Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico by Howard R. Lamar

Peter Hurd emerged as one of New Mexico’s best-known modern painters. New Mexico during the modern period has continued to hold a special attraction for artists cross-culturally in a variety of fields. Other dramas performed include Los Pastores, the story of the shepherds’ search for the infant Jesus, and Los moros y los cristianos, a recounting of the Christian victory over the Muslim Moors in Spain. At Christmas many communities stage the folk drama Las Posadas, which tells the story of Mary and Joseph seeking shelter for the birth of Jesus. After experiencing a revival in recent decades, Hispanic folk plays have also perpetuated New Mexico’s Hispanic heritage. More recently, George Lopez, in establishing himself as one of the area’s finest santeros, carried on the tradition of the Lopez family of woodcarvers in Cordova. Patrocinio Barela, whose santos first caught the public eye during the 1930s, created a great many wood sculptures before his death in Taos in 1964, and in the process, he helped to link the past with the present. Hispanic folk art and drama, revived and revitalized during the 1920s, continues to thrive in today’s New Mexico.

Each group who came here aspired to preserve their unique culture. Mementos of New Mexico’s past, whether a small horseshoe nail or shard of Indian pottery, an imposing mission ruin or a crumbling cavalry fort, are plentiful – so much so that one is seldom far from some tangible reminder that history here is not remote and dead, but very close, and continue to affects us.

The Pueblos, the Navajos, the Apaches, and the Spanish knew it as a pristine wilderness where the land was filled with mystery, unseen forces, and hidden terrors, but also, with rugged beauty which stirred the imagination. Throughout its long history, New Mexico has meant many things to many people.

Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico by Howard R. Lamar