Response to Orlando Romero 2

RACISM EMBEDDED IN ORLANDO ROMERO ‘s REPRESENTATION By Paul Henrickson, Ph.D. 2008 This response to some of the comments of Orlando Romero may, when all is said and

done, require a rather special introduction. Orlando and I know each other. It cannot be said that we know each other well, but it would not be true to allow anyone to believe the relationship was casual.

My feeling about our relationship is that it had the opportunity to be personally meaningful to both of us had our respective cultures allowed for it. My culture which cannot be said is purely from any one locality,

and certainly not from a limited mind set, Orlando’s personal culture, on the other hand, appears to be solidly entrenched in the Northern New Mexican Hispanic orientation.

Photo dating from 1888

Penitente group Penitente morada New Mexico

Good Friday celebration at Rancho de Taos, New Mexico , photo by Anne Lorraine Erickson-Schille

Orlando Romero at Los
Alamos for the “cinqo de mayo” celebration

I came across this rather interesting description of the New Mexico Hispanic population which, while not incorrect in what is written, there needs to

be some elaboration to explain some of the customs still prevalent among them such as the lighting of candles on Friday evening, Old Testament first names and circumcision as well as an intense exclusivity which

requires a daily battle for its maintenance, facing, as it does, the intense need for dissemblance in a society politically and economically dominated by Anglos The Hispanic has had to occultly manipulate

these circumstances, most often to the economic disadvantage of non-Hispanics, in order to maintain a semblance of those customs brought with them a half millennium ago.

While there may be other justifiable explanations for these customs I have not heard any offered. “… but nonetheless Spanish in their Catholicism, language (still a 16thcentury Castilian dialect to some degree), and

culture. They worked their primitive farms in isolation, generally undisturbed by the "Westward Ho" Anglos who bypassed the unpromising wastes of New Mexico. Though to outsiders they are indistinguishable from

Mexicans, these New Mexicans think of themselves as Hispanos, direct descendants of Spain.” [Comments by
David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace are, in outline, conventionally correct, ]

Romantically one can see a great deal of

literary and filmic potential in that description, but the only two films of my acquaintance which touch upon that special characteristic which gives definition to this group’s character are “The Penitentes” with

Raul Julia and the film made of Richard Bradford’s novel

Red Sky at

Morning

.

Both of these films touch very sensitively on two of those

distinctive characteristics. One of these being the love/hate relationship that exists and is rooted in the response system of the Hispanic toward anything not itself, and the near psychotic socio-religious

patterning in the arena of deicide., and adding to this, the undoubtedly traumatic and schizophrenic effect of having been forced by the Spanish Inquisition, to deny one’s God and learn, somehow or other, to hate what you

are. I am sympathetic with their dilemma, but not with their use of it to punish all others for being who they are. In this regard it should be remembered that the Jewish victims of the Spanish Inquisition

were officially and legally identified within two days of Columbus’s departure. It is, largely, for this reason that it is supposed that the majority of Columbus’s crew were Jews escaping the inquisition.

The Jewish, and also the Muslim, populations were often forced to convert to Christianity, hence the term “Converso” as it is generally applied to Jewish converts…but also to Muslims. They were in fear of losing either,

or both, their lives and their fortunes. This institutionalized Inquisition also accounts, I understand, for the retreat of about 15,000 Jews to Muslim Turkey encouraged by the policies of the then Sultan.

Sultan Bayezid II sent Kemal save the Arabs and Sephardic Jews of Spain from the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, and granted them permission to settle in the Ottoman Empire
Reis TO

Whatever their reasons, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon at some point, gave away to some of these survivors great tracts of land, which was not their property but belonged to the various American Indian tribes

they had subdued, however, the present day Hispanic heir of those land grants is very attached to the idea of that land and wants it back. Perhaps thinking that, for them, it was “Canaan”, or a form of it. And, in point of fact,

it is not unlike the area, and also in point of fact some of the behaviors attributed to the Canaanites are today still identifiable in the present day Hispanic inhabitants of Northern New Mexico as is their general attitude toward

their Indian neighbors similar to that held by the Jews of the exodus in their treatment of the Canaanite army whom they talked into being circumcised (in exchange for wealth and women) and then days later when the

operation is at its most painful and the patient unable to move was murdered. Although a shrewd move, it seems hardly consistent with other more compassionate biblical instructions, except for the one provisional

suggestion that consideration is for one’s own, anyone else is fair game. However, in the past century and a half, those land grants were sold, but that makes no difference they still

want them back, hence the insistent policy to redefine the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1843) supported , to my knowledge, by three influential Jews, Rabbi. Hellman of Synagogue Beth Shalom, Stan Eudis, and the one time,

possibly still,

Priest associated with San Ysidro in Agua Fria a barrio in south-west Santa Fe. In the meantime the American Indian whose lands these were in the beginning is politically silent on the topic. And

the Anglo who, over that period of time, have bought, sold and bought again these lands is confused about the logic of the issue. Somehow, I have grown accustomed to abating my emotion when it is

in conflict with reason, but others may not have been able, nor wished to do so, and this, I think, may be part of the problem. In any event I think all this background has something to do with

Orlando’s evident surprise that I was still living in the valley when, by chance, we encountered each other in the Pojoaque post office. “Are you still in the valley?” he asked me and I responded “Is there a reason I

shouldn’t be?” Since then he’s never said a word to me. It is true I left for Europe soon after that and that leaving certainly did have something to do with the nature of the New Mexican Hispanic who still believes in and

practices a sort of native magic. I would judge, and did so, that from his Post Office comment he was, somehow, surprised that after 3 dog killings, acequia flooding of my house, civil rudeness, Jemez Mountain

Electric Cooperative abuses and the court case heard by Judge Petra Maes where-in my lawyer, Michael Righter, later disbarred, had been suborned by the lawyer for the defendants, also named Maes, which was

supposed to indicate that I was not welcome in the valley….and the only thing they had against me was that I was not “one of them”. I believe this experience may explain that one of the

provisions in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago of 1843 was the provision that migrants from the East would be welcome into the then territory. When I first read this provision I thought it a strange

one for a treaty, but I now think I understand it. It is so much a part of the Northern New Mexico character not to welcome strangers (cf. Patricia Madrid’s advice to a Hispanic audience in Las

Vegas while she was running for the office of Lieutenant Governor…to inhibit the migration of Anglos into the territory,

(photo of Patricia Madrid), or that of Deborah Jaramillo, while Mayor of Santa Fe, telling a California reporter that it was merely a matter time before Anglo houses would be burned) that the writers of the

treaty felt it a requirement to include it. I also understand very well now, after the fact, what Jacques Cartier had in mind when in 1957 he told me that if I thought I wanted to move into the

valley I should understand that the people there were “terrible”. I had not asked for more information, nor did he volunteer additional information.

Cartier, Actor-dancer as one of the historical characters in his repertoire of portraits

These occurred years before all these later developments when I had mentioned to Orlando that visitors who came to see me often told me that they felt the presence of a

female spirit following them around the garden. These were Anglo folk and usually not given to such things, but Orlando took my comment to heart and volunteered to rid the place of any spirits. I

felt it unwise to refuse such an offer and I watched patiently with an open mind as he burned something and advised me to put the ashes in a container and to sleep with it beneath my pillow. Well, I put it

into a container and laid it on the shelf.

Since the encounter in the Post office I now wonder what ceremony Orlando had intended to perform while leading me to believe it was some sort of exorcism. I hate to think him capable of evil because I like him, but there

have been several people who were evil whom I liked so I suppose, I am no great judge of character, or, I am impressed by the offbeat, or , as one Welsh astrologer told me my chart tells him I

would be a great leader for the criminal class. On the surface Orlando shows none of those, otherwise disagreeable, characteristics, but, after awhile one begins to sense a quite nearly subconscious focus on

an age-old hurt for which, it is felt that someone feels there must be retribution, and while the original participants are no longer around it will be sufficient to use a surrogate who simply is of the type, that is

“guerro”. The term “anglo” is used to refer to anyone, regardless of color, not Northern New Mexican Hispanic. In order to bring this about it is sometimes necessary to appear to be other than what you are and subterfuge

abounds. HELGI HUNDINGSLAYER HAUGHEM shot by David Duran

and when confronted with his guilt accuses me of arrogance as a reason for murdering an excellent animal. It is in that connection that the report below fascinated me tremendously and could

shed some interesting light on the nature of all folk enclaves. The questionnaire sent from the national FWP offices reflected the dominant version of folklore, directing the FWP field writer’s

questions to the subject of Indian legends, geographic features, superstitions, festivals, tall tales, and jokes and anecdotes “passed around by the camp fire” (Robelledo. Introduction xxiii-xxiv),

In the questionnaire, New Mexico natural and cultural wonders are imagined to exist in a mythic realm outside history. But this abstraction of culture from history is itself a historically specific act, as A. Gabriel Melendez

describes it, ‘the fetishing of folknessthat began in the 1930s__served political and ideological ends. For the vision of New Mexico as an enclave of folk was also a way to erase the greater part of the Neo-Mexicano

social and historical agency’. This statement rather shocked me as it seemed to be unusually forthright and surprisingly “right on”, if one could imagine a sub-cultural society so

intent upon appearing, or to be seen as, what they were not that ultimately believing that a grafted-on fantasy was possible and that consequently a fact, of sorts, would follow this act of imagination. There might be a

precedent in this cultural transmutation if what some claim regarding the conversion of nonethnic Jewish Khazars th in the 9 century accounts, today, for their comprising 90% of the inhabitants of Israel

is true. There is a question hovering about these matters which has rarely been asked and that seems to be: just what are the differences between the Sephardic Jew, which presumably

is the New Mexican Jew and the Eastern European Jew, assumed by some to be ruling Washington D.C. and known, by some, as Ashkenazi? When in a letter to the editor of the Santa Fe NewMexican

commenting on Mel Gibson’s unfortunate encounter with a Jewish California policeman I made a one sentence (20 words perhaps) suggesting that since Gibson enjoyed researching for his films he might research that

Khazar- Jewish relationship. After a one day appearance of the letter that sentence was purged and I condemned to a four day period of penitential silence. When I asked Michael Odza who had

complained about that one sentence I did not receive a reply. Perhaps my neighbors across the Nambe valley will provide the answer. Ms. McKinney owns the newspaper, but who owns her?

This statement also seems to suggest that in the process of consideration and reconsideration of commentary on the values and characteristics of the New Mexico Hispanic that extant and

functioning social environments may be partially obscured in both the writing and the reading. It is the phrase “to erase the greater part of the Neo-Mexicano social and historical agency”

that suggests that someone has attempted to remold a whole set of cultural behaviors, and perhaps, thereby to better integrate them, or not, into a different and less restrictive cultural context. If so, it certainly was an

interesting experiment, but from my experience it has not worked, but has laid the groundwork for a disturbing social development waiting in the wings.

of Alice, of “Alice in Wonderland” from being a

n…or like re-establishing the reality of Santa

s, now, to have been formulated with the intent of grafting on to the present group consciousness a different and more acceptable one which, in turn, might be more amenable to adaptation. Certainly an ambitious program in social psychology if this is the way it was. This example, if this is what it is certainly does not forebode much success

for the present and even more grandiose plan of globalization. These considerations tend to make of the Northern new Mexico the subject of a mystery not unlike that of the Khazars who, some believe, have been able to hoax the entire world into believing that they are the true (ethnic) Jews and, having done so, now constitute 90% of the population of Israel. If

Adolf Hitler had realized this one wonders how he might have accommodated this intellectual conflict. He murdered people who were not the ones he thought they were.

As for Orlando’s work as a santero there is nothing I am able to say as, I believe, I have never seen any that he may have done. However, I will say this that the few I have seen over several decades have impressed me with their sameness. Now, in art work that becomes cultic and, consequently, subject to applied formulae of production this is almost an inevitability. Because of this it is possible for us,

in fact, it is quite nearly unavoidable that this sameness becomes known as “The school of”…and then add the name of whatever place it happens to be, e., “The school of Firenze” and such an attribution would probably indicate to the student 1) that we do not know the name of the person who executed the work and are incapable of telling one work from another or who did what of among them.

Art criticism, in its usual sense, has no place to function in the field of santos production. In the case of the function of santero in New Mexico it appears to bear a relationship to the population not unlike that of a religious intercessor. In fact, the production of santos in New Mexico seems to bear some

relationship to other cultures household gods and those who make them are revered as special beings whether their craft is remarkable or not. The repeated replication of traditional handcrafts in subject matter and in unevolved technique seems to bear some relationship to sympathetic magic. One santero tried to explain: "We want only to say that Jesus was a man who suffered deeply

and gave-up His life. The pretty crucifixes in some of the churches do not grab the eye. They do not melt the heart."

I find this expression of aesthetic intent more than acceptable; in fact, I would state that such an intent is probably a necessity if the product of creative activity is to do its intended job. The

objectification of aesthetic intent into an object that possessesthe required organization of elements that can transmit meaning is only one part of the equation which represents the object as meaning. The other part of the equation is

represented by the observer whose visual vocabulary must be sufficient to extract the meaning from the object. And then, of course, we can’t be sure that the meaning as received is the same as what was intended. In point of fact that entire process can

most adequately described as a process of approximations. Part of that problem, of course, hinges on the adequacy or inadequacy of our vocabularies…both verbal and visual vocabularies. This vocabulary is, I believe, built up

through a process of observational experience and critical evaluation and finally coalesced within the culture as shared communal visual tools.

I agree with Orlando on the salad bowl metaphor when he states “We are like a salad

bowl ... you can't enjoy salad with only lettuce unless you're a rabbit. What are needed are tomatoes, onions and assorted veggies," Romero said.

And as in any good salad, the different flavors are distinctive and interesting, for the taste buds at least. However, the implication is that the Hispanic population may be indiscriminate as to whom it relates to sexually. I do not think

that, on the whole, such a statement would correctly profile the population. Anglos when invited guests at Hispanic homes for a social celebration or in a church for a social event such as a wedding or a funeral mass are nearly inevitably confronted by racial insults, or in other ways allowed to understand that they are

unwelcome outsiders. In fact, it has so much been the customary Hispanic response to Anglos that they do not know how to behave, at ease, when they are guests in an Anglo home, Deborah Jaramillo, the mayor of Santa Fe, is one such example. I know that for a contemporary white audience to read that the white man is often

racially insulted in public may come as a bit of a surprise, but it is absolutely true, very contrary to the prevailing myth that racism stems only from the white man to others. When the fantasy generates an aggressive attitude towards other groups and is used to deprive them of their rights, property and

freedoms it then becomes a matter of inappropriate social behavior in a multiethnic community. In short, one group’s fantasies has no right to impinge upon another group’s real (in the sense of legal) rights. And in New Mexico they do and the political propaganda of the fantasist has already been brought to the floor of the United States Senate by New Mexico politicians Pete

V. Domenici and Jeff Bingaman in the form of a Bill designed to investigate whether, or not, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo has been breached. Well, most Anglos living in the area know that it has for one of its more startling provisions was the specific requirement that the Hispanic residents who chose not to return to Mexico would greet in a friendly fashion those venturing into

the territory from the East. Even after more than a century and a half they have failed to do so and even as talented a diplomat as Concha Ortiz y Pino de Kleven failed to know how to reconcile these deep differences.

differences.

When facts and beliefs come into conflict on the political scene it might be expected that irrational events might take place, as when witches were burned in Salem and a Roman Emperor appoints his horse to the Senate… although this last example may have been a late Roman example of a conceptual work of art not unlike places a figure of

Christ submerged in a jar of urine. Although numerous, irritating and barbaric as some of my personal experiences with some Hispanic in new Mexico have been the pale in the face of the published misconduct of elected officials such as District Attorney Patricia Madrid, Mayor Deborah Jaramillo,

Judge Jose Cruz Castaillano, Land Commissioner Alex Armijo, Supreme Court Justice Petra Maes and not a few others. Were I to be the governor of a conquered nation I would think more than twice about allowing any of their number being placed in positions of authority in local and regional civil position over those who did the conquering. In the case of

the Northern New Mexican Hispanic it is an open invitation to punish the innocent symbol of your socalled subjection. Conquered they were, subjected they were not. When State Commissioner for public lands Alex Armijo tried to take over a section of my property in Santa Fe to allow access to a remote

section of his property so that his then 16 year-old son might have his own entrance to the property (at my expense) and announced this intention on official state stationary I simply made copies of the letter and sent them to every department head in the state. It had its effect.

Perhaps the most classic example of the sardonically amazing behavior of the Hispanic when in office is part of the public biography of Jose Cruz Castaillano whom I first knew as a District Attorney and who later became a District Judge from which position the other District Judges, evicted him for his pilfering of their community savings account. Within a month after this loss

of prestige he was arrested at a grocery store for having lifted three packages of cigarettes about which he explained he “needed to feed” his family. From this several wondered what species his family might be. Because of this need, however, he was given a job as District Attorney in, I believe, Mora County where the Attorney General there as well as the Police Chief