Decolonizing New Mexico

About

About this Project

Dr. Estevan Rael-Gálvez launched this project in 2017 with the support of the McCune Foundation which requested him to deepen the work he began after his consulting firm completed Culture Connects Santa Fe, the City of Santa Fe’s first cultural plan. The goal of the project was to understand and address the various manifestations of historic trauma that have continued to divide the community of Santa Fe. Initially, the Santa Fe Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Initiative defined the work with the targeted goal of establishing a commission. While it was always recognized that the transformation from something as profoundly complex as colonialism would be an extensive process, early stakeholder engagement revealed the need to undertake further research to underpin the long-term effort. The project also expanded beyond Santa Fe.

Decolonizing New Mexico is the culmination of community engagement and a depth of research effort. The project leveraged Dr. Rael-Gálvez’s work as a colonial studies scholar, trained particularly as an anthropologist and historian, but also his decade’s long community advocacy working with and in community. This website is meant to enter gather historical context and ideas toward the development of a process, centering truth and transformation in New Mexico. It is neither comprehensive, nor complete and as more information is collected, more will be added to this website.

The Context & Framework

Time

Temporally, New Mexico has often been divided by archaeologists into the troublesome binary of “prehistoric” and “historic”; or framed by historians into distinct periods: “Pre-contact, Spanish Colonial, Mexican, Territorial and American.” All fail to capture the complexity of cycles and the transitions that lead up to and follow events, both cataclysmic and ordinary.

People

Identity is neither static nor something easily defined. In New Mexico, it is like nesting dolls, one inside the other, with beauty buried in the layers of complexity and consciousness, unknown perhaps, but still there. Some individuals and communities stand in strength and sovereignty. Others, whether they carry the complexity of their ancestry in their faces and hands or not, sustain memory in an aching consciousness.

Place

The representations of New Mexico spatially are often revealed in cartography, though in the colonial context, mapping is largely about power and politics: positioning places, people and objects in space; lines on parchment often made at the behest of distant popes, kings and presidents.

Story

In New Mexico, there are as many stories as there have been and are people, places and events, and recognizing that the story depends upon its teller is essential. Here, multiple and overlapping themes evoke origins, prophesy, innovation and convergence. Some are tales spun to excite, enchant or lure and others to inform and elevate.

Charting the Path Toward Truth & Reconciliation

Making the Case

This manuscript works to set the foundation for the work that is required to create transformation. Some of the questions before us are: how do we acknowledge the traumas of the past and yet still foster transformation in both present and future; how can we (re)imagine spaces, events and stories that are inclusive and that celebrate the complexity of its residents; how do take the harms and create possibility in healing?

A Comparative Analysis

Overview

In an effort to contextualize this initiative, comparative research and analysis on methods and frameworks of various Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) projects provided insightful information. TRC models have been critical in resolving deeply rooted conflicts around the world, promoting the belief that confronting and reckoning with the past is necessary for successful transitions from conflict, resentment and tension to peace and connectedness.

Charting A Path Forward - Recommendations & Strategies

As the Western Apache say of their homelands in Arizona, “wisdom sits in places,” and New Mexico is certainly no exception. But one cannot grow wise by simply looking at the surface of the buildings or in neighborhoods. I believe that wisdom can only be achieved by seeing past the layers, which in essence makes it deeply and profoundly contested and connected.