Most New Mexican communities are Spanish descended with Catholic roots. Peoples left here, reinventing here, or who fled here. I am describing people from the 1500's, 1600's, and into the 1700's. We are of the gringo empire. We are the spawn of those with ambitions for gold, who landed here, finding refuge in the pinon hills, ponderosa filled rocky ridges, sage brush mesas, and cottonwood infested valles del rios.
We are of a similar ambitious European unsettledness. A branch on the vine of Monarchies with insecure desire for power and control, acting from discontentment, causing masses to migrate, calling it exploration, and eventually conquering. Most modern New Mexicans cannot recognize their pretentious and imperial beginnings, even though it is paraded in the glorious image of the conquistador. That glory now lives in the shadows of the new conqueror, the innovative industrial American. Most New Mexicans find a way to remain loyal to suffering maybe to distract from the diminished Spanish ego. As if a honorable way to be noticed or respected in this new, foreign, and American way of life.
The conquering Spaniards withered into faith driven humble villagers. They had nothing to offer the royalty, so the withering began and their faith became valuable. And so did the land. As the mestizo cultures began to dilute the hardened pride of conquering peoples, equally a colonial pride was stirring in the east. This mountain desert region was only a pit stop to the riches known in the west. With this desperate form of purpose the subservience was birthed. This region grew from the isolation of Spanish communities. Slowly each community displaced with a desperate grasp at having purpose in an American expansion. Spanish speaking, crucified Christ preaching, my ancestors adapted to desert life, orphaned by Spain. This desperation is how I can envision the conception of my subservient and maybe toxic humility.
Albeit a subtle hypocrisy, history tells a story of an arrogant Christ focused intimidation. We know the pueblos were coerced. These mountains smoothed and helped a restless conquering people to tolerate a local lifestyle that looks to have grown symbiotic with pueblos.
The indigenous people were converted into Catholics, for sure not wanting to dismiss their ancestral beliefs, possibly understanding that their lifestyle is more inline with divinity than the conquering evangelists. But now those communities are equally tired, trying to find a niche in America. Through the conquest tragedy grew a privileged lifestyle of land grantees, farmers, and shepherds that were coerced into becoming American. We are now a legacy of people that are enduring, ironically a similar wave of evangelists, squatters, speculators, investors, experimenters, and refugees. We are now visitors to the richness of the Sangre de Cristos.
The suffocating conqueror privilege and new desperate desire to belong seems to have left us toxically humble. Humble to point of believing ourselves as destined to suffer in self doubt. I seem to see this inability to feel appreciated, praised, valued, lovable, and worst worthy of the fruits of the spirit in the New Mexican Chicano people I counsel. The first person that comes to mind is myself.
I am my first client. In reflection, I preferred to uplift myself with validation from others, believing they might believe in me. When this failed I had no idea how to deal with the endless need to feel worthy. I forgot that Jesus Christ asked me to live as he lived, free of self depreciation, judgment from and of others, slavery, and free of a toxic humility. I now hear in my darkest moments, "I believe in you", and I wonder if that is me or Him.
I have grown to see my communities' subtle and gradual crucifixion of "hope in self", worried that this might reflect an overall inability to hope period. A slow death by punishing the misunderstood and toxically humble masses. I no longer want to punish toxically humble peoples. I am for a life of gracefully serving them with spirit so that they recognize the greatness God hoped for them.
