We are a nation of rich ethnic, racial and linguistic and tribal influences, but a trip to Santa Fe teaches a lesson in how diverse those influences are and how easy it is to forget that we are a nation of east and west.
COMMENTARY – Quite often when I travel I face a reality check where pre-conceived notions are put aside in favor of simple facts. I came upon this when my wife and I traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a short vacation to visit our daughter and son-in-law.
Santa Fe is a beautiful southwestern city with simple adobe architecture, stately mountain views, and beautiful jewelry and art galleries. But walking the streets of Santa Fe we came across San Miguel Church with a small statement that read, “The oldest church in the United States built by Spanish Franciscan padres and Tlaxcala Indians from Mexico in 1610.” Just to put this sign in a historical context, the San Miguel church was built ten years before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth.
Farther down the road is the state capital building, which I found out from a local and verified through a Google search is the oldest state capital in the United States. Semantics comes into play here as our statehouse in Boston is the oldest continuously serving capital in the United States, while Santa Fe is the oldest state capital. Semantics aside, New Mexicans take pride in calling their state capital the oldest in the United States.
The point of this short history lesson is that we here in Massachusetts think that America started with the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620 and that our way of life owes much to those resilient immigrants from England. But what the Pilgrims did is begin the development of what can best be called eastern America as they practiced their religion, formed governing rules and interacted with and eventually ravaged the Native Indian population. Our country was shaped by what the Pilgrims brought to the eastern seacoast, a social and political culture that still resides in the very soul of this nation.
Western America started in and around Santa Fe as the Spanish conquistadors, the Franciscan padres and the local native Indian tribes built churches, government buildings and formed a diverse but European-based culture. The Spanish came here to take the riches of the land back to Madrid, the Franciscans came to bring Christianity to the Indians and the native tribes fought to protect their land and their way of life from those whose only aim was to enrich and evangelize. The inhabitants of this vast western America were incorporated into the United States with our victory in Mexican-American War of 1848.
The fact that the United States as a whole is the product of the confluence of British religious immigrants, Spanish conquerors and evangelizers and native Indians completes a picture of our heritage, our values, our biases, our successes and failures as a nation. We are not just a country of Pilgrims whose progeny founded the 13 colonies, but rather a country with a distinctly Spanish-Indian character. We often think about divisions in this country in terms of North versus South, in large part because of the Civil War. But if we are to be true to our evolution as a nation since the days of exploration and exploitation, the real division is between East and West – British versus Spanish, colonizers versus exploiters, Protestants versus Catholics.
Michael Kryzanek is Executive Director of the Minnock Center for International Engagement at Bridgewater State University. He can be reached on Twitter@MikeKryzanek.
What is a constant in our evolution as a nation are the Native Americans who suffered under both the British and the Spanish, and even today are forced to fight those who would trample on their rights and their way of life.
Part of my reality check in New Mexico was walking by an art gallery where a young man had designed a popular T-shirt called “The Founding Fathers.” On the top row were the Mr. Rushmore presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. On the lower level were what the artist called the real founding fathers – Chief Joseph, Geronimo, Sitting Bull and Red Cloud – the leaders of great Native American tribes who fought unsuccessfully against the white man.
We are a nation of rich ethnic, racial and linguistic and tribal influences, but a trip to Santa Fe gave me a lesson in how diverse those influences are and how easy it is to forget that we are a nation of east and west.