I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
So there’s at least one more connection to be found between Sonia Sotomayor and New Mexico, albeit a bit indirect.
That is, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor’s family roots in Puerto Rico — and the island’s 19th century acquisition by the United States — call to mind New Mexico’s similar historical ties to the USA.
As American history buffs know, Puerto Rico, known as la isla del encanto (the island of enchantment) and New Mexico, known as la tierra del encanto (the land of enchantment), were both Spanish speaking outposts that were annexed to a young United States in the 1800s.
UNM law professor Laura Gomez, who’s written about this history, notes that there are ”striking similarities” between 1846, the year New Mexico was ripped away from Mexico in the Mexican-American War and 1898, the year the United States took Puerto Rico following the Spanish-America War. Gomez’s recent book Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race takes up this comparison in more detail.
“I think the Americans learned something from New Mexico,” she told me recently. “I do think there are similarities in our historical experience as people originally colonized by the United States, as opposed to voluntary immigrants or as opposed to slaves.”
A related comparison to be made is that neither native Puerto Ricans or New Mexicans are or were “immigrants.”
Yet that’s what Obama seemed to imply when he announced the Sotomayor nomination, the judge poised to make history standing right next to him. From last week’s announcement:
Sonia’s parents came to New York from Puerto Rico during Second World War…
When Sonia was 9, her father passed away, and her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to provide for Sonia and her brother — who’s also here today, is a doctor, and a terrific success in his own right — but Sonia’s mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood, sent her children to a Catholic school called Cardinal Spellman, out of the belief that with a good education here in America all things are possible.
“Here in America”? But Puerto Rico is part of America, its people native-born American citizens from birth.
Just like New Mexicans, of course, in spite of the occasional ignorance that assumes the Land of Enchantment is really part of Mexico.
There’s a reason New Mexico license plates include the letters “USA” in bold type just so everyone’s clear.
