Mexicans in New Mexico: Deconstructing the Tri-Cultural Trope
Mexicans in New Mexico: Deconstructing the Tri-Cultural Trope Item Type Article Authors Fairbrother, Anne Citation Fairbrother, Anne. "Mexicans in New Mexico: Deconstructing the Tri-Cultural Trope." Perspectives in Mexican American Studies 7 (2000): 111-130. Publisher Mexican American Studies & Research Center, The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) Journal Perspectives in Mexican American Studies Rights Copyright © Arizona Board of Regents Download date 30/09/2021 22:07:23 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/624842 MEXICANS IN NEW MEXICO: DECONSTRUCTING THE TRI -CULTURAL TROPE Anne Fairbrother If Coronado and Ouate were to meet, would they recognize their own people? What vestiges of the colonies created by Conquistadores would they find? What would they say of that riotous preoccupation about Spanish origins, recalling, with a smile, that none of the great leaders brought a wife or family with him? Arthur L. Campa' Arthur Campa, the renowned folklorist who wrote in the 1930s and 1940s, provides a refreshing response to the "preoccupation about Spanish origins" in New Mexico, and should be a key voice in the discourse around the tri -cul- tural trope2 that represents New Mexico today. That tri -cultural image is of the Indian, the Hispano, and the Anglo, and that image manifests itself in public enactments, in tourism publicity, and has penetrated the collective consciousness of the region. The questions that must be asked in this region so recently severed from Mexico, and so long the outpost of an empire of colonized mestizos, are: Why is the mestizo, the mexicano, excluded from that iconic image? Why was the mes- tizo invisible and unheard from the time of the U.S.
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