Hispano Homeland - Hardcover

Deep in the American Southwest, in the mountains and river valleys of northern New Mexico, a distinctive group of people have made their home for four hundred years. Descendants of the settlers who moved into this most northern periphery of New Spain late in the sixteenth century, they exhibit clear cultural differences from other Spanish-speaking people of the Borderlands.
In this carefully researched, clearly written book, Richard L. Nostrand interprets the Hispanos' experience in geographical terms. He demonstrates that their unique intermixture with Pueblo Indians, nomad Indians, Anglos, and Mexican Americans, combined with isolation in their particular natural and cultural environments, have given them a unique sense of place--a sense of homeland.
Several processes shaped and reshaped the Hispano Homeland. Initial colonization left the Hispanos relatively isolated from cultural changes in the rest of New Spain, and gradual intermarriage with Pueblo and nomad Indians gave them new cultural features. As their numbers increased in the eighteenth century, they began to expand their Stronghold outward from the original colonies. In the early nineteenth century, their isolation ended with the beginning of trade with Anglos from the east, who presented them with economic attractions that drew Hispano workers into a peripheral Outland area.
At about the same time, Spanish-speaking immigrants, bringing with them a Mexican culture, began to enter the Stronghold and the Outland. Economic attractions and Mexican and Anglo competition led to village depopulation and the diffusion of many Hispanos throughout the urban areas of the Southwest.
Nostrand examines historical, geographical, and census documents and oral information to determine the extent of the Hispano Homeland through time. Its heyday was about 1900, when it extended over an area the size of Utah and two-thirds of its population were Hispano. Today it is eroded and less majestic, but it still stands apart--a distinctive island in America, the only surviving colonial Spanish subculture.