Kristen’s Reviews > Nación Genízara: Ethnogenesis, Place, and Identity in New Mexico > Status Update

“Genetic genealogy is a tool that has allowed us, the Nuevomexicanos, a scientific pathway to honor our Native heritage by not allowing erasure or suppression any longer.”

“‘Hijo, hijo mío, you are not dependent on the weaver. You are the weaver.’ Maria’s son and Ferrán’s wayward pupil and others like him are exhorted to become the subject in as well as subject to history. In this way, a Genízaro nation is born.”

“Another challenge was a rapidly growing, floating population of Genízaros and mestizos with no ties to specific settlements in the Río Abajo and without title to farmland or grazing land. Having little or no stake in society made it difficult to fully transition and assimilate into Hispano colonial culture.”

“Governor Tomas Velez Cacupin’s 1754 placement of the Genizaros in Abiquiu is understood as his attempt to totally acculturate the Native population as Hispanos. The very fact that some residents of Abiquiu still self identify as Genízaro, and still maintain their Genizaro dances and vocalizations, is a testament to the fact that the colonial process of acculturation was incomplete.”

“Needless to say, the extinction never took place, and the decline or disappearance of segments of New Mexican Native Americans can attributed to identity transformation, acculturation, intermarriage and emigration— which are all components of the process of mestizaje.”

“Between 1700 and 1849, New Mexico’s parishes recorded over three thousand baptisms of captive Indian women and children, many of whom thereafter entered the Hispanic society as Christianized Genízaro subjects.”