ii INVENTION AND CONTENTION: IDENTITY, PLACE, AND MEMORY OF THE SPANISH PAST IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST, 1848-1940 BY BRIAN LUNA LUCERO B.A., Latin American Studies, Columbia University, 2001 M.A., History, University of New Mexico, 2005 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy History The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December, 2013 iii DEDICATION To Myra, who knows more than anyone what this work means. To Vada who always knew I would finish this. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I must first thank my advisor, Sam Truett, for shaping my ideas and always offering sound advice on all aspects of the historian’s life. I also thank my committee: Durwood Ball for his extensive proofreading, Bárbara Reyes for her unflagging encouragement and Enrique Lamadrid for his staunch support. I may never have started on the road to this degree without the Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship at Columbia University to light my path. This dissertation benefited from the support of several grants at vital points in the work. A travel grant from the Mellon Mays Fellowship allowed me to access archives out of state. A dissertation completion grant from Mellon Mays gave me precious time to focus on writing and introduced me to the most helpful colleagues I have known. Grants from UNM’s Center for Regional Studies supported this work at all stages. Finally, I thank the Mellon Doctoral Fellowship at UNM for vital support during the research and writing of this work. v INVENTION AND CONTENTION: IDENTITY, PLACE, AND MEMORY OF THE SPANISH PAST IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST, 1848-1940 BY BRIAN LUNA LUCERO B.A., Latin American Studies, M.A., History, Ph.D. History ABSTRACT As the twentieth century unfolded, American writers, critics, and boosters presented a narrative of the arid Southwest as an exotic place blessed with a romantic history that could inspire, captivate and renew the many new white citizens flocking to rapidly growing cities. The history of Spanish colonialism in the area became a precious and exclusive cultural and economic resource. This dissertation tells the story of the commemoration of the Spanish past from 1848 to 1940 in three Spanish towns that grew into prominent American cities: Tucson, Arizona; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and San Antonio, Texas. In chapters centered on space, historic preservation, Mexican folk ritual, and pageants, this work examines the stories told about the Spanish past in these cities and reveals how people of differing classes and ethnicities gave meaning to the places they lived and to the process of American annexation of the region. That meaning shaped individual and social identities as well as the flow of power between them. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................................VI INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER OUTLINE............................................................................................................................ 22 CHAPTER 1: THE BLACK LEGEND......................................................................................... 25 COLONIAL RIVALRY AND THE BLACK LEGEND ............................................................................ 27 THE ROMANTIC TURN....................................................................................................................... 33 THE SPANISH PAST IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST .................................................................... 39 MEMORY AND RACE IN THE SOUTHWEST ...................................................................................... 50 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................... 57 CHAPTER 2: SPACE AND THE SPANISH PAST.................................................................... 63 THE COLONIAL ORIGINS OF ALBUQUERQUE, SAN ANTONIO AND TUCSON.............................. 65 SHIFT OF CITY CENTERS................................................................................................................... 79 A CITY BOTH ANCIENT AND MODERN IN ASPECT ........................................................................ 87 MODERNISM AS JUGGERNAUT ......................................................................................................... 95 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................... 99 CHAPTER 3: HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN THE URBAN SOUTHWEST ................101 PEJORATIVE VIEWS .........................................................................................................................102 THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION.....................................................108 PRESERVATION GOES WEST: THE ALAMO..................................................................................113 THE SPANISH GOVERNOR’S PALACE ............................................................................................119 HISTORIC ABANDONMENT: TUCSON.............................................................................................128 TITLE BY ANNEXATION: HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN ALBUQUERQUE.................................. 135 CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................................... 137 CHAPTER 4: MEXICANO RITUAL AS COLONIAL TEXT...............................................139 LOS PASTORES: ORIGINS AND DIFFUSION ...................................................................................141 LA GRAN FAMILIA MEXICANA: LOS PASTORES AS CULTURAL UNIFIER................................145 THE POLITICS OF MEXICANO RITUAL..........................................................................................155 A CONFUSION OF IDEAS: LOS PASTORES AS VIEWED BY ACADEMICS .................................... 159 SPECTACLE AND RITUAL: THE ENGLISH PASTORELA ...............................................................169 PASTORES AS ANTI-MODERN REDEMPTION.................................................................................175 CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................................... 178 vii CHAPTER 5: PAGEANTRY........................................................................................................181 NEW PAGEANTRY IN THE UNITED STATES ...................................................................................182 THE SAN ANTONIO BICENTENNIAL ...............................................................................................187 ALBUQUERQUE’S GOLDEN JUBILEE..............................................................................................197 THE CORONADO CUARTO CENTENNIAL.......................................................................................204 THE BAILE DE LAS FLORES ............................................................................................................218 CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................................... 225 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................228 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................237 1 INTRODUCTION American visitors to the Southwest in the decades immediately after Mexico ceded that territory to the United States found the region to be dirty, barren, and primitive. In their eyes, the people, recently citizens of Mexico, appeared lazy, untrustworthy and slow-witted. Defining civilization by the number of hotels, railroads, and factories in a place, these newcomers concluded the Mexican Cession came up short in that count.1 Yet as the twentieth century unfolded, American writers, critics, and boosters reimagined the narrative of the arid region as an exotic place blessed with a romantic history that could inspire, captivate and renew the many new white citizens flocking to rapidly growing cities. The history of Spanish colonialism in the area became a precious and exclusive cultural and economic resource. This dissertation tells the story of the commemoration of the Spanish past in the American Southwest with an eye to explaining how and why the content and form of that commemoration changed from the mid nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth. In the late-nineteenth century, the people of the United States of America had to make sense of the incorporation of the northern territory of Mexico into 1 I will refer to this territory as both the Mexican Cession and the American Southwest, acknowledging that the Mexican North was annexed by the United States in three stages. Texas entered the United States as a state in 1845, Mexico ceded 525,000 square miles of its land to the United States through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, and the United States purchased an additional 29,670 square miles of Mexican land in the Gadsen Purchase of 1854. For an overview of this expansion and its legal ramifications see Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: