This, in turn, meant that Mexicans elites likely had more reason to be hostile toward the American occupation; their situation, arguably, deteriorated more drastically with the occupation. In comparison, Pueblo Indians may have had reason to welcome the American invasion because it disrupted Mexican elites’ authority. At the same time, elite Mexicans’ roles as the local legal, political, and religious authorities made them key targets for co-optation by the Americans. Mexican men came to play key roles in the new political and legal regimes (roles from which Pueblo men were excluded). If one of the central aims of the colonial project was to foster the transition to the authority of a new nation-state, the new sovereign had to make citizens out of some natives. Thus, some Mexican elites were converted from opponents of the new state to participants who held some degree of citizenship, albeit second-class. American law played a fundamental role in this process, incorporating Mexican elites as legislators, as jurors, and in various other capacities.
Legally White, Socially Non-white
As Chapter 2 explained, the mixed Spanish, indigenous, and African ancestry of the Mexican people opened the door to questions about where they would fit in the American racial order. Although American attitudes were not homogeneous, a broad consensus existed among Euro-Americans that Mexicans were racially inferior precisely because they were racially mixed. But the collective naturalization of Mexican citizens under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo hinted that Mexicans had white status given that, at the time, naturalization was limited to white persons. Thus, Mexicans’ collective naturalization in 1848 promoted a legal definition of Mexicans as “white.” Tension around Mexican Americans’ racial status arose because this legal whiteness contradicted the social definition of Mexicans as non-white. As a result, Mexican Americans came to occupy a position in the American racial hierarchy that was between white and non-white, or what I have termed “off-white.”6 My adoption of this term connotes Mexican Americans’ in-between status, rather than their status as more white than non-white.
Given Euro-American attitudes about Mexicans in the nineteenth century, as well as social relations between Euro-Americans and Mexicans in New Mexico, we can conclude that the racial subordination of Mexicans was pervasive. Euro-American immigrants to New Mexico after the American conquest probably shared racist ideas about the native Mexican and Indian populations similar to those articulated by Euro-American travelers, whose writings were widely published in the press. These beliefs formed an enduring, if not static, feature of the social landscape, coloring interactions between Euro-Americans and their Mexican and Pueblo neighbors in all social realms in which they interacted. Although Mexican men and Euro-American men were both enfranchised in New Mexico, racist beliefs about Mexicans created a broad gulf between the two groups. Additionally, de facto segregation of these groups allowed for infrequent interaction that might have tempered Euro-Americans’ racist beliefs.
During the Mexican period, the small number of Euro-American immigrants to the region assimilated into Mexican communities. They universally became fluent in Spanish (it was a business necessity), and they sometimes converted to Catholicism and became naturalized Mexican citizens. A number of them formed households with Mexican or Indian women. After the American occupation, however, most of the towns to which Euro-Americans immigrated in significant numbers—including Las Vegas, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque—were characterized by residential segregation.7 For example, Las Vegas, the county seat of San Miguel, was divided into separate, racially identifiable municipalities until the 1970s.8
Most Euro-American immigrants to Las Vegas arrived in the area with the construction of the railroad in 1879; the 1870 and 1880 censuses show that almost all Euro-Americans in the county resided in “New Town” Las Vegas (later the town of East Las Vegas)—the area built up around the railroad yards, with a visibly American-style architecture still evident today. Mexican Americans in Las Vegas were instead concentrated in “Old Town” (later, West Las Vegas), which was structured around the Mexican-era plaza defined by traditional adobe structures. The vast majority of smaller New Mexico communities had few Euro-Americans, and in those with a more sizable Euro-American presence, Mexican Americans and Euro-Americans lived in separate areas (if not separate towns), attended separate churches, and so on.9 While much of the social history of New Mexico communities in this era remains to be written, it is clear that Mexicans and Euro-Americans lived virtually segregated lives.
Neither did Mexican Americans and Euro-Americans interact with any frequency in the workplace. Either Euro-Americans were elites (lawyers, for example) who infrequently interacted with Mexican peers,10 or they were laborers who were intentionally separated from Mexican workers. Consider, for example, the employment records of the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad as late as 1895. Of its workforce, 35 percent had Spanish surnames (likely both Mexican and Pueblo, but it is unknown in what proportions), but of those 92 percent worked in the track maintenance department, which performed seasonal, unskilled, and physically demanding work.11 That department, in turn, was among the most racially segregated (only 15 percent of its workers did not have Spanish surnames) and the lowest paid. Moreover, the railroad even paid workers in the same jobs different wages on the basis of race: white track layers (predominantly Irish immigrants in 1895) were paid a daily rate of $2.25, while Mexican American and Pueblo Indian track layers earned $1.00 to $1.25 daily.12
These conditions made it entirely feasible for Euro-Americans to live and work in New Mexico without learning Spanish, and, conversely, gave Mexican Americans little incentive to learn English.13 Language thus became a significant barrier to interracial social interaction.14 Indeed, the newer Euro-American immigrants’ refusal to learn Spanish became an important symbol of their resistance to acculturating and accommodating to the region’s Mexican majority. This can be seen as both a product and a cause of anti-Mexican racism on the part of Euro-Americans, for it meant that Euro-Americans’ deep-seated prejudices were likely to go unchallenged by social interactions or friendships that crossed racial lines. The persistence of language barriers conspired to cement racial divisions that continued well into the twentieth century in many communities.
The status of Mexican elites became a crucial factor in the transition from the Spanish-Mexican to the Anglo-American racial order. Under the Spanish-Mexican order, some mestizos had been able to improve their social status, but under the Anglo-American order, they were often lumped together with lower-status Mexicans as racially inferior. The evidence reveals the emergence of two dynamics, sometimes in conflict with each other. All Mexicans were considered racially inferior to Euro-Americans, which promoted the formation of a collective, racialized identity among Mexican Americans. Yet the formal legal system allowed some Mexicans to claim white status. Mexican elites were better situated to exploit this avenue not because they were white (they were not), but because they were structurally positioned to do so. As previously noted, a central goal of American colonialism was to co-opt elite Mexicans. An important psychological inducement for Mexican elites was allowing them to claim white status.15 Mexicans received a collective psychological boost by being allowed to claim whiteness within the American context of white supremacy. This fundamentally changed the calculus of Mexican elites regarding American colonialism. Especially for Mexican American elites, whiteness operated as a palliative to soften the sting of changing from colonial subjects to colonial objects.
For the boost to be meaningful, however, Indians—specifically, Pueblo Indians—had to be excluded. The assertion that members of the Navajo, Apache, Comanche, Ute, and other nomadic and seminomadic tribes were not “white” was not controversial. From the Euro-American perspective, these Indian tribes looked like the Indian tribes they had been battling, slaughtering, and gradually pushing west from the time of the first New England settlements. New Mexico’s Pueblo Indians, in contrast, puzzled Euro-Americans. They had lived for centuries in permanent settlements in which they
had perfected farming in New Mexico’s arid climate. In fact, they often fought together with Mexicans against the non-Pueblo tribes in New Mexico.16 From the perspective of the American colonizers, Pueblo Indians and the mestizo Mexican masses must have seemed similar: they lived near each other (often in adjacent communities) in villages along rivers; they practiced variants of Roman Catholicism; their economies centered on subsistence agriculture and sheepherding; they used Spanish-language first and surnames; and, under the relatively recent Mexican independence, they were full citizens under the Mexican Constitution.17 It was precisely the region’s prior colonization by Spain that had produced these commonalities between Mexicans and Pueblo Indians.18
In this context, it served the interests of both Euro-Americans and those Mexicans who wanted to claim whiteness in order to differentiate themselves from Pueblo Indians. It was the fragility of Mexican Americans’ claim to whiteness that prompted them to distance themselves from Pueblo Indians, African Americans, and other Indian groups. Mexicans’ ability to claim whiteness as well as the inherent instability of that claim stemmed from their status as a racially mixed people. Precisely because of this mestizo heritage, Mexicans were able to stake out a tenuous claim to whiteness, drawing particularly on their European ancestry and culture (Spanish language, Catholic religion). But because of this thoroughly mixed background, and especially because the non-white ancestry dominated, Mexican Americans’ claim to whiteness was both weak and conditional. Insecurities and uncertainties about their claim led Mexicans to distance themselves from Pueblo and other Indians as well as African Americans.
Mexican American Elites: Power in the Law
Beginning in the 1870s, county courthouses in New Mexico served as both a central site for public gathering and the most visible arm of territorial government in action.19 The district court convened twice a year in each county, making the county seat busy with newcomers including the presiding judge and lawyers (all riding circuit in four to six counties), witnesses, and newspaper reporters. They also provided opportunities for local residents to earn money in roles such as bailiff and juror in the courtroom and outside it by operating restaurants or boarding houses or otherwise meeting the needs of court visitors.20 In every county seat, the courthouse would have been among the most imposing buildings. Newspapers in the largest towns covered trials and even the more mundane happenings of the courts when they were in session, increasing the courtroom audience still further. In some counties, civil and criminal litigation increased tremendously in the late 1870s—coinciding with the entrance of the railroad and increasing Euro-American immigration to New Mexico. For example, in San Miguel County, then one of the territory’s most populous counties, criminal prosecutions increased fivefold between 1876 and 1882 and civil lawsuits doubled during this time.21 This litigation boom would have drawn even more attention to the county courthouse, enhancing its role as the focal point for American governance.
The use of Spanish in New Mexico courts was an important symbol of Mexican Americans’ power. Even in the early twentieth century, most Mexican American witnesses still testified in Spanish in the county courts. Their testimony was translated into English by an official court interpreter, who was one of the essential officials riding circuit with the presiding judge and other court personnel.22 Trials were simultaneously translated between English and Spanish; court interpreters translated the statements by the judge and lawyers into Spanish for the benefit of the majority-Mexican jurors, many (if not most) of whom spoke only Spanish. Interpreters translated witnesses’ testimony in Spanish into English for the benefit of Euro-American judges and lawyers who spoke little or no Spanish. Translation was essential because the American system depended on laypersons, many of whom spoke only Spanish, to serve as jurors and witnesses. Yet the centrality of the Spanish language in American courts was indicative of the ownership of cultural space. The appointment of an official court interpreter and the simultaneous two-way translation between Spanish and English conveyed the message that the courtroom was an institution in which Mexican Americans had substantial power.23
All judges and most lawyers were Euro-Americans, but in other respects the district courts in most New Mexico counties were dominated by Mexican Americans.24 For example, the vast majority of county sheriffs (like other elected officials) were Mexican American.25 Sheriffs called the court to order, collected fees (including bail), summoned jurors, made arrests, and jailed prisoners. To accomplish these tasks when court was in session, they appointed from four to six bailiffs to assist them. Bailiffs too were likely to be Mexican American in most counties, given the demographics of New Mexico. For instance, in San Miguel County in one period during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, all but two of sixty-one court bailiffs were Mexican American.26 Bailiffs were paid two dollars a day (the same rate as jurors), and some evidence suggests that Mexican American elites used these positions as a form of political patronage. Given the region’s demographics, Mexican Americans (including significant numbers of women) also composed the vast majority of witnesses and visitors in the county courts.
Mexican American jurors played a special role in the court system. In criminal trials, two sets of jurors functioned as a check on other actors in the legal system: grand jurors, who issued indictments, and petit jurors, who decided guilt or innocence. Given that nine of twelve counties had a Euro-American population of less than 20 percent, we can reasonably infer that the majority of jurors in those counties were Mexican American. Mexican American grand jurors checked the authority of Euro-American prosecutors to decide whether or not to accept prosecutors’ recommendations for indictment. (None of the twenty-one prosecutors who served during the territorial period was Mexican American.27) Mexican American petit jurors checked the authority of Euro-American judges, deciding the guilt or innocence of defendants and their punishment. Of fifty-nine supreme court justices appointed during the territorial period (who served as both trial and appellate judges), only one was a native New Mexican—Antonio José Otero.28 Otero was among the first three judges appointed by Kearny in 1846, but there is no evidence that he ever presided over court proceedings.
The experience of one New Mexico county is illustrative. In San Miguel County, where Euro-Americans composed 12 percent of the population in 1880, Mexican American jurors outnumbered Euro-American jurors four to one; 80 percent of grand jurors and 86 percent of petit jurors were Mexican men.29 Higher status, wealthier Mexican Americans were more likely to serve as jurors, and especially as grand jurors, while lower status Mexican American laborers served regularly on petit juries as a form of political patronage.30 Mexican Americans’ participation as jurors probably occurred throughout New Mexico well into the twentieth century. At one level this is not surprising, since there simply were not enough Euro-American settlers for the legal system to function. If jury trials were to be held in nineteenth-century New Mexico, Mexican American jurors would be needed.
Perhaps the most extensive site for Mexican power in the legal system was the territorial legislature.31 Mexican men composed the majority of all such legislative bodies between 1848 and 1870, ranging from a low of 55 percent to a high of 95 percent of delegates or legislators.32 Political scientist Carlos Ramirez has estimated that, over the entire territorial period, Mexican American legislators made up 66 percent of the upper house (council) and 75 percent of the lower house in the New Mexico legislature.33 Mexican Americans were just as likely to hold leadership positions in the legislature during the territorial period: of twenty-one council presidents, only six were Euro-Americans; of thirty-two speakers of the house, thirteen were Euro-Americans.34 Although Euro-Americans played important roles in the territorial legislature, it is reasonable to speak about legislation passed by these bodies as the acts of Mexican American elites.
One indication of the power of Mexican Americans in the legislature was the role of the Spanish language and of translation, both written and oral. During this time period and beyon
d, New Mexico legislatures and constitutional conventions were conducted in Spanish and translated into English, with the resulting constitutional and legislative provisions published in both Spanish and English.35 In this sense too, the laws and other actions of these bodies were the voice and will of Mexican elites, not of Euro-Americans and the various Indian peoples in New Mexico. Treating Mexican elites as agents with a powerful voice and role in creating their own destinies—even after the American conquest—is an important corrective to past historical scholarship.36
And yet there were significant limits to the power of majority-Mexican legislatures. First, unlike state governments and the federal system, in which the legislative branch was a coequal check on the executive branch, in the New Mexico Territory, the executive branch was much stronger than the legislative branch by congressional design. Remember that the governor and other major positions in the territorial government were appointed directly by the U.S. president (subject to Senate confirmation). Ramirez’s data show that the most powerful territorial positions were overwhelmingly filled by Euro-American men.37 Second, Congress reserved the right to veto any legislation enacted by the territorial legislature.38 Significantly, Congress did not give itself the right to nullify the legislatures of all American territories, but only those of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.39 Despite these limitations, majority-Mexican legislatures still emerge as a powerful site for exploring the ways in which Mexican elites negotiated the new American regime. In the following sections I examine how the actions of the majority–Mexican American legislatures impacted other racially subordinated groups: Pueblo Indians, African Americans, and other Indians in New Mexico.
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