"Christmas, on the side” and “Savage Indians"

 

“La Villa Real de San Francisco de la Santa Fe.  Through it have swarmed three races – Indian, Spanish and Anglo … None of the tri-racial conflicts has been settled by the Sword and the Cross, nor by the Great Persuader Mr. Colt and the creed of the Almighty Dollar; they have simply gone underground, into the bloodstream.’  (Flight from Fiesta, Frank Waters)

For over 32 years we have been experiencing Santa Fe, New Mexico and learning about its people, history, customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements.  Some things make a deep impression on us.  Others are more ephemeral.  In their own special category though are two phrases that we heard on our initial 1992 trip that continue to reverberate to this day and probably will forever – “Christmas, on the side” and  “battles with savage Indians.”

Australian Koalas Celebrate Christmas in July

The former expression should not be confused with “Christmas in July,” a celebration that takes place during the summer in the Southern Hemisphere to align with the traditional winter season. Contrary to the beliefs of some people New Mexico is neither below the equator nor even south of the border – and therefore “Christmas on the side”  is not about the timing of that holiday.  “Christmas on the side” is in fact a culinary choice that applies 365 days a year.

New Mexico cuisine is a blend of its “tri-cultural heritage” Native American, Hispano and Anglo – and chile is its foremost ingredient, appearing ubiquitously as a red or green sauce made from the eponymous pepper pods.  How these piquant capsicums got here is debatable.  Native Americans claim that it arrived pre-contact through direct trade between southwestern Pueblo Indians and the Toltec Indians of Mexico.   While Hispanos like to believe that they introduced them – either the 1582 expedition of Antonio Espejo who wrote, “they have not chile, but the natives were given some seed to plant,” or Juan de Oñate on his 1598 colonizing mission.  There is no archeological evidence to prove or dispel either theory.   The Spanish however can take credit for the chile-with-an-“e”spelling when they added that letter to the Aztec word for pepper, “chil,” in order to make it a noun in their language.  

The Anglo contribution to all this is green chile cheese burgers. Several NM restaurants claim to have THE origin story.  Most popular perhaps is that of the Owl Bar and Cafe in San Antonio, NM where scientists working on the Manhattan Project would order burgers with green chile on the side. One day, the dishwasher didn’t show up to work so the cooks put the green chile directly onto the sandwich rather than clean yesterday’s dirty bowls themselves.  

So the question most frequently asked out here by restaurant wait staff taking someone’s order is “red or green?”  To which an acceptable answer is “Christmas” meaning both.  (This is such a common component of daily dialogue in the Land of Enchantment that it has been proclaimed the “Official State Question and Answer.”)

According to local legend, “waitress Martha Rotondo, at the popular Santa Fe restaurant Tia Sophia, came up with the term while encouraging customers to get a mix of red and green chile on the dish they had ordered. But Nick Maryol, whose parents started the restaurant nearly a half-century ago, has said the story is mostly true, or roughly ‘90 per cent’ authentic.” (Google AI)  

As to which color is hotter?  It depends on the eatery.

Therefore on our first trip out here, having our first meal at a New Mexican eating-place and being self-avowed “spice wimps” – as New Englanders our flavoring of choice is maple syrup – we asked the waitress how to find our way through this labyrinth of piquancy and come out the other end with our taste buds unscathed.  

Her answer, without even the slightest pause was, “always ask for Christmas, on the side.”   

A guideline that has allowed us picante-averse Anglos to successfully and safely enjoy New Mexican for these past 37-plus years.  We did however dine at the Owl Bar and Cafe on our barely-before-Covid trip to the southern part of the state.  And that time when it came to chile there were no questions asked.

The “savage Indians” quote on the other hand is clearly not a gustatory guideline – or advice of any kind.  We first learned of it on a guided walking tour of the downtown area of the Santa Fe,  which being of Spanish design is centered around a town plaza containing, in this instance, a “Soldier’s Memorial” monument. 

After complaints that Union graves were being robbed the 1866-67 New Mexico Territorial Legislature passed an act funding the caretaking of these burying-places and erecting a structure memorializing the fallen men.  The resulting obelisk has four sides –  one crediting the “People of New Mexico” for erecting the structure;  two specifically saluting Union Army soldiers who died at the territory’s Civil War battles – Valverde, Cano Del Apache, La Glorieta and Peralta; and one commemorating “heroes who have fallen in the various battles with savage Indians.”  The last panel was a revision ordered by the subsequent year’s legislature.  But that was not the only alteration. On August 8, 1974 an unidentified man gouged out the word “savage” with a hammer and chisel while several bystanders gathered to watch.  The rebellious revision was not a total surprise.  A year prior the Santa Fe City Council had approved a proposal to take down the monument due to the presence of the egregious epithet.  They then rescinded the measure, fearing the loss of federal restoration funding for the Plaza, which had been declared a historic landmark in 1962.  

 

 

Our reaction upon hearing this story for the first time?  We understood why at least one third of the town’s tri-cultural heritage would justifiably be angry over the word choice and thought it was good that the issue seemed to have been resolved quietly while at the same time giving the City Different another one-of-a-kind historical anecdote to tell.

It turns out however that while the word may have been gone, it definitely was not forgotten.

In summer, 2020 during the George Floyd inspired protests over racial justice and controversial monuments Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber called for the removal of the Soldier’s Monument and two other statues honoring historically-contentious New Mexicans: Kit Carson (fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent and U.S. Army officer)  and Don Diego de Vargas (leader of the 1692 reconquest of New Mexico twelve years after the Pueblo Revolt chased the Spanish out of their colony – aka the “Reconquista.”)  

Why them?  As an Army officer Carson led forces that subdued the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche tribes by destroying their food sources.   And while Hispanos maintain that the Reconquista was both bloodless and divinely protected, Native Americans (and most historians) disagree with that view.  The de Vargas statue was quietly removed and is now on display at the New Mexico History Museum.  But an unannounced, clandestine (and apparently not very well thought out) overnight attempt by the city to remove the Soldier’s Monument intact was halted in medias res by the workers to prevent its destruction.   Kit Carson’s relocation then was tabled, and three years later that statue was partially dismantled by unknown activists in their own overnight raid.

As to the Soldier’s Monument – on Indigenous Peoples Day (October 12) two months after the failed covert civic confiscation Native activists and their supporters used rope and chains to bring part of it down.  Following orders Santa Fe police officers monitoring the scene left before the collapse.

So you might think – case closed – just complete the demolition and move on.  Right?  Not so fast.  Eight months later Union Protectiva de Santa Fe Nuevo Mexjico – “established in 1916 to help preserve the language, traditions, history, arts and culture from our descendants of the original Spanish Colonists of Santa Fe New Mexico and it’s surrounding areas” – filed a lawsuit asking that the city be ordered to rebuild the obelisk on the Plaza.  Why?

Santa Fe’s Hispano community feels that its cultural history is being pushed aside and replaced by a falsely curated Anglicized version of the past.  E.g. the city’s annual September Fiesta – originally a religion-based festival memorializing the 1692 Reconquista, was co-opted into a week-long celebration showcasing the city's culture, art and (in their opinion) sanitized, tourist-enticing history with more and more of the original Hispano-centricity removed over time.  

As to the Soldier’s Memorial…  During the Civil War, over 3,000 men, mostly Hispanics joined the New Mexico Volunteers, with their own officers.  Battles within the territory resulted in 263 Union casualties.  After the conflict ended many Hispanics continued to serve in the regular army, some under Kit Carson during his Navajo suppression campaign, while others remained with their militias as late as the 1890s.  New Mexico Hispanos take pride in their roles in these chapters of U.S. and NM history – helping the territory’s bid for statehood by proving their bravery and loyalty to America.  Union Protectiva viewed the attempted/proposed removal of the Soldier’s Monument as yet another affront to their cultural heritage.

Well, as seems to happen with some many contentious issues out here, nothing yet has been decided as to the fate of the obelisk, which still sits in the Plaza in its fragmented condition.

Clearly there is a lot more simmering in Santa Fe’s “tri-cultural heritage” than just red and green sauce.

Yancuic Méxihco, what’s in a name

 

While the major motivation for our maiden voyage to northern New Mexico in 1992 was to see what gave Georgia O’Keeffe all those ideas for her “abstract art” we also, as we remember it, expected to experience at least a little bit of its namesake country to the south – although never having visited there we had no idea what.  However as Shakespeare has Juliet ask, “what’s in a name?” – by which the play-write meant that a name is just a label and doesn't define the true nature of something.  

So how “Mexican” was it?  Well we bought some blankets from a street vendor that were made there.  And checked out other stuff that we thought might be representative of that country such as Virgin of Guadalupe, Frieda Kahlo and Day of the Dead collectables.  But Santa Fe’s earth-colored buildings looked more North African (where we also have not been) than south of the border.  And neither the Native American pottery beautifully decorated with intricate geometric designs nor the small paintings on wood created by Spanish artists charmingly depicting saints and other Catholic iconography that we saw seemed to have a place in our Mexicano expectations.

We would later come to learn that New Mexico was a part of Mexico from just 1821 to 1848 – barely a tick on its history timeline.  And was given that name by Spain in 1598, probably after an Aztec legend of a distant northern land called “Yancuic Méxihco.”  The country of Mexico named itself that when it won its independence from Spain in 1821, having been dubbed “New Spain” by its conquerors 300 years earlier.  During that time each colony developed its own identity and culture in spite of being geographically adjacent.

Here’s how.

The Americas were settled around 12,000 years ago by PaleoIndians – nomadic hunter-gatherer-foragers who spread over an extensive geographical area, resulting in wide regional variations in lifestyles.   Next came “Archaics” –  also hunters, gatherers, and foragers who, because large herd animals were becoming less available, switched to smaller animals and a wider assortment of wild plants.   This in turn led to the “triumvirate of Puebloan traits” – agriculture, sedentariness, and village-scale organization.  Some sedentary places turned out to be better than others.

“Southern cultures became agrarian-based and took advantage of the virtually year-round growing season in their part of the world ... [allowing them] (A) to support larger populations, and (B) to enable the rise of privileged classes of individuals who had the time to acquire knowledge and produce more advanced technologies in construction, astronomy, medicine, etc [much like] early Middle Eastern cultures.” (William Osborne, Quora.com)

North of the Rio Grande River, however, seasonal climates limited agricultural production.  Plus a more abundant supply of large mammals for hunting made agriculture less important.  These northerners had much lower populations than the tribes in Mexico, Central America, and South America.  

Enter the 16th century Spanish.

In expanding its empire Spain had three equally important goals – expansion of Catholicism to the exclusion of other religious traditions, material wealth, and enhancement of the status of both the individual conquerers and the crown – “God, gold and glory.”

That meant “exploring new lands, claiming them for the Spanish crown through expeditions led by conquistadors, establishing settlements, exploiting the land's resources like gold and silver, forcing indigenous populations into labor systems like the encomienda, and converting them to Catholicism, all while establishing a strict social hierarchy with the Spanish elite at the top.” (Google AI)  

South of the Rio Grande the Spanish found silver (which became a major source of income for the crown,) gold, mercury (used in silver refining,) corn, beans, and fertile land for their favored crops of wheat and sugar cane.  Up north – not much exploitable resources other than the labor of the indigenous people.

Mesoamerica had advanced cultures like the Maya and Aztec with highly developed urban centers, complex writing systems, and intricate religious practices; a diverse array of other tribes and a history of large-scale uprisings.  New Mexico’s Natives were primarily composed of independent Pueblo tribes divided by language, religion, and family connections who interacted only for trade – plus additional nomadic groups like the Apache and Comanche.  Less complex and more localized.  

Modern day New Mexico culture stems from a stronger blend of indigenous Pueblo traditions and a greater emphasis on Native American heritage within the state's identity, resulting in uniquely distinctive architecture, art forms, and cuisine that differ from those found in present-day Mexico.  NM also has its own unique dialect of Spanish – a more specific mix of 17th century Spanish and Native American influences compared to the broader blend seen in Mexico, which incorporates more Mesoamerican indigenous elements – and being a trade center kept up with changes in the vernacular.

It was the unique architecture and works of art in the museums, shops and galleries that took our breath away on that first visit.  And still does.

New Mexico’s buildings are a blend of Spanish, Native American, and American influences, while Mexican architecture is influenced by Spanish colonial styles.  

The original 17th century NM colonists were familiar with the use of adobe as a building material as a result of the North African Moors control of their country from 711 AD until 1492 AD.  The Pueblo Indians already lived in housing featuring adobe walls, flat roofs, and kiva fireplaces, which the colonists readily adopted and adapted to their needs.  Over time the style was enhanced to reflect New Mexico's U.S. territorial history with pitched roofs, stucco exteriors, and symmetrical facades.  And later a modest Spanish Colonial Revival with red tile roofs, arched doorways, and ornate detailing.  In our hometown this was codified as “Santa Fe Style” in 1912.  The resulting architecture is unique and has been named one of the “Dozen Distinctive Destinations in America” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  

The Spanish cemented their power over Mexico by imposing their architecture on the colonized Mesoamericans.  Spanish architects brought Gothic, Islamic, and Renaissance traditions to the New World – beginning with forts and churches, then expanding into housing and trade buildings as populations grew.  The decline of native populations in villages and Pueblos encouraged the consolidation of power in urban centers.  However indigenous artists and craftsmen still added their own touches, e.g. carving church reliefs in native styles, known as “tequitqui sculpture.”  Likewise the central plazas and orderly grids of Aztec cities were incorporated into the new Spanish construction work and soon spread to other colonies and Spain itself.

Tequitqui sculpture

In the world of “fine art” the differences were even more striking.  18th century art in Mexico was characterized by splendor, while in remote New Mexico artistic output was considerably more modest.  South of the border saw the spread of portraits, room screens, devotional imagery and “Casta paintings” (depictions of racially mixed families popular with colonial elite) plus murals on the walls of sacristies, choirs, and university halls – all created by classically trained artists using then state-of-the-art materials.  Up north self-taught artists used local natural materials to create “retablos” of Christian saints and holy figures on hand-hewn cottonwood surfaces as shown above to decorate their otherwise plain adobe chapels.  Today paintings created in the exact same manner by descendants of these “santeros” can be found in museums and galleries and on the walls of folk art collectors around the world.  Including ours.

Queen of Heaven and Saints c. 1770 Mexico City

According to the latest census, around 50.1% of New Mexico's population identifies as Hispanic or Latino.  A significant portion would likely classify themselves as Mexican, however the survey asked for ethnicity rather than ancestry.  The Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe Catholic shrine in Santa Fe (late 1700s – early 1800s) is the oldest church in the United States dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe indicating that, as an object of worship in New Mexico, the VoG may have preceded Mexico’s 1821 country-hood and its takeover of the colony.  Frida Kahlo came on the world art scene in the late 1930s.  And exploded on the pop culture scene in the 2002 after Salma Hayek's biographical film of the painter – becoming an icon for the feminist and then LGBT movements and appearing, like the Guadalupe on tee shirts, votive candles, tattoos, lowrider cars etc. in her own “church of Frida.”   In researching this we realized that we probably misremembered her omnipresence in 1992.  She most likely showed up here around 2005 or so.  Thirty-five years of Santa Fe-ing can become a blur. 

Suffice it to say however that Hispanic culture comprises a major part of New Mexico’s customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements.  And that its people’s three most recognizable Mexican icons – the Virgin of Guadalupe, Frida Kahlo and Day of the Dead skeletons – are pretty much ev-e-ry-where out here.  Together with intricate Native American pottery, whimsically devotional paintings of Spanish Catholic saints, lots of Georgia O’Keeffe & friends, and mucho, mucho más.   

Yancuic Méxihco.  “What’s in a name?” 

More than we would of thought.

NOT from our collection

So New England readers may ask, “why didn’t something like that happen here?”

The Spanish colonization strategy encouraged marrying and procreating with the Native population rather than large-scale immigration.  Settlers who came to the New England colonies, particularly the Puritans, arrived as couples or families, making intact family units a central aspect of the community structure there.  

Also English Colonies were largely autonomous as long as they paid taxes and followed British trading laws, whereas the Spanish central government micro-managed colonization, and the appointed governors were expected to earn rewards from trade and tribute.