Ethnic Politics and Land Tenure in New Mexico, 1694-1965 Jacobo Baca
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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 6-23-2015 Somos Indígena: Ethnic Politics and Land Tenure in New Mexico, 1694-1965 Jacobo Baca Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Baca, Jacobo. "Somos Indígena: Ethnic Politics and Land Tenure in New Mexico, 1694-1965." (2015). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/2 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in History ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Jacobo D. Baca Candidate History Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: L. Durwood Ball, Chairperson L. Manuel García y Griego Margaret Connell-Szasz Jason Scott Smith Beverly Singer i SOMOS INDÍGENA: ETHNIC POLITICS AND LAND TENURE IN NEW MEXICO, 1694-1965 by JACOBO D. BACA B.A. in History, University of New Mexico, 2003 M.A. in History, University of New Mexico, 2006 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy History The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May, 2015 ii DEDICATION To my family, especially, my Grandparents, José Filadelfio Rodríguez (1909- 2000) and María Marina García Rodríguez (1905-1994), who loved to tell stories of the Tewa Basin; and, to my parents, Mario Amado Baca and María Juana Barbara Rodríguez Baca, who taught me to love history, especially our own. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without tremendous patience, both my own and the patience that others have had for me. My long tenure at the University of New Mexico afforded me opportunities to study New Mexico, but it also gave me invaluable connections that shaped this dissertation. At UNM Libraries, I would like to thank Rose T. Díaz, Pauline Hefffern, Samuel Sisneros, Aaron Blecha and Bonifacio Anglada. Rose provided me opportunities to study history from primary resources, including the papers of Reies López Tijerina; Pauline let me bounce ideas off of her over coffee and toast; Samuel and I shared our projects and passion for New Mexico history; and Aaron and Bonifacio were always there to save me when the technical details of earning the doctorate seemed insurmountable. At the UNM Chicana and Chicano Studies Department, I would like to thank Enrique Lamadrid, L. Manuel García y Griego, and Irene Vásquez. Profe gave me a bridge out of the archives and into the classroom, and Manuel and Irene helped me develop my skills as an instructor. Manuel also directs the Land Grant Studies Program at the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute, where I served as a research assistant. The LGSP gave me the opportunity to work with land grant activists like Manuel, Juan Sánchez and Arturo Archuleta. Thanks also to Emanuel Storey (who created some of this dissertation’s maps) and Maurice Kivlighan at SHRI and the LGSP. To my committee, Dr. L. Durwood Ball, Jr., Dr. Jason Scott Smith, Dr. Margaret Connell-Szasz, Dr. LM Garcia y Griego and Dr. Beverly Singer, I offer my deepest gratitude. Jason’s sensible approach to history and sense of humor were refreshing when I nearly left the doctoral program soon after getting into it. Margaret and her late iv husband Ferenc are, for me, the embodiment of curiosity and compassion. Manuel pushed me to articulate my ideas more clearly and assertively. And Beverly, with whom I swapped stories of the Tewa Basin, helped this manito feel at home. Lastly, to Durwood, my most sincere thanks for his patience and diligent editing of endless drafts of this dissertation. Durwood reminded me that kindness has a place in academia, and his friendship and support throughout my graduate career brought me back from the edge of quiting too many times. Thank you, Durwood. The Center for Regional Studies remained a steadfast supporter of my studies throughout my college career, and provided funding in the final stages of this dissertation. My deepest gratitude to Dr. Tobías Durán and Marina Cadena for their support and their impact on the study of New Mexico. An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship provided funding at a critical time in this dissertation, allowing travel and research that made completing this work possible. Thank you to Michael W. Graves, Louise Lamphere, Adriana Ramírez de Arellano, Miguel Gandert, and the entire UNM Mellon Committee for their vision and support. Fellowships from the Office of the State Historian provided additional funding, and I thank Estevan Rael-Galvez, Rick Hendricks and Dennis Trujillo for their support. These fellowships allowed me to spend time with other graduate students during the dissertation writing process. I’d like to thank all of my fellow mellonistas, particularly Bryan Turo, Karen Roybal, Brian Luna Lucero, Tessa Córdova and Jaelyn de María. At the end of my graduate career, I was fortunate enough to have two supervisors that believed in me and this project and invested their resources in seeing this project v through. Fellowships with Suzanne M. Schadl at the Inter-American Studies Program at UNM and the Craig Newbill at the New Mexico Humanities Council helped bring this project to fruition. Suzanne modeled interdisciplinarity and how to be both a public and academic scholar. Craig and the staff at the New Mexico Humanities Council, where I am fortunate to serve as Assistant Director, exhibit an enthusiasm for the public humanities that I hope to emulate. To my family I offer my thanks. Miguel, especially, was always there to support me, especially when research and writing took me away from familial responsibilities. Last, but by no means least, I want to thank my wife, Lucía, and my children, Liliana and Eliseo, who have put up with a groggy, sleep deprived husband and father for too many years. Completing this would have been meaningless without you and I love each of you dearly. Jacobo D. Baca Albuquerque, NM vi Somos Indígena: Ethnic Politics and Land Tenure in New Mexico, 1694-1965 by Jacobo D. Baca B.A. in History, University of New Mexico, 2003 M.A. in History, University of New Mexico, 2006 Ph.D. in History, University of New Mexico, 2015 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines changes in Hispano and Pueblo Indian land tenure in the Tewa Basin of north central New Mexico across three centuries. Land grants imposed upon the Pueblo world in the Spanish colonial period limited the shrinking Pueblo population. They paradoxically protected Pueblo land from further incursions through the Mexican era. By the American territorial period, Pueblo and Hispano land grants were exposed to similar legal, political, and economic processes that dispossessed both communities of their commonly held lands. When New Mexico became a state in 1912, the federal government intervened after decades of reneging on its duty to protect Pueblo lands. The result was the Pueblo Lands Board, which examined non-Indian claims to lands within the exterior boundaries of Pueblo land grants. New Deal programs followed the proceedings of the board, and addressed both Pueblo and Hispano land tenure by purchasing numerous Hispano community and quasi-community land grants that had long since passed from communal ownership. vii Through an examination of intercultural relations and government relations, I analyze how Indian Pueblos and Hispano villages that once shared a sense of common destiny grew apart by the middle of the 20th century. This dissertation explores ethnic politics in Hispanos struggle for culturally based land claims in New Mexico. It examines the repression of Pueblo-Hispano hybridity by Pueblo rights advocates, government bureaucrats, Indiophiles, Hispanophiles, and Hispano and Pueblo communities themselves. It compares Hispano communities’ struggle for land and water rights with comparable Pueblo Indians struggles. Despite similarities in how they worked and bore claim to their land in the past, the divisive way that Hispano and Pueblo communities relate to one and other and how they understand and articulate their claims to land and water rights is indicative of growing fissures between the two communities. Convoluting already complex relationships are changes in Hispano ethnic politics, where celebrations of a Spanish colonial heritage have given way to a recognition and assertion of indigenous origins, articulated notably in claims to land and water rights. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... xiii INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 PART I CHAPTER 1: Spanish Settlement and the Reshaping of the Tewa Basin’s Pueblo World in Colonial New Mexico, 1598-1730 .........................................................49 CHAPTER 2: Shifting Land Tenure and Pueblo-Hispano Relations in the Tewa Basin in Colonial Spain and Republican Mexico, 1710-1848 .................................96 CHAPTER 3: Not a Feeling in Common: Changes in Pueblo & Hispano Land Tenure in Territorial New Mexico, 1850-1876................................................................153