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Land Loss Among the Hispanos of Northern New Mexico
Abstract
There has been little exploration of the psychological impact of land loss and displacement on American minority populations. What little there is, is evident in research on Native Americans. Virtually absent from the mental health literature is research on the psychological processes of land loss and the coping strategies employed by the Hispanos of Northern New Mexico. Hispanos received land grants by the Spanish and Mexican governments beginning in the 17th century. Living in Northern New Mexico for many years, this author observed negative emotions regarding land loss within the Hispano community. Such observations were reinforced by the continued appearance of local and national newspaper articles on land grant activism and litigation in Northern New Mexico and annual commemoration of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, a document drafted at the end of the Mexican American War in 1848, upholding the rights of Hispanos to the possession of land grants. Such observations led this writer to initiate a pilot survey that would capture current Hispano feelings regarding land loss. The hypothesis guiding this investigation was that Hispanos in Northern New Mexico would express negative emotions when discussing land loss. Six Hispanos were purposefully recruited. Some claimed fifth or sixth generation of Hispano Northern New Mexican ancestry. A survey questionnaire in English was generated by the researcher and normed with a local Hispano. It included demographic items and open ended questions on acculturation, language, land grants, and land loss. Overall findings described sadness, anger, loss, resentment of outsiders, and dishonor. Responses also elicited feelings of injustice, loyalty to the land and domination by the Euroamerican culture. Collapsed responses revealed two concepts, encroachment by the Euroamerican culture and the Federal government, and class conflict within the Hispano community. Implications for such findings include various coping behaviors needing more investigation and future research that will generate relevant clinical theory and motivate public policy in the interest of Hispanos.
... The values and philosophical stances embraced by IMA-US are embodied in political slogans, such as la unión hace la fuerza/the union makes the force (Cohn and Delgado 2005), si se puede/yes, we can (Cohen-Chen and Van Zomeren 2018), el pueblo unido jamás será vencido/the people united will never be defeated (Vargas-Hernández 2005), and Tierra, Libertad y Ley/ Land, Freedom and Law (Huirimilla 2007). These values have been expressed in these transnational communities generation after generation, and can be observed in social discourses and popular culture across both sides of the border Zentella (2004Zentella ( , 2009Zentella ( , 2014. This history of social movements makes evident that throughout these difficult chapters, multiple groups, including Indigenous, Indigenous-Spanish, and other minorities, have come together to seek freedom from structural oppression (De la Peña 2006;Vasconcelos and González 1944). ...
... The denial of traumatic experiences represents a normative reaction that follows after such exposures (Cohen et al. 2012). During the colonial era, embracing indigenous identity was perceived as a threat to the physical and psychological integrity of the survivors (Anzaldúa et al. 2003;Talebreza-May 2015;Zentella 2004Zentella , 2009Zentella , 2014. Therefore denying indigenous heritage by adopting the colonial identity was a way to ensure survival, and secure greater social mobility, a survival strategy that was passed down across generations (Caminero-Santangelo 2004; De la Peña 2002; Van Dijk 2019). ...
... For IMA-US, this denial has been transmitted across generations through many social venues, including the public school system, which until recently was minimizing the existence of indigenous people (De la Peña 2002). The detachment of the general population from their indigenous roots can be traced to the survival responses crafted during the colonial era, including assimilation, acculturation, and concealment of indigenous identity (Anzaldúa et al. 2003;De la Peña 2006;Oehmichen 2007;Talebreza-May 2015;Zentella 2004Zentella , 2009Zentella , 2014. In indigenous communities, this legacy of colonization played out somewhat differently. ...
Recently, Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) have encountered an escalation in adverse social conditions and trauma events in the United States. For individuals of Mexican ancestry in the United States (IMA-US), these recent events represent the latest chapter in their history of adversity: a history that can help us understand their social and health disparities. This paper utilized a scoping review to provide a historical and interdisciplinary perspective on discussions of mental health and substance use disorders relevant to IMA-US. The scoping review process yielded 16 peer reviewed sources from various disciplines, published from 1998 through 2018. Major themes included historically traumatic events, inter-generational responses to historical trauma, and vehicles of transmission of trauma narratives. Recommendations for healing from historical and contemporary oppression are discussed. This review expands the clinical baseline knowledge relevant to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of contemporary traumatic exposures for IMA-US.
... Tijerina's Hispano grassroots movement in northern New Mexico, the Alianza Federal de las Mercedes, contested the failure of the U.S. government to honor the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. The treaty was written to protect the rights of Hispanos and their land and was signed by Mexico and the United States (Zentella 2004). Many of the publications and festivals continue to this day although some observances are waning. ...
... "Here in New Mexico we interface with nature, interface with traditional culture; we have a different experience, and a lot of it is reverence," according to Miguel Santistevan (Dudley 2010). For this reason, land loss whether by annexation, confiscation, poverty, or environmental conflict, constitutes an injurious and disempowering detriment to the very essence of Hispano culture (Zentella 2004). Many challenges impact the culturally significant foodways of ethnic groups. ...
Strolling down the walkway of the Albuquerque International Airport, one is overwhelmed by the variety of quaint crafts that represent New Mexican culture. The commodification of both Native and Hispano cultures is displayed throughout the airport and in the city's tourist shops that pepper the landscape of historical sites. Native heritage is sold as Kachina dolls, Navajo blankets, turquoise jewelry, and Indian fry bread. Dispersed among these Native crafts are souvenirs of a separate sort-those that symbolize the native Hispano culture. Most celebrated among Hispano products is chile, in more recent times this is most often green chile. Hispanics make up 47% of New Mexico's population (Pew Research 2011) and particularly when tourists travel north of Albuquerque, where some of the larger Hispanic concentrations are located in the high-country's northern regions above Interstate 40 (U.S. Census Data 2010), they find themselves confronted by a host of chile items in the form of ristras (strings of drying red chile peppers), Christmas lights, earrings, salsas, burgers, beer, soaps, and wax candles, and other commodities. All of these products have become more readily visible in response to a rise in tourism, however, their cultural influence goes far beyond tourism. Chile has been cultivated in New Mexico for at least four centuries (Bosland and Walker 2004) and some chile lines have been bred and handed down through generations. Symbolically linked to both the land and a distinctive New Mexican identity, green chile (Capsicum) appears as a cultural heirloom that defines northern New Mexican cuisine and as one respondent stated, " is seen in part to be what makes northern Hispano New Mexico culture unique. " As both food and decoration, chile is a preeminent ethnic emblem for what Gonzales (2007) terms Nuevomexicanos, or northern New Mexican Hispanos. Over the last several decades, there has been an explosion in research on food, identity, gendered relationships, and cultural heritage. Scholarship documents the centrality of food, 2 [Type the document title] consumption, and preparation in expressing and maintaining various aspects of identity (questions of how people connect what they eat to their personal, social, and political identities, of how they use what they eat to distinguish themselves from others within and outside specific social groups, and of the role 'cuisine' plays in the scripts of 'Nation' and 'national identity' are quite revealing " (Narayan 1997:161). By considering chile, this paper contributes to this ongoing research on food and identity through its exploration of Hispano in the specific region of northern New Mexico. To explore the ways in which Hispanos symbolically use and relate to green chile and how green chile is incorporated into a sense of ethnic identity, I conducted semi-structured telephone and face-to-face interviews with people living in rural northern New Mexico, Albuquerque, and southern Colorado. A snowball sampling procedure was used to contact participants, whereby one contact provided names of others of Hispano heritage willing to discuss the topic. A total of 24 interviews were conducted in 2011 and 2012 with participants between the ages of 24 and 72 who identify as being part of a Hispano culture. The semi-structured interview guide contained 20 open-ended questions related to green chile and Hispano culture. Qualitative content analysis was utilized to systematically examine the interviews and newspaper articles from local papers (The Las Vegas Optic, Green Fire Times, Santa Fe New Mexican and the documentary film Genetic Green Chile) that added secondary supportive data. Data from informal interviews and over ten years of participant observation of funciones, fiestas, Lent rituals, and 'topic related' conferences/workshops were verified by speaking with key informants, including artists, teachers, retirees, local residents, business owners, and scholars specializing in New Mexican history. Examples of topic related conferences include one held at the University of New Mexico in 2012 titled, " Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on the Freedom to Farm in the U.S. and Abroad, " as well as a 2012 workshop at the Onate Cultural Center on seed saving and presentations made by Cuatros Puertas, a non-profit culturally based seed bank, on green chile and genetic engineering.
... Between 2011 and 2015, it had the highest rate of drug-related deaths of any county in the United States (Rossen et al., 2017), with 85.8 deaths per 100,000 people, more than five times the national average 16.4 deaths per 100,000 people during that same time frame (New Mexico Department of Health, 2017). Rio Arriba County is a culturally diverse region (Garcia, 2010;Zentella, 2004) that is designated as rural by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy which defines rurality as all population centers and land area not included in urbanized areas of 50,000 or more people, or in urban clusters of between 2,500 and 50,000 people (Health Resources and Services Administration, 2017). ...
Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder (OUD) is accessed half as often in rural versus urban areas in the United States. To better understand this disparity, we used a qualitative descriptive approach to explore the experiences of individuals with OUD seeking MAT in rural New Mexico. Guided interviews were conducted with 20 participants. The frameworks of critical social theory, intersectionality theory, and the brain opioid theory of social attachment were used to guide data analysis and interpretation. Thematic content analysis derived five major themes which identified novel barriers and facilitators to MAT success, including a perceived gender disparity in obtaining MAT, challenges in building a recovery-oriented support system, and the importance of navigating a new normal social identity. This deeper knowledge of the experiences and perspectives of rural individuals with OUD could serve to address the rural–urban MAT disparity, leading to enhanced recovery capacity and transformative policies.
Research on loss of land for Northern New Mexican Hispanos and clinical work with La Raza populations indicated a connection between past and present historical and psychological issues, motivating the development of the multidimensional model of Hispano attachment to and loss of land. The model, however, did not entirely capture the abuse leveled on Hispanos and lacked inclusion of similar experiences among other La Raza populations. This article exposes events embedded in the model—patterns, voices, and coping strategies—that provide a glimpse of more than 400 years of collective historical trauma sustained by La Raza and that is based on a Manifest Destiny colonization, beginning with the conquest of Mexico and running to current racial profiling. It also describes the evolution of the model to include the overarching La Raza population.
One underpinning of ties between family and culture among the Hispanos of Northern New Mexico is land. Among Hispanos land has historically symbolized a protective environment fostering survival, the development of extended family systems, a land-based culture, and a variety of land practices including spiritual/religious rituals. This, however, began to change with the initial loss of Hispano land holdings, a consequence of the annexation of New Mexico into the American Union and the disregard by the American government of Hispano landholder rights upheld in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848. A grounded theory dissertation completed in 2005 addressed Northern New Mexican Hispano perspectives of attachment to and loss of land. The core concepts that emerged from the findings were, after a post-dissertation evaluation, found to parallel John Bowlby's still relevant, intertwining inner and outer rings of attachment and Setha Low's linkages between individual and place. Bowlby's ethologically based protective outer ring is a conceptual representation of the environment. The inner ring represents an organism's experience of safety and survival within the environment. Both rings intertwine as one's physiological state impacts one's view of the environment, with this view influencing one's physiological state. Setha Low pinpointed six specific types of linkages that form the basis of an interactional relationship between individuals and place. The grounded theory investigation narrative responses provided material that contributed to the development of a Multi-Dimensional Model of Hispano Attachment to and Loss of Land within the context of Northern New Mexico guided by the framework of Bowlby's and Low's models. While at this present time the model is applicable only to the respondents of the grounded theory investigation, it nevertheless contributes to a greater understanding of the process of psychological attachment and loss of land and its emotional consequences as perceived and conceived by Hispano residents in Northern New Mexico. Such psychologically based findings suggest applicability to mental health approaches for Hispanos in Northern New Mexico. Recommended are further studies with larger and more varied Hispano samples that could make this model generalizable to other Hispano or Latino populations residing in the area of the United States that was at one time a part of the Northern Mexican territories absorbed into the American Union as described in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The development of this model contributes to the growing work on place psychology, to the Chicano/Hispano psychology literature, and to literature on cultural trauma.
Dans les sociétés culturellement diversifiés, les individus peuvent présenter des attitudes relatives à leurs relations avec les autres et les groupes. Ces attitudes (dites “attitudes d'acculturation”) sont liées à des prises de position sur deux problèmes généraux posés à toute personne en acculturation: la préservation culturelle de son propre groupe et le contact avec les autres groupes. On définit les attitudes d'assimilation, d'intégration, de séparation et de marginalisation, puis on les mesure dans plusieurs groupes en acculturation d'Australie et du Canada (les indigènes, les immigrants et les groupes ethniques implantés). On donne la validité et la fidélité des échelles d'attitude, puis on analyse les relations des échelles entre elles par rapport aux deux problèmes sous-jacents que sont la préservation et le contact. Enfin, quelques-unes des applications pratiques des attitudes d'acculturation sont envisagées.
This essay identifies and categorizes terms used to designate the Hispanic/Latino population in addition to specific names used to designate distinct groups in the US. A brief taxonomy of terms is given in an attempt to clarify the complexity of ethnic identification. As Hispanic/Latinos bear a plural identity, ethnic names that are appropriate today may be obsolete or even offensive tomorrow. The mediating factors in self-designation are gaining a voice and power to name one's identity and define one's reality. The article provides an analysis framing the process of ethnic self-designation within an ethnopolitical and psychosocial context. The analysis concludes by presenting mestizaje and transculturation as processes involved in the evolution of Latino identity.
This essay identifies and categorizes terms used to designate the Hispanic/Latino population in addition to specific names used to designate distinct groups in the US. A brief taxonomy of terms is given in an attempt to clarify the complexity of ethnic identification. As Hispanic/Latinos bear a plural identity, ethnic names that are appropriate today may be obsolete or even offensive tomorrow. The mediating factors in self-designation are gaining a voice and power to name one's identity and define one's reality. The article provides an analysis framing the process of ethnic self-designation within an ethnopolitical and psychosocial context. The analysis concludes by presenting mestizaje and transculturation as processes involved in the evolution of Latino identity.
Place attachment is the symbolic relationship formed by people giving culturally shared emotional/affective meanings to a particular space or piece of land that provides the basis for the individual’s and group’s understanding of and relation to the environment. This chapter applies this definition of place attachment in order to identify a range of types of place attachment in cultural terms, and to present ethnographic examples of each type. It is argued that while there are often strong individualistic feelings that may be unique to specific people, these feelings are embedded in a cultural milieu. Thus, place attachment is more than an emotional and cognitive experience, and includes cultural beliefs and practices that link people to place. This discussion is illustrated with examples of how these often overlapping place attachment processes occur in the central plaza of San José, Costa Rica. Future research directions for a cultural analysis of place attachment are suggested as part of the conclusion.
Prevailing paradigms of Chicanos and other socially disadvantaged groups are written from the perspective of and reflect the values of the dominant sociology. A new paradigm of Chicano sociology, more sensitive to the nuances of Chicano culture and consistent with a minority world view, is offered to supplant earlier formulations found in the sociology of Mexican-Americans. Chicanos are not a volunteer immigrant group, but one internally colonized with an alien culture and language imposed. Chicano cultural and familial values are not maladaptive or dysfunctional, but effective mechanisms for coping with an oppressive condition.
Acculturation, the process whereby immigrants change their behavior and attitudes toward those of the host society, is a fundamental part of migration-induced adaptations to new sociocultural environments. A rapidly expanding research literature on acculturation has accompanied the growth of international migrations. In response to the need to integrate the growing literature on acculturation and mental health status among Hispanics in the United States, and to identify points of convergence and new directions for research, 30 publications were examined. Points of convergence are identified, as are problems and limitations. The research needs new directions, proceeding from but not constricted by the assumptions and procedures in the work already done.
This paper reviews some recent research on the mental health of the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis of Canada. We summarize evidence for the social origins of mental health problems and illustrate the ongoing responses of individuals and communities to the legacy of colonization. Cultural discontinuity and oppression have been linked to high rates of depression, alcoholism, suicide, and violence in many communities, with the greatest impact on youth. Despite these challenges, many communities have done well, and research is needed to identify the factors that promote wellness. Cultural psychiatry can contribute to rethinking mental health services and health promotion for indigenous populations and communities.
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