Landscape Change In Hispano And Chicano Villages Of New Mexico

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4490445
AutoresJohn B Wright (autor de correspondencia), Carol L Campbell
Año2008
Volumen98
Número4
Páginas551-565
Fecha de publicación2008-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaGeographical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1931-0846.2008.tb00317.x
OpenAlexW1549148883
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas14

Understanding villages grows more fascinating and urgent as we watch them become encircled, transformed, or erased. Grasping the geographical reality of village and town forms is critical in this work. John Jakle explored small and emerged with insights into the stereotypes, symbols, and vernacular forms that help create generalized views of (1982). Joseph Wood focused on New England, arguing that the classic nucleated, colonial village is an idealized, simplified, and romanticized view of form constructed by economic forces after the Revolutionary War (1997). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the public imagination, New Mexico's Hispanic villages reify around collection of classic traits. Chambers of Commerce and state agencies promote culture tourism by reframing the Laws of the Indies guidelines as edicts in order to market villages as enchanting colonial relicts instead of lived-in, evolving communities (Hughes 2002; LGD 2003). The classic landscape traits of Spanish villages most often stressed include central with Catholic church and bandstand, rectangular grid of streets, garden plots, an encircling common, and the continuing use of acequias and long lots (narrow agricultural fields). Such landscapes certainly exist, but how typical were and are these structural traits in the villages of northern and southern New Mexico? Geographers, historians, and anthropologists have studied the Spanish-and Mexican-era village landscapes of northern New Mexico extensively (Jackson 1952; Westphall 1983; deBuys 1985; Warren 1987; Crawford 1988; Ebright 1989; Forrest 1989; Carlson 1990; deBuys and Harris 1990; Jordan-Bychkov, Kilpinen, and Gritzner 1997; Smith 1998,2004). These and other researchers have revealed the complexity and diversity of village landscape morphologies and functions--and scholarly points of view. Although Dan Stanislawski reminded us of the power of the gridded impress over environmental constraints in eleven in Michoacan, Mexico ([1950] 1969), Jeffrey Smith argued that linear forms and not grids most frequently appear in twenty-four Spanish-American (Hispano) communities in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, especially where Anglos have made inroads into the community (1998, 440). However, J. B. Jackson believed that this ribbon-shaped pattern in New Mexico was as inherently Hispanic as grid because it kept farmers close to their land and acequias (1952). Smith later explored the origins of Las Vegas, New Mexico, as gridded town with vibrant plaza--forms born of the need for centralized commerce and defense against Indian raiding (2004). According to Marc Simmons, this initial grid pattern was defining trait of New Mexico Hispanic communities but was often modified and sometimes lost both its Hispanic and its Anglo influences (1969). Stephen de Borhegyi advised us that even when the plaza/fortress form disappears as the landscape is pacified, village can remain highly Hispanic in social terms (1954). This is clearly seen in Chimayo, New Mexico, where the Plaza de los Cerros is gone but the village's Santuario folk church is cultural and spiritual touchstone for the region's Hispanics--one that serves as the destination for the largest Good Friday pilgrimage in North America (Wright 2002). Reuben Rose-Redwood agreed, arguing that grid morphology itself reveals little about the social function and meaning of places (2008). George Kubler called the grid a generic urban solution (1942, 166). Richard Nostrand's work on eight generations of life in the Hispano (Spanish self-identifying) village of El Cerrito, New Mexico, patiently explained both the persistence and the disappearance of village form and cohesion through time (2003). This appears to be equally true in South Texas, where Daniel Arreola reported that, of fourteen plaza towns he studied, only three had central (1992

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