Selective History: The Politics of Designating New Mexico State Historical Sites

I consider myself well-educated. However, on topics of history, I am afraid I have been bamboozled. When I moved to New Mexico, I was blindsided by a side of history I’d never learned. Whole wars erased from my Midwestern History books. Whole groups of people vanished as though they never existed. I grew up with the impression that The West was empty land that somehow had never been explored prior to manifest destiny. Aside from the sparse indigenous people who lived here, it was free for the taking. We are especially proud of this where I came from. I grew up in Kansas City, home of the cattle train, train head to the west. Every year we celebrate the expansion of the west with Santa Cali Gon festival. My understanding of the American West was shaped through selection– a selection of representation in the texts, and selection of representation in Hollywood. Though who makes these choices, I cannot be sure. The idea that people make active decisions about the selection history fascinates me.

Then, driving to Taos with a friend, I marveled as we turned onto Cárdenas drive–A street named after her family who has lived there for hundreds of years–long before New Mexico was one of the “United” States. As I gawked at the beautify of the land and architecture of Taos, I kept telling me friends–both native New Mexicans, “You don’t get it, you don’t get it!” I did not understand why they were not dancing through the fields with me. Personally, I do not know what it is like to stand where my family has stood for generations. I also do not know what it is like to have your entire history erased.

Taos mountain from the view of the Cardenas kitchen

We passed her family hacienda–sold in her lifetime and renovated into a gift shop that sells high-end art and postcards with Mountain vistas. She told me her family could no longer afford the taxes on land they’d lived on for hundreds of years.

Toas is not as well-known for the native communities that have inhabited it for hundreds of years. As the final resting place for Kit Carson, it is in some ways a monument to the great conquistadors–conquerors that established “America’s foremost, bona fide Art Colony” and tamed the sacred mountains with “a world-class ski resort.” As a student of rhetoric, this amazes me. As a friend, it appalls me. New Mexico’s history is sold on the back of tourism. While my friends know the complicated and bloody history of the American Southwest, I am lost in a daze. That night, we walked around the city Plaza, and my friend gave me a ghost tour–so many people killed.

I sit in in literature classes, and I am the only one asking questions like “Who is Santa Ana?” Everyone around me has the colonization, war, and oppression stored in their minds, written on their family bloodlines. While I was telling my friends that they didn’t understand the beauty of their own land, I am the one who has no idea. I do the reading in class, but I try not to talk. I have come to the realization that my people–white people–are the ones who took everything. We wrote the history from the perspective of the conquers. Unfortunately, we are still erasing history. We see a beautiful mountain, and we colonize it with writers, authors, and ski resorts. I’ve found that I am learning a lot more in New Mexico than I anticipated.

In an effort to both better understand a history I never learned AND discover who makes decisions about selection of history, and I embarking on a tour of the New Mexico State Historic Sites. Already, I have some concerns about the representation of history. This week, I called the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs to ask if what I saw on the website is true.

There are only six New Mexico State Historic Sites:

Lincoln Historic Site (dedicated 1966). – “Walk in the footsteps of Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and other famous and infamous characters of the Wild West…Lincoln is a town made famous by one of the most violent periods in New Mexico history.”
Jemez Historic Site (dedicated 1973) – “Ruins of a 500-year-old Indian village and the San José de los Jemez church dating to 1621/2.”
Fort Stanton Historic Site (dedicated 2008)- “Established in 1855 as a military post to control the Mescalero Apache Indians”
Fort Selden Historic Site (dedicated 1974) – “Built on the banks of the Rio Grande, this adobe fort housed units of the U.S. Infantry and Cavalry. Their intent was to protect settlers and travelers in the Mesilla Valley from desperados and Apache Indians.”
Coronado Historic Site (dedicated 1976) – “Coronado was searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. Instead of treasure, he found a dozen villages inhabited by prosperous native farmers…Conflict with Coronado and later Spanish explorers led to the abandonment of this site within a century of first contact.“
Fort Sumner Historic Site/Bosque Redondo Memorial (dedicated 1968) – where the “U.S. Army forcibly moved the Navajo and Mescalero Apache people from their traditional homelands to the land surrounding this lonely outpost is pivotal to the history of the American West.”

And despite being few, they already seem to tell an interesting tale of New Mexican history. The historiography of the west as presented in the selection of historic monuments is eager to create exciting experiences for “New” Mexicans. The State Sector calls out the reader like you might expect from the department of tourism.

“Explore History Where it Happened: New Mexico Historic Sites are storied places where the past is palpable. They invite you to hit the road, explore, and get out in the golden New Mexico sun. It’s your chance to follow in the footsteps of indigenous people, Spanish conquistadors, Civil War soldiers, outlaws, and lawmen.”

From the brief descriptions on the website, the only footsteps I can imagine are those clad in the boots of militant occupation. In general, I see gaps in the representation of minority populations and little celebration of the borderlands people.

Perhaps more troubling to me is that there is no known process for designating future sites, and no new sites have been designated in ten years. At the very least, there are no public documents about the selection process, and no one on staff at the Department of Cultural Affairs (who oversee the cites) knows how the process works.

Research Questions:

What time periods, events, and people does the state highlight in their selection of historic sites?
What time periods, events, and people are erased or skimmed over in the selection process?
What is the process for dedicating a State Historical Site? Who makes the decisions about its selection and Dedication?
What criteria is used to select state historic sites?