me about the WFH movement. People move into an area they don't understand, and are isolated from the local residents because they don't have to work with them, and so see them as an inconvenience to the building of their Starbucks, or whatever it is they want to bring with them. To suggest Texans move in and overwhelm the locals is an idea that would horrify almost anyone else.
Well go talk to the people on the Pueblo and yell at them for providing water rights to the ski valley they needed for their expansions. And you can tell all the ticketing and sales department at the ski valley to should stop working for the 'man', they are all natives. Clearly they don't share your views. The pueblo is 3 miles from town - there's nothing that's going to happen to the history. We're talking about sage brush land staying sagebrush vs having structures. Glad you think there's nothing special about the rest of the US.
My neighbors have been here for 45 years as gallery owners. While talking to them this Sunday, they said Taos county was so depressed in the early 80s, the levels of poverty were appalling then compared to what it is now, it was one of the poorest counties in NM. The mayor has a rethinking tourism survey going on, and their opinion was, "is he stupid?!" They said without tourism the area will fall back into the seriously decayed state it was when they first arrived.
Not just the Pueblos, but also the Spanish-speaking people of New Mexico had their culture and language beaten out of them by Anglo missionaries and schoolteachers, trying to "improve" and assimilate them. That left deep scars.
Sounds similar to what happened to the Cajuns. Check my thread on the Louisiana forum. They say the same things.
[quote=unemployed_developer;65823052]Sounds similar to what happened to the Cajuns.
It seems that the "conquered" folks always get that "special" treatment.
The Pueblo Indians had already been given citizenship status under Mexico and under the treaty (Guadalupe Hidalgo - 1848) they were supposed to be holding that same status after they came under US control. That didn't exactly happen. They could not vote in NM until 1948. Congress granted citizenship to US-born Indians in 1924 but states have control over voting rights. This section of the treaty ran somewhat counter to existing US law and constitutional provisions regarding Indians in 1848. The various tribes and Pueblos possessed their own sovereignty and made treaties and individuals were exempt from US taxation under the constitution. Commerce between the US and the Indian nations was managed differently than between states.
Concern about the predominance of the Spanish language in various official proceedings is one of the issues that kept New Mexico from statehood for several years. (See Language Policy Web Site)
In the mid 90's I visited some small town in northern New Mexico where they still spoke Castilian Spanish which is a dialect from the northern half of Spain. Some of the people there were direct descendants of people from Spain.
QUESTA, N.M. in THe Sangre De Cristo Mountains , here the dialect still exits today , Ms. Rael-Vigil, 68, who traces her ancestry to a member of the 1598 expedition that claimed New Mexico as one of the Spanish.
I don’t understand why it is odd for somebody to be Spanish and Native American but not Mexican. I know you didn’t comment it but you did link to it
I don’t understand why it is odd for somebody to be Spanish and Native American but not Mexican. I know you didn’t comment it but you did link to it
Sometimes people are talking past each other.
New Mexico's history flows from the south. The NM "Spaniards" we are talking about never crossed a national border to get here. The geography we call New Mexico was part of New Spain before there ever was a Mexico. When they settled here on Spanish land grants, they were Spanish in every way -- language, religion, customs, legal system, even the inquisition. That general situation continued for 220 years or so before Mexico gained independence and tried to administer NM from Mexico City. That lasted about 27 years up to the Mexican War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848). Were some of the early settlers and their descendants also part Indian? Sure. Did the families intermarry with each other or local Indians? Sure. Are we caught up in a trap of DNA and labels like Mestizo or Genizaro. Sure.
There are some historians (like Felipe Fernández-Armesto) who suggest that the post-conquest relationship between the Spanish and the Indians (in Mesoamerica and even in Peru) was one more of acceptance (by the Indians) than the fewer examples of violent conflict we often attribute to that era (and generally see in the US/Indian relationships). The "Stranger Effect" is explained, briefly, in his Library of Congress lecture -- skip the first 15 minutes.
( https://www.loc.gov/item/2021687799/ )
Well go talk to the people on the Pueblo and yell at them for providing water rights to the ski valley they needed for their expansions. And you can tell all the ticketing and sales department at the ski valley to should stop working for the 'man', they are all natives. Clearly they don't share your views. The pueblo is 3 miles from town - there's nothing that's going to happen to the history. We're talking about sage brush land staying sagebrush vs having structures. Glad you think there's nothing special about the rest of the US.
My neighbors have been here for 45 years as gallery owners. While talking to them this Sunday, they said Taos county was so depressed in the early 80s, the levels of poverty were appalling then compared to what it is now, it was one of the poorest counties in NM. The mayor has a rethinking tourism survey going on, and their opinion was, "is he stupid?!" They said without tourism the area will fall back into the seriously decayed state it was when they first arrived.
Nobody's saying there should be no tourism. Taos is looking at developing a Destination Stewardship Plan, to help balance "the needs and expectations of visitors with the needs of local residents, businesses, and the environment." Maybe you should read it before you jump to conclusions. My argument was not with this but with your saying people should move to Taos in droves. It's not going to happen. Try running for City Council on that platform!
Please spare me the notion that you and your gallery owner neighbors are "saving" Taos County from poverty and underdevelopment, or that you understand the views and motivations of Taos natives or the choices they have to make to survive in a white-dominated society.
Nobody's saying there should be no tourism. Taos is looking at developing a Destination Stewardship Plan, to help balance "the needs and expectations of visitors with the needs of local residents, businesses, and the environment." Maybe you should read it before you jump to conclusions. My argument was not with this but with your saying people should move to Taos in droves. It's not going to happen. Try running for City Council on that platform!
Please spare me the notion that you and your gallery owner neighbors are "saving" Taos County from poverty and underdevelopment, or that you understand the views and motivations of Taos natives or the choices they have to make to survive in a white-dominated society.
I'll just say this - I've been doing some trail scouting for the local trail association. A good portion of the hiking trails that are not on the roads to the ski areas are either in disrepair or so completely overgrown and covered in blowdown they are 100% unusable. 40 years ago, these trails were all operational, or else they wouldn't have made it onto the Forest Services list of marked trails.
If the locals actually cared about their land, they wouldn't let everything go to crap and become dilapidated. If it wasn't for the ski areas, the rest of the county's trails would be in the same crap shape. I've been to trail volunteer events. Not one volunteer was born in Taos. I'm freakin sick of hearing "locals" gripe and complain while they let the greater land area they reside in fall apart. I just talked to a person my age who's family goes back to conquistadors in the Taos area. He straight up said the original families are complete grumps that complain about everything - including some of his own family. And there's a lot of extended family / 2nd cousin type of marriage. Used to be that way in Taos, not anymore, but Chama is still like that.
I would just LOVE to go back to this.
I want to add this - most all the actual in person encounters I've had, regardless of the persons age or heritage have been positive. The people here are in general pretty awesome. The ones that gripe and complain must not get out and socialize much.
I'll just say this - I've been doing some trail scouting for the local trail association. A good portion of the hiking trails that are not on the roads to the ski areas are either in disrepair or so completely overgrown and covered in blowdown they are 100% unusable. 40 years ago, these trails were all operational, or else they wouldn't have made it onto the Forest Services list of marked trails.
Interesting point, even if off topic, is the state of some of those northern forest trails after the big wind of a couple years ago. I can’t imagine some of those areas will be cleared of fallen trees in decades if at all. Streams are clogged with fallen timber. It is not just trails. All of that is fuel for a future conflagration beyond what we saw last year.
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. I would have picked it if it was closer to COS and same price as Taos. 
