Key Takeaways
1. Santa Fe's Identity: A Deliberate "Myth" for Modernity.
"In a world infatuated with maintaining historical traditions and ethnic identities, Santa Fe has created an unusually successful illusion of authenticity."
A city's deliberate reinvention. Santa Fe, facing economic decline after being bypassed by the main railroad line in 1880, consciously embarked on a project to redefine itself. The "Plan of 1912" aimed to transform the city into an exotic tourist destination, a "City Different," by crafting a unique public identity rooted in a romanticized version of its past. This process, termed the "invention of tradition," involved selectively drawing from local history and cultures to create a cohesive, marketable image.
The myth of Santa Fe. This manufactured identity, encompassing architectural revivals, public ceremonies, and an art colony, became known as the "myth of Santa Fe." It served multiple purposes:
- Providing a unifying civic identity for residents.
- Creating a promotional image to attract tourists.
- Offering a romantic backdrop for Anglo-American newcomers.
This myth, while successful in fostering economic resurgence, often obscured underlying social and cultural complexities.
Paradox of invented traditions. Ironically, these "invented traditions" often presented themselves as historically authentic, denying their modern origins. They reworked fragments of regional, family, and ethnic traditions, blending them with borrowings and pure invention. This phenomenon, prevalent in the modern world, allowed societies to create a sense of continuity and stability in the face of rapid industrialization, urbanization, and cultural mixing, even as it selectively edited history.
2. Architecture as the Core of Santa Fe's Invented Tradition.
"The Santa Fe style of architecture, sometimes known as the Spanish Pueblo revival or simply the Pueblo style, emerged first and has continued to epitomize local identity."
Defining a unique architectural language. The "Santa Fe style," a blend of Spanish Colonial and Pueblo Indian building traditions, became the most tangible expression of the city's new identity. Codified by the Museum of New Mexico between 1912 and 1916, this distinctive revival style was crucial for differentiating Santa Fe from other American cities and from the California Mission style. It provided a visual shorthand for the city's "City Different" persona, influencing everything from public buildings to private residences.
From "primitive rudeness" to picturesque charm. Initially, Anglo-Americans viewed Santa Fe's adobe buildings as "dilapidated" and "primitive," preferring modern Eastern styles. However, as the city sought a unique tourist appeal, this perception dramatically reversed. The museum's efforts, including a photographic survey of old adobe structures, helped redefine these once-derided forms as picturesque and historically significant, inspiring new construction that mimicked their aesthetic.
Key elements of the Santa Fe style:
- Flat roofs and massive adobe walls, emphasizing horizontality.
- Projecting vigas (roof beams) and canales (roof drains), reinterpreted as decorative.
- Recessed portals and buttresses, adding depth and a sense of age.
- Casement windows, replacing modern sash windows for a historical feel.
This architectural language, though a modern interpretation, aimed to evoke a timeless, pre-industrial past, becoming central to Santa Fe's allure.
3. The Paradox of Cultural Purity Amidst Deep Hybridity.
"The public rhetoric of triculturalism suppresses rich family histories such as these."
Tricultural harmony: A carefully constructed narrative. Central to the myth of Santa Fe was the rhetoric of "tricultural harmony" among Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglo-Americans. This narrative presented New Mexico as a unique place where three distinct cultures coexisted peacefully. However, this idealized vision often obscured the complex realities of historical conflict, power imbalances, and the extensive intermixing of these groups over centuries.
Denial of mestizaje and intermarriage. The Spanish casta system, which categorized people by racial ancestry, eventually broke down through widespread intermarriage. After the American occupation, while Anglo-Americans often denigrated Mexicans as a "mongrel" race, the Spanish-American elite later asserted a claim to "pure Spanish blood" (limpieza de sangre) to distinguish themselves. This public emphasis on racial purity systematically downplayed the significant historical and ongoing intermixing between:
- Spanish and Indian populations (mestizos, genízaros).
- Hispanic and Anglo-American groups (coyotes).
This denial served to maintain social hierarchies and present a simplified, palatable image for tourism.
The "Spanish" vs. "Mexican" identity shift. The term "Spanish-American" gained prominence in the early 20th century, replacing "Mexican" in public discourse, particularly during the statehood campaign and the Mexican Revolution. This shift allowed New Mexicans of Spanish descent to distance themselves from negative stereotypes associated with Mexico and assert a more "European" and therefore "acceptable" identity within the American context. This redefinition, while politically expedient, further complicated the understanding of the region's true cultural hybridity.
4. Tourism: Shaping Identity, Masking Complex Realities.
"A city that buries its utility lines the better to sustain a historical fantasy, such as Santa Fe, is utterly dependent on tourists, who owe their leisure to the prosperity of industrialization."
The economic imperative of exoticism. As Santa Fe's traditional economy declined, tourism emerged as a vital lifeline, but it demanded a specific, romantic identity. The city's leaders, initially ambivalent about being a "quaint old city," eventually embraced the tourist image, transforming local traditions and architecture into marketable commodities. This economic reliance meant that the city's public face was increasingly tailored to external perceptions of the "exotic Southwest."
Commodification and selective history. The tourist industry, particularly the Santa Fe Railway, played a significant role in shaping this image. It promoted:
- "The Santa Fe Indian": A stylized, dignified, yet aloof figure, often posed with crafts for sale.
- "The Santa Fe Southwest": A romanticized landscape of canyons, cliff dwellings, and Pueblo villages.
- "The City Different": An ancient, picturesque city distinct from modern America.
This commodification led to a selective presentation of history, emphasizing romantic elements while suppressing less appealing aspects like poverty, social conflict, or the violence of conquest.
Gentrification and displacement. The success of tourism, especially the "Santa Fe style" vogue of the 1980s, brought millions of visitors and "amenity migrants" (wealthy newcomers). This led to:
- Escalating property values and rents, making the city unaffordable for many native residents.
- Displacement of working-class Hispanos, many moving to surrounding areas or facing long commutes.
- The critique: "We painted our downtown brown and moved the brown people out," highlighting how aesthetic preservation coincided with social displacement.
The tourism boom, while economically beneficial for some, exacerbated social inequities and intensified ethnic frictions, often masked by the rhetoric of tricultural harmony.
5. Key Figures and Institutions Orchestrated Santa Fe's Image.
"Hewett attracted others to the museum's crusade of cultural revival and preservation."
The Museum of New Mexico: A cultural engine. The joint Museum of New Mexico–School of American Archaeology, founded in 1909 and led by Edgar Lee Hewett, was the primary catalyst for defining and promoting Santa Fe's new identity. Hewett, a skilled administrator and lobbyist, along with his staff—including photographer Jesse Nusbaum, illustrator Kenneth Chapman, and Mayanist Sylvanus Morley—systematically researched, codified, and publicized the "Santa Fe style" and its associated cultural narratives.
Hewett's vision and influence. Hewett, a former college president with a passion for archaeology and public presentation, leveraged his connections and autocratic style to advance the museum's agenda. He cultivated powerful patrons like Frank Springer, who provided crucial funding and political backing. The museum's efforts extended beyond architecture to encompass:
- Archaeological excavations, linking the city to ancient Anasazi heritage.
- Revival of Native American and Hispanic arts, promoting crafts for the tourist market.
- Elaboration of the Santa Fe Fiesta, transforming a local celebration into a major historical pageant.
This comprehensive approach ensured the museum's central role in shaping the city's cultural landscape.
The "City Beautiful" meets romantic regionalism. The museum staff, influenced by the national City Beautiful movement, applied its principles of civic improvement and architectural homogeneity to Santa Fe. However, they uniquely combined this with a romantic regionalist aesthetic, arguing that Santa Fe's distinctiveness lay in its "ancient" adobe architecture, not classical grandeur. This fusion resulted in the "Plan of 1912," which proposed using the local style to attract tourists and reverse economic decline, effectively making architectural image central to civic identity and economic strategy.
6. Contested Histories: Whose Past Gets Celebrated?
"What is omitted from a historical revival is frequently as revealing as what is included."
Selective narratives in public memory. The official "myth of Santa Fe" presented a sanitized version of history, carefully selecting which events and figures to celebrate. The focus on the "peaceful reconquest" of 1692 by Diego de Vargas, for instance, deliberately overlooked the bloody reconquest of 1693 and subsequent conflicts. This selective memory served to promote an image of harmonious coexistence, palatable for tourists and politically convenient for the dominant Anglo-American and Spanish-American elites.
Exclusion and reinterpretation of diverse experiences. The narratives of various groups were either marginalized or reinterpreted to fit the prevailing myth:
- Pueblo Indians: Their resistance and ongoing cultural life were often reduced to picturesque "performances" for tourists.
- Mexicano working class: Their struggles, land loss, and vernacular building traditions were largely invisible in the official narrative.
- Anglo-American modernization: The period of Americanization (1846-1880) was often "scraped away" from buildings and narratives.
This process of omission and reinterpretation created a public history that reinforced existing power structures and tourist expectations.
Challenging the official myth. Over time, marginalized groups began to assert their own histories and identities, challenging the dominant narrative. The Chicano movement, for example, embraced the concept of Aztlán and emphasized Indian-Spanish mestizaje, directly confronting the myth of Spanish purity. Similarly, Native American artists and activists used their work to highlight the violence of conquest and the ongoing struggles for cultural survival. These counter-narratives exposed the constructed nature of Santa Fe's myth and demanded a more inclusive and honest reckoning with the past.
7. "Scrape" vs. "Anti-Scrape": The Battle Over Historical Authenticity.
"Restoration... means the most total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered."
The dilemma of historical intervention. Santa Fe's approach to its built environment has been deeply influenced by the "Scrape" philosophy of restoration, which aims to return a building to an idealized, often imagined, historic appearance by removing later additions. This contrasts sharply with the "Anti-Scrape" preservation ethic, which advocates for diligent maintenance and respect for all layers of a building's history, viewing them as part of its continuous evolution.
Santa Fe's "Scrape" approach in practice:
- Palace of the Governors: Its 1913 "restoration" stripped away Victorian-era additions and reconstructed a speculative Spanish Colonial portal.
- Acoma Mission: The 1920s restoration removed early 20th-century towers and insisted on earthen plaster, even when cement plaster was more practical.
- General trend: The city systematically removed signs of its Americanization to create a unified "Pueblo-Spanish fantasy."
This aggressive restoration often prioritized a romanticized aesthetic over actual historical fabric or the practical needs of local communities.
The rise of preservation and its challenges. The "Anti-Scrape" philosophy, emphasizing the preservation of all historical layers, gained traction nationally after World War II and began to influence Santa Fe. However, the city's strong "revival style" tendencies often clashed with this approach. The demolition of Kenneth Clark's 1962 modernist library entrance in 1990, for example, demonstrated a continued preference for a selective, romanticized past over preserving the best work of each generation, even if it meant destroying a significant piece of its own architectural history.
8. Modern Regionalism's Struggle for Deeper Relevance.
"The dilemma for Meem, as for every regional artist in the twentieth century, was how legitimately to continue historical traditions, to respond to local climate, and to foster local community at a time when international economic, technological, and artistic trends drove toward cultural homogenization."
Reconciling tradition with modernity. John Gaw Meem, Santa Fe's dominant architect at mid-century, embodied the challenge of modern regionalism. He sought to create buildings that were both rooted in local Pueblo-Spanish traditions and responsive to modern architectural theory. Meem's work, while often criticized by strict modernists for its historicism, found a unique synthesis by abstracting traditional forms and emphasizing sculptural massiveness, often using modern materials like reinforced concrete disguised with adobe-colored stucco.
Beyond style: The quest for a "critical regionalism." While Meem's "Pueblo-Spanish Revival" and the later "Territorial Revival" provided Santa Fe with a strong aesthetic identity, they often remained primarily stylistic. A deeper "critical regionalism," advocated by figures like Lewis Mumford and later architects like Antoine Predock, sought to move beyond superficial aesthetics to address:
- Environmental adaptation: Responding to local climate and topography (e.g., passive solar design).
- Social structures: Fostering community through traditional settlement patterns (plazas, courtyards).
- Economic self-sufficiency: Supporting local economies and appropriate technologies.
This approach aimed to create architecture that was not just visually regional but deeply integrated with the social and ecological realities of its place.
The tension between image and substance. The "vogue of Santa Fe style" in the 1980s, fueled by books and media, epitomized the commodification of regional aesthetics. This "cardboard scenographic populism" prioritized image over substance, often neglecting deeper social and environmental issues. While architects like Predock experimented with abstracting regional forms and incorporating car culture imagery, the challenge remained to create buildings that were both culturally resonant and genuinely responsive to local needs, rather than merely serving as romantic backdrops for tourism and wealth.
9. Coyote Consciousness: Embracing Mixed Identities and Challenging Stereotypes.
"If we are to overcome the us-them dichotomy and resist our human impulse to project negative stereotypes onto other ethnic groups and nations, we must confront and come to terms with our coyote nature."
The power of the hybrid. The concept of "Coyote Consciousness" offers a powerful counter-narrative to the idealized purity often promoted in Santa Fe's public myth. Coyote, a trickster figure in Native American mythologies, embodies the marginal, the intermediate, and the mixed. Embracing this "coyote nature" means acknowledging and celebrating the inherent hybridity of human identity, challenging rigid ethnic categories, and fostering tolerance for complexity and ambiguity.
Coyote as a symbol of cultural interaction. The term "coyote" itself is a product of cultural mixing—a Nahuatl word adopted into Spanish and English. Historically, it referred to individuals of mixed Spanish-Indian or later, Hispano-Anglo ancestry. In contemporary New Mexico, "coyote" can describe someone adept at navigating multiple cultural worlds. This figure represents:
- Adaptability and malleability, constantly changing and making new things possible.
- Creative vitality, thriving in uncharted, interstitial spaces.
- Challenge to social norms, transgressing boundaries and questioning fixed identities.
This perspective encourages a shift from viewing mixed heritage as "impure" to recognizing it as a source of strength and innovation.
Towards a "mestiza consciousness." Visionary thinkers like Gloria Anzaldúa advocate for a "mestiza consciousness" that actively bridges cultural, psychological, sexual, and spiritual boundaries. This involves:
- Confronting contradictions, learning to live with internal and external conflicts.
- Healing splits, addressing the dualities that create division.
- Fostering tolerance, cultivating insights into life's ambiguities.
By embracing this hybrid identity, individuals and communities can move beyond simplistic "us-them" dichotomies, fostering genuine communication and shared social action, and ultimately creating a more humane and inclusive society.
10. Beyond the Myth: Towards a More Inclusive and Honest Future.
"Our job remains to overcome historical amnesia, challenge ethnic and tourist stereotypes, develop a sustainable economy, revitalize community, nurture myths worth believing, and foster a more humane society to pass on to coming generations."
Confronting historical amnesia. Santa Fe's reliance on tourism has often led to the suppression of uncomfortable historical truths, such as the violence of conquest, the extent of racial intermixing, and the displacement of native populations. A more constructive social mythology requires openly acknowledging these omissions, including:
- The Japanese internment camp, a stark example of how unpleasant details are erased from public memory.
- The Taos Revolt and land grant losses, reminders of unredressed injustices.
- The "scorched-earth" tactics, used against Native Americans.
Embracing a complete, unvarnished history is crucial for genuine reconciliation and building a foundation for future social justice.
Cultivating a critical regionalism. Moving beyond superficial "Santa Fe style" aesthetics requires a deeper engagement with local realities. This involves:
- Sustainable development, prioritizing affordable housing, local jobs, and environmentally sound practices.
- Community-focused design, revitalizing traditional settlement patterns like plazas and courtyards, and exploring new models like cohousing.
- Challenging tourist stereotypes, encouraging visitors and newcomers to engage with the authentic, complex cultures of Santa Fe.
This approach seeks to harness the tourist economy for local social needs, ensuring that cultural preservation benefits all residents, not just a select few.
Nurturing myths worth believing. A healthy society needs myths that inspire and unite, rather than divide or mislead. For Santa Fe, this means:
- Celebrating hybridity, through public art and narratives that honor mixed ancestries and cultural interactions.
- Promoting local autonomy, empowering communities to define their own identities and address their unique challenges.
- Fostering dialogue, creating spaces for open, honest conversations about history, identity, and social change.
By actively shaping its mythology to reflect its true complexity and aspirations, Santa Fe can become a model for other communities striving to balance tradition with modernity, and local identity with global interconnectedness.
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