The Fiesta de Santa Fe is a fascinating example of an invented and evolving tradition. Its historic roots date to 1712, when the Hispanic residents of Santa Fe came together to celebrate the Reconquest of Santa Fe in 1692 by don Diego de Vargas. A general uprising of Pueblo communities in 1680, famously led by an Indian named Popé, resulted in numerous Spanish deaths and the evacuation of most of New Mexico by Spanish colonists. De Vargas returned with a military force in 1692. The first phase of the Reconquest was fairly peaceful, but by 1693 conflicts between Spaniards and Pueblo people had erupted and continued for years. The Reconquest, in other words, was not nearly as peaceful as advocates of today’s Fiesta assert. (Details of the Reconquest are available in a summary provided by the Office of the New Mexico State Historian.)
The Fiesta was primarily a religious event through much of its early history, although it went through various changes as control of New Mexico shifted from Spain to Mexico and then to the United States in 1846.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Fiesta had fallen onto hard times and was apparently abandoned in 1912. In 1919 a revival was spearheaded by SAR’s president, Edgar Lee Hewett. Hewett’s goals were multi-faceted. He and other members of the Anglo elite wanted to celebrate all of the region’s cultures while promoting Santa Fe’s commercial aspirations. Hewett’s efforts to control the increasingly elaborate event generated resistance by Santa Fe’s artist community, who organized counter-events that parodied the seriousness of Hewett’s version of the Fiesta.
In subsequent years Fiesta seemed to have returned to its original roots primarily as a celebration of Santa Fe’s Hispanic heritage. As Native American militancy intensified, however, local Pueblo leaders began to protest the whitewashed portrayal of the Reconquest. There protests are voiced in a powerful documentary, Gathering Up Again: The Fiesta in Santa Fe (dir. Jeanette DeBouzek and Diane Reyna, 1992).
The 2015 Fiesta, especially the so-called Entrada or arrival of a mounted dignitary representing de Vargas as he enters the plaza to retake Santa Fe, generated fierce criticism from Native American quarters. These became much more marked in 2016, when raucous protests forced the horsemen representing de Vargas and his assistants to dismount.
On September 17, an editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican made a case for conversations between Hispanos and Indians that could change the event in ways that would bring the community closer to together. It remains to be seen whether this will happen.
This year’s protests put a sympathetic outsider in an awkward position. Fiesta is an occasion when Santa Fe’s Hispanos can express pride in their cultural heritage, which in the case of New Mexico has produced one of the most distinctive and in many ways admirable regional cultures in the U.S. At the same time, Native Americans can legitimately protest a public ritual that misrepresents the brutality and imperialism of the Reconquest. The conflict is further complicated by the many threads of history, family, and religion that unite the two communities. Still, Fiesta has adapted to new realities over its long history, and there’s reason to be optimistic that it can change yet again in response to the vitality of Santa Fe’s multicultural civic life.
Sources on la Fiesta de Santa Fe:
–A short article in New Mexico Magazine.
–Don’t miss a charming and informative El Palacio article by Carmella Padilla that describes a painting by the artist Gustave Baumann that playfully documents the Fiesta parade as performed on the Santa Fe plaza in 1926.
–For details of SAR’s pivotal role in the revitalization of Fiesta in the 1920s, a good source is Nancy Owen Lewis and Kay Leigh Hagan, A Peculiar Alchemy: A Centennial History of SAR, 2007.
–Ronald L. Grimes, Symbol and Conquest: Public Ritual and Drama in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2nd ed., 2013. Grimes has produced an album of seven videos about the fiesta. In addition, two chapters of his recent book, The Craft of Ritual Studies. are about the fiesta. The book discusses Sarah Horton’s The Santa Fe Fiesta, Reinvented, as well as Jenny Debouzek’s 1992 documentary, Gathering up Again: Fiesta in Santa Fe.
–Sarah Bronwen Horton, The Santa Fe Fiesta, Reinvented, 2010.
Update, September 22, 2016: Distinguished SAR alumnus Estevan Rael-Gálvez published an excellent comment on the Fiesta situation in the Santa Fe New Mexican on 9/17.
Update, August 2018: Protracted negotiations have led to the announcement that the controversal Entrada of the Fiesta de Santa Fe will be discontinued. Details available here and here. Congratulations are due to all those involved in arriving at a solution that stands to leave behind much of the bitterness and public protest that had come to dominate the Fiesta in recent years. An invented tradition, the Fiesta de Santa Fe has been invented yet again for a different time.