‘Vecino, Hispano, y Mexicano’: Exploring Civic Identity in Nineteenth-Century New Mexico

Summary

Generations of American anthropologists have studied the process of Spanish colonization through the lens of ethnicity, considering how interactions between colonial and indigenous populations resulted in the mixing and reformulation of ethnic identities. This approach works well in the early colonial period, when colonial society was organized into a system of ‘castas’ that were determined, in large part, by one’s ethnic heritage. It is less appropriate during the late colonial and early national periods, however, a time when the cast system fell out of use and an increasingly multiethnic colonial population began to self-identify using terms that expressed their affiliation with a community, colony, or nation. This paper explores several such civic identities popular among Hispanic settlers in New Mexico during the nineteenth century, a period that witnessed New Mexico ?s transformations from Spanish colony to Mexican territory to newly-conquered territory of the United States.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Enfants de la patrie: Historical Archaeologies of National Identity and Nationalism   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-42,10