A Conversation with New Mexico 
State Historian
Rob Martinez: 
Understanding Law, Culture and Identity in Early New Mexico

We think of 1776 and the early 1800s as foundational years for the country, and they are. But here in New Mexico, 1776 does not necessarily mean the same thing. How would you say 1776 for New Mexico differed culturally and historically from the broader United States, especially the East Coast?

 

Rob Martinez: That is a great question. We are really lucky here in New Mexico because in 1776 two things happened. First, a priest from Mexico City, a Spanish priest, Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, was sent with the mandate to study the people, churches, and economy of New Mexico and write a detailed report, and we have that from 1776.

 

Another thing that happened is that same priest, along with a younger priest, Fray Silvestre Escalante, explored the Great Basin with Spanish soldiers, a cartographer from Spain, and Genízaro Indians from the Abiquiú area. They were supposed to establish a trail from Santa Fe to California. They were distracted. They ended up going north toward what is now the Salt Lake area in Utah, and they did an exploration of the land. They took notes on the land and the Native peoples. They even wanted to establish missions and settlements there. But they came back south, and then there was a conflict about whether they should keep going to California or return. After some heated arguments and discussions, they came back south through Arizona and back into New Mexico.

 

These things are important because what we get from these documents is insight into what New Mexico was like culturally. Both the British colonies on the East Coast and New Mexico were, in essence, on the edge of their empires, far-flung places. The British and the other peoples on the East Coast included Germans and French and, of course, Native Americans, and Black enslaved people brought from Africa and the Caribbean. So it was a very diverse population over there. But it was different in the sense that it was highly European, and there was less of an attitude of mixing with Native Americans or mixing with Black people. It was a different attitude. You had more of a Protestant perspective on the East Coast, which looked at those people as others. You pushed Native people away, put them somewhere else, and established communities where they used to live.

 

The Spanish view in New Mexico was different in that the Pueblo people had already been here and had established communities, and the Spanish respected those lands and communities. They respected them because there just were not that many Spanish people here, and they had not found mineral wealth. Had the Spaniards discovered silver in the mountains east of Albuquerque or near Santa Fe, there would have been thousands of Spaniards here—soldiers, miners, merchants, colonists—and things would have been different.

 

But here, there was more of an attitude, the Catholic attitude of the Spaniards, of incorporating Native peoples and Black slaves and Black free people into the Spanish system—obviously converting them, sometimes lovingly, sometimes by force, and making them part of that system. That is why within a generation or two of Spaniards landing near Native communities, they were mestizo, mixed. That goes back to the old Roman way of doing things. When the Romans would conquer a people, they would make babies with the women there to turn them into Romans, if that makes sense. The Spaniards kind of had that attitude: integrate yourself, intermix, obviously conquer, but change the conquered people and also be changed by them.

So New Mexico had a much more mixed culture of European—meaning Spanish, Portuguese, some French—and of course all those Native groups I have mentioned, mixing through the generations. And it impacted the way we spoke Spanish. We know this because Spanish governors and priests would come and look down on local people, on Pueblo people, and on mixed-blood Spanish citizens, vecinos. They would say, “These people say they are Spanish, but they are not. They are more like mestizos. They are Genízaro Indians. They are a mixed people.” And they would say their Spanish was not very good. But we love our Spanish here in New Mexico, the way we speak, and our amazing mixed history.

 

So in 1776, Fray Atanasio Domínguez describes the buildings as made of mud, adobe. He was used to stone cathedrals and palaces and fountains in Mexico City or Puebla. But in New Mexico he found towns like La Villa de Santa Fe, the capital, and would say, “This is just a collection of mud huts,” compared to the grandeur of Nueva España, New Spain, to the south. So it is interesting to read what we were like in 1776. 

 

You can trace some of that integration into the present. New Mexico is still uniquely mixed, and in a very positive and profound way.

 

Rob Martinez: Yes, and it does not mean there has not been conflict, even violence. We have not even gotten to the contributions of Americans. The Spanish came and changed New Mexico, but the Pueblos resisted. So you have that push and pull, that tug-of-war that makes us who we are. Then the Americans came and tried to change us, and again you have that push and pull, with people resisting.

 

The Pueblos kept speaking their languages and kept their traditions. They went into their kivas to practice their religious rituals. And then Spanish New Mexico developed a folk Catholicism that had the Penitentes starting at least as early as the early 1800s. When outsiders would come, even from the Catholic Church, people like the Mexican bishop in the 1830s and 1840s were a little horrified by what they saw. He thought the Penitentes were butchers and were doing some very strange things. Padre Martínez of Taos, the great advocate of New Mexicans, defended the Penitentes.

 

Then Bishop Lamy comes in 1850, our first bishop, and he also was horrified by the Penitentes and looked down on our adobe churches as not good enough, pagan, and not very Catholic. So you have these energies operating, and New Mexicans are resisting conquest while at the same time assimilating. That is what human beings do when they are conquered. They take those things the conquerors bring that improve their lives, but then resist those things that are going to cause them to lose something of themselves.

 

Spanish and later Mexican governance operated within a civil law tradition. In practical terms, how do you believe that shaped community organization, land use, and dispute resolution in New Mexico?

 

Rob Martinez: It definitely shaped New Mexico. All the things I have mentioned about the hierarchy of king, viceroy, governor, and alcalde mayor you also had with the Church: pope, archbishop, bishop, priest. These systems were in New Mexico, but as anybody who has ever come to New Mexico knows, you kind of have to bend to New Mexico. You have to bend to the sky, the landscape, and the people.

 

So those systems are in place, and we know from Spanish and Mexican-period documents that those systems worked. If there was a crime or a murder or a theft, the governor was essentially a judge and jury. It was a system that worked for them in that time. When you study these documents, you learn so much not just about the legal system, but how people lived and how they saw their world. And that goes for the church documents of the time as well.

 

New Mexico experienced multiple transitions in governance from Spain to Mexico and eventually to the United States. How do you think those transitions affected institutions and everyday governance between 1776 and 1846, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo comes about?

 

Rob Martinez: I am glad you asked that, because that is a really formative period in New Mexico’s cultural development. Again, we have to acknowledge that the Pueblos were there, surviving and thriving and watching Spanish, Mexican, and American systems. They were learning how to maneuver those systems. Culturally, New Mexico is really coming into its own at this time—how we speak Spanish, how we express our folk Catholicism, our santos, how we paint saints and carve them, and our prayers and our alabados, these chanted songs of folk Catholicism. They really reflect who we become between 1776 and 1846.

 

It is interesting that you mention the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo because under the Spanish system we had a casta system, a caste system. That was a very race-driven system that tried to control and put into a hierarchy the different blood mixing going on in Spanish colonial society. At the top you had Españoles, Spanish people; in the middle, Mestizos, mixed blood; and at the bottom, Native people and Black people. Again, it was a way of trying to control that which you could not control. But that was part of the cultural and social system in place.

 

When we become part of the United States, we are annexed in 1848. Through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, we are granted citizenship through treaty. Back then, you had to be white to have citizenship. Black people could not access it. Native Americans could not access it. So one of the negotiations the Mexican government had with the United States government was that when you incorporate places like New Mexico and California, with the Mexican people who were citizens at that point, you have to grant them full citizenship.

 

That is why, when you do your genealogy in New Mexico as a Hispanic and your names are Martinez, Romero, Salazar, Ulibarri, and you find your ancestors, there is a little “W” next to all of them: white. And it is not because we were looked at and seen as white. It was just a legal aspect of how to grant us citizenship.

 

The Pueblos were able to maintain their land base when we transitioned first from Spain to Mexico and then to the United States. Hispanics had a harder time because the Americans required original documents, and many times we did not have them. The document might date from 1702 and have deteriorated, and ultimately everyone just knew that land belonged to Severino Martin. He owned that land. So there were challenges like that.

 

One other quick point: we New Mexicans have killed a governor under each flag that ruled over us. In 1642, Governor Luis Rosas was disliked. He looked down on the local people, enslaved Apache people, and abused some of the local soldiers. So he was arrested and thrown in a cell in Santa Fe, and then some soldiers and citizens broke the door down and stabbed him, killing him. The Spanish sent some military men up here to deal with that and executed some of those folks. Under Mexico, in 1837, Albino Pérez was appointed from Mexico City. He also looked down on local people, and he was executed just outside Santa Fe at Agua Fría. They beheaded him. Then in 1847, when the war was going on between the United States and Mexico, Charles Bent was appointed territorial governor, civil governor, and he was killed up in Taos. So we have a pretty amazing, fascinating, violent, but brilliant history here in New Mexico. 

 

You mentioned the problem of incomplete or deteriorated legal documents. It sounds as though law and custom intersected pretty heavily. How did law and custom intersect in those early New Mexico communities, and to what extent did formal legal systems coexist with local practices and traditions?

 

Rob Martinez: That is an interesting question because one person’s local custom is another person’s hardcore law. In New Mexico, say in the colonial period, if you wanted a land grant, you would have to petition the governor for it, or the alcalde mayor, the local magistrate. Once it was granted, the way they surveyed it was different from how we do it, or how the Americans did it. They would say, “Okay, the land that is being granted to you goes from the river to that hill, to that tree, over to the river.” And it would be described that way in the document. But that can be vague. What if there are three trees? What if there are two hills? But that is how they did it, and everyone knew what they were talking about.

 

They would grab a piece of earth, dirt, or rocks—whoever was granted the land—and throw it in the air and say, “I take possession of this land in the name of the king.” That is a ritual that would seem kind of foreign to Americans who, two hundred years later, would come in and survey land in squares. The Mexican and Spanish land grants may not be square at all; they may be oddly shaped pieces of land.

 

And we have to go back to the Pueblos. They had their own communities before the Spanish came. They did not keep records like that either. They had their own ideas of where one community’s land ended and another community’s land started. And certainly there must have been conflict and warfare and then the settling of problems. So all of this comes into play through the centuries here in New Mexico. 

 

It seems as though, to the degree there was a design, it was very much a patchwork of different cultures and different practices across different communities.

 

Rob Martinez: Exactly. Going back to land, land grants did not just give you access to land; they gave you access to water. Anybody who has been to New Mexico knows that you have to have water. It is a very arid climate.

 

The Pueblo people had agriculture when the Spanish arrived. We know from documents like the Castaño de Sosa expedition in the early 1590s that these people, the Pueblo, had their own acequias, their own ditches. Then the Spanish bring their own system of acequias and ditches, traditions going back to Moorish Spain. And it was not just about the physical ditches and how you accessed water; it was how you organized it with the mayordomo, who would decide who got water and when.

 

These are ancient ways of doing things in New Mexico, and they are custom. Not everything was written down. Oral practices, oral traditions, and oral laws were also important. I read one time that an American who arrived along the Santa Fe Trail in the 1800s witnessed our acequias and wrote back home saying something like, “Here in New Mexico, they irrigate the way they did in Old Testament times.” And he was not being complimentary. He was saying, “This is really old-fashioned.” And yet we are still doing it. It is how we live. It is how our culture is expressed. 1

 

How did early land policies influence the social and economic development of the period from 1776 to 1846?

 

Rob Martinez: It was crucial. Everything we did had to do with land and water. It is interesting when you look at Pueblo perspectives and other Native American perspectives on land—how you respect the land, and the sacredness of land, rivers, and water. As the centuries and generations unfold, the Spanish and Mexican people of New Mexico take on a similar perspective. So the acequia system is looked at as sacred.

 

If you look at what is going on even today in northern New Mexico, people are still petitioning the state government in Santa Fe for funds and for recognition of how sacred water and these waterways are to life in New Mexico. So I think it is easy and truthful to say that these land grants and acequia systems are very much what define New Mexicans—not just our Spanish government or our Catholic practices, but also how people lived and the foods they ate.

The foods they ate—corn, maize, beans, frijol, squash, calabaza—blended with what the Spanish brought: wheat and barley, and animals like pork, beef, lamb, and goat. It really comes down to us and defines us. Even now, as Americans, we eat our cheeseburgers with green chili on them. I will accept nothing less. 

 

Looking back at the period from 1776 to 1846, what foundations were laid during that time that you believe still shape New Mexico to this day?

 

Rob Martinez: I do think that language is the key to cultural survival. So again, the Pueblo people and other Native groups—the Apache, Navajo, Comanche—keeping their languages alive. And that goes for the Hispano people of New Mexico: speaking our Spanish, maintaining it, talking to our grandparents in their language. I think that is crucial.

 

It is important that we study and learn from our history, but also realize that our heritage comes to us from our parents and our grandparents, and that our culture survives and thrives by practicing it. Not just practicing it, but living it: speaking our languages, eating our foods, listening to our music, and singing our songs.

 

I think that is what comes down to us from that time period, because we do not live in those times anymore. We live in 2026, but we can look back and learn from our ancestors. It is not just about looking back at that time period. We are talking about the 250th anniversary commemoration of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, the American Revolution. But also, as New Mexicans, we can look back, as you have done here today, and realize that we were not doing that here in New Mexico. We were doing other things, and our ancestors were living their lives and accomplishing things, and now we are all together. People of Spanish and Mexican background and Native American background in New Mexico are now adopted children of the United States, so that is our history, too—the American Revolution, but also the history of Americans who have come here over the last 160 or 170 years from back East and from varying backgrounds. They are also heirs to New Mexico’s history and diverse cultures. 

 

As we approach the nation’s 250th anniversary, what is most important for New Mexicans, including members of the legal profession, to understand about this early period in our history?

 

Rob Martinez: I would say this: the Declaration of Independence is an amazing document, not just in U.S. history but in world history. It is not perfect. It has some problems. It did not include Native Americans or Black people or women or even poor people. However, it led to the U.S. Constitution, which is a document that has allowed these various groups to find their way, make their way, and stake a claim as Americans through a legal system that, while again challenging at times, has still allowed people of different backgrounds to pursue the American dream.

Again, it is not perfect. We are still working on it. We are a work in progress, I like to say. But I think it shows you that through being part of the American system, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Chicanos, Hispanos, and Black people can work through this system as long as it stays true to the spirit of what the founders intended. 

 

Over the past 250 years—from 1776 through 2026—how would you say New Mexico has been uniquely shaped compared to the other forty-nine states?

 

Rob Martinez: Well, I am biased. I think New Mexico is unique in many ways. We have ancient civilizations going back thousands of years, the Pueblo people, and they are still here. We have diverse Native peoples—Apache, Navajo, Comanche, Hopi. They have been put under the umbrella term “Indian,” but they are so much more than that. So we have that. That is what makes us unique.

 

We were part of Spain’s empire for two hundred years. That makes us different. But hold on—so was Florida, so was Texas, Arizona, and California. We share that with Mexico. We share it with Cuba and Puerto Rico, Central America, and South America. So we have that commonality, Spain, Hispanidad, with those places. But what makes us different are our local Native peoples and cultures that have blended with the Spanish and created something unique.

 

And then I have to look at our Black history in New Mexico. The first representative of Spain to the Pueblos in 1539 was an African, Estevan. He started out as a servant, a slave, but eventually became an explorer. So that is when Black history starts here. And Black colonists, mulattoes, mixed with Spanish, are part of the Oñate colonization of 1598 and the Vargas reconquest of 1692. All of this blending and mixing creates something unique here.

 

So by the time Americans start coming here in the early to mid-1800s, we are already special. We are already different, and exotic, and kind of scary—if you are used to Illinois or Kentucky or Virginia in the 1850s. But people kept coming, and they are still coming. We are changing and evolving. I know there are a lot of people who say, “We do not want people coming here and changing us.” Well, that is history. People have been coming here and changing New Mexico since the 1500s, when the first Spaniards conquered and settled here. And it is an ongoing process.

 

It is a dance. It is a dance we do to maintain our ancient cultures, our ancient languages, and our ancient rites and rituals here. But it is also part of what we do to respond to all of that. How do we respond? We welcome people, and we say, “Respect who we are, but what do you got? Let’s see what you are bringing to the table, and let’s see where it takes us.” Because if you do not evolve and work with people coming to New Mexico, you do not want a dead culture, a dead language. You want a thriving culture, a living language, that evolves with the times and looks to the past to learn, but also looks to the future to be better—to be better than our ancestors and better than ourselves.