ALBUQUERQUE, – Noted Mexican-American writer Sandra Cisneros says New Mexico needs a “truth and reconciliation commission” like South Africa to address its history of violence between Hispanics and Native Americans.
Cisneros told The Associated Press this week that such a commission could help bridge divisions among descendants of Spanish settlers, Mexican immigrants and American Indians.
“There is real division here, historically,” Cisneros said while in Albuquerque to promote an art exhibit based on her 1984 novel The House on Mango Street at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. “I think what New Mexico needs is what South Africa had ... the Truth and Reconciliation (commission). And that hasn’t happened.”
Cisneros said she considered relocating to New Mexico but changed her mind because she felt some of the state’s Hispanics looked down on down on Americans of Mexican descent. She currently lives in Mexico.
In October, Cisneros told the Santa Fe New Mexican’s Pasatiempo she contemplated moving to northern New Mexico – until she read residents there “don’t like Mexicans.”
Cisneros said the book Desert America: A Journey Through Our Most Divided Landscape by Rubén Martinez highlighted the racial divisions within New Mexico and she couldn’t get past that in a region obsessed with its mythical, Spanish colonial past.
Some Hispanic residents in New Mexico often differentiate themselves from other Latino in the U.S. by claiming they have a more direct Spanish-colonial lineage. Some scholars have disregarded those claims.
Her comments come as Native American students are seeking to change the seal of the University of New Mexico.
The students say the seal with a rifle-toting white frontiersman and a sword-carrying Spanish conquistador depicts the state’s violent past and makes American Indians students feel uncomfortable.
Nick Estes, a University of New Mexico doctoral student who is pushing for the seal change, said he believed the state’s communities should talk honestly with each other about New Mexico’s violent past. “I do think there is a lot of truth telling to do,” said Estes, who is Native American.
But Ralph Arellanes, chairman of the Hispano Round Table of New Mexico, said Cisneros was being too simplistic in her critiques of New Mexico Hispanics. “She’s forming her opinions based on what she hears, based on what she reads and not on what she knows,” Arellanes said. “For the most part, New Mexicans are very welcoming to other groups, especially Mexicans.”
Arellanes said there is nothing wrong with New Mexico Hispanics being proud of being descendants of originally Spanish land grant families. Their land was later stolen by white settlers, and the legacy of that land theft is still felt today, Arellanes said.
Cisneros is known internationally for her novel The House on Mango Street and recently published A House of My Own: Stories From My Life.