04
evidence of the culture
New Mexico
It doesn’t get the press of Santa Fe—and this nearly 500-year-old city doesn’t want it.
t hits you on arrival at the airport. A Comida Buena restaurant rubs shoulders with a store called Distant Drums. There’s an Earth Spirit curio shop, a Black Mesa coffee purveyor and a Fiesta Market. On the New Mexico state flag, the red Zia Indian sacred symbol for the sun floats on a field of yellow— the same colors as the flag that Spanish conquistadors carried when they marched here nearly 500 years ago. Pueblo Indian paintings and murals share space with a silver retablo of Spanish-Mexican heritage. Large wooden beams carved with colorful Indian symbols support the lobby ceiling, homage to traditional Mexican architecture. This is a different place. A very different place. It was once called “the city at the end of the world,” and Albuquerque’s character emerges from its isolation and raw frontier expe rience. From its earliest days, the people who came were poor, in search of a new life and a piece of land, even if it was hardscrabble, worthless land. Even the area’s Pueblo Indians were migrants; they came to live by the Rio Grande when drought drove them from the Four Corners region (where Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico now meet) 800 years ago. Three centuries later, Spanish explorers arrived from the south in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. The first Spanish governor took charge of the territory in 1598, nine years before Jamestown, Virginia, was established. Spanish settlers followed, mainly those too lowborn to have a chance in caste-conscious southern Mexico. They came north, way north, to the outermost colonies, the farthest frontier, and settled beside the Indian pueblos. It is the unique symbiosis of the Indian and Spanish cultures between the 1500s and the mid-1800s that gave the city its soul and, today, continues to paint the cultural texture of Albuquerque in vivid
By Roger Toll hues. During all those years, a period longer than the United States has been a nation, these two cultures have lived side by side, exchanging or mingling languages, livestock, customs, food, rituals and spiritual beliefs. “That first meeting with the Spanish at Zuni Pueblo was the beginning of a relationship that has had its difficult times, to say the least,” says Ron Solimon, a Laguna Pueblo Indian as well as president and CEO of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. But, he points out, the economic benefits were many and unexpected: “The Spanish brought horses, sheep, seeds of new foods, and they fought beside us against our enemies. In turn, the native population helped the Spanish, who were tested by the severe elements in this region. From the beginning, it was a process of education each way.” The peoples intermarried. When the Spaniards celebrated their religious days, Indian neighbors cared for their livestock, and vice versa. The names of the native pueblos that surround Albuquerque are Spanish—Acoma, Sandia, Santa Ana, Jemez—and a famous Apache chief is known not by an Indian name but by the Spanish name Geronimo. “The heartbeat of our ancestors still beats strongly within every one of
“It is open and friendly, and there are no walls between our cultures,” says silversmith Stella Naranjo.
90 Sky november 2005
photo by Robert Fried
i
Albuquerque,
: evidence of the culture
i
t is the unique symbiosis of the Indian and Spanish cultures between the 1500s and the mid-1800s that gave the city its soul and, today, continues to paint the cultural texture of Albuquerque in vivid hues. her adult life. “Here, we have always embraced everyone,� she says. “It is open and friendly, and there are no walls between our cultures. The community here is very rounded. Everyone gets along. Maybe that’s because we don’t have to cater to the rich, as they do in Santa Fe. It is too commercialized there now.� Albuquerque’s sophisticated, smarty-pants sister an hour to the
Ambling Through Albuquerque
For general information about Albuquerque, New Mexico, visit the city’s official tourism Web site, www. abqcvb.org. Indian Pueblo Cultural Center 12th Street NW, 505-843-7270, www.indianpueblo.org Adobe Silver @ Naranjo’s Gallery of Art
522 Romero Street NW, 505-248-1087, e-mail: naranjos@Iname.com National Hispanic Cultural Center 1701 Fourth Street SW, 505-246-2261, www.nhccnm.org Scalo Northern Italian Grill 3500
Central Avenue SE, 505-255-8781,
92 Sky november 2005
Grill occupies an old department store in the first shopping center west of the Mississippi River, built in 1946. Down the street, the French champagne house, Gruet, which has a winery on the outskirts of town, has opened Gruet Restaurant in the historic Monte Vista Fire Station. And just past the University of New Mexico campus, the Route 66 Diner perfectly re-creates an American Graffiti–era soda fountain within an Art Deco gem of an old gas station. Downtown Albuquerque is a living museum of architectural nostalgia, one of the few big cities in the country that has not been redeveloped to within an cure internet access from inch of its life. You can still find Skip ast, hseow to turn a hotel room into an officeib. ahn. f Maisel’s Indian Jewelry and Crafts store, * * * * * which has hung its kitsch Indian-head Every month, more than a million business travelers rely on iBAHN™ technology at leading neon sign out over Central Avenue since hotels to keep their personal information and corporate data safe. Visit iBAHN.com 1939, across the street from the erstto ďŹ nd and book an iBAHN hotel for your next business trip or conference. while movie palace, the KiMo Theatre, a stunning “Pueblo Decoâ€? theater from the late 1920s that is now home to a performing arts center. They share sidewalk space with hip restaurants, clubs, Š 2005 iBAHN. All rights reserved. The inďŹ nity road mark and iBAHN are trademarks and/or service marks of iBAHN. Photo credit: Grand America Hotel, Salt Lake City, UT. coffeehouses and converted lofts popular with artists, designers and professionals. Like Nob Hill, downtown is SkyMag_roadwar_STN50002_01kb.indd 1 8/19/05 1:16:15 PM booming in a way that would be the envy of any mid-size city. “Even as we face the demands of a new wave of immigrants looking for a new life in magical New Mexico,â€? Vazquez says, “the spirituality we should be promoting is our unique culture, not just nice vistas from some fancy spa. Because it’s the real thing.â€?
www.scalonobhill.com Gruet Restaurant 3102 Central Avenue NE,
505-256-9463
Route 66 Diner 1405 Central Avenue NE,
505-247-1421
Skip Maisel’s Indian Jewelry and Crafts
510 Central Avenue SW, 505-242-6526 Kimo Theatre, 423 Central Avenue NW, 505-768-3522, www.cabq.gov/kimo
Based in Park City, Utah, Sky contributing editor Roger Toll recalls visiting Skip Maisel’s Indian Jewelry and Crafts store in the 1950s, when Albuquerque’s trendy attractions were workaday gas stations.
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photo by D Falconer/PhotoLink/getty images
us, but our bloodlines are crossed,� Solimon says. The city’s roots lie in Old Town’s plaza and the simple, two-towered adobe church of San Felipe de Neri, built in 1706 by Franciscan friars. Leading from the plaza are a bevy of small streets and old adobe buildings that house jewelry stores, galleries, shops, bookstores and restaurants. When the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad came to Albuquerque in 1880, 34 years after Mexico ceded the territory to the United States following the Mexican War, the town’s center shifted a few miles east to meet the new railway and the economic growth it promised. In Adobe Silver @ Naranjo’s Gallery of Art, a jewelry shop on Old Town’s Romero Street, Stella Naranjo, a gracious woman in her 50s, is bustling in and out of her back room, an atelier where she crafts silver. Her ancestors came north from Mexico in the early 1700s and married with the native population. The family has worked as silversmiths for generations. “I am a Romero,� she says, with the pride of a New Englander introducing herself as a Bradford or a Brewster. Though she was raised in Santa Fe, she says she is happier living in Albuquerque, where she has spent most of
north has long cast a shadow over its more humble sibling. “We don’t want to become like Santa Fe� is an Albu querque motto, code for locals’ fear of losing what they value most: their unique heritage and warm communal ethic that tie the community together in a fabric of tolerance. Now, with galloping growth and escalating real estate values, it appears that Albu querque has been discovered by folks from other states. Citizens take pride in their new popularity, but they worry about the homogenizing pressures that could turn it into another Phoenix or Los Angeles, with smog, traffic and houses that are way out of scale. “When I was a kid in Santa Fe,� says Carlos Vazquez, director of history at Albuquerque’s National Hispanic Cultural Center, “everyone who came from New York wanted to learn to speak Spanish, eat chiles and wear a bolo tie.� That made it easier to preserve the city’s special character. “Now people are coming in with their own attitudes and want to make it look like Grosse Pointe, Michigan, or a California suburb as soon as they get here,� he says. “When I left here as a young man, California was the way of the future,� Vazquez says. “Now it may be New Mexico, since so many people are coming. But a lot of challenges are emerging as we overload the city with more people than this place can handle. It is stretching us to find room for everyone, not only in terms of space but culturally and spiritually.� If the new pressures are a test of the resiliency of the frontier spirit that sustained Albuquerque over hundreds of years, some older, central areas of the city are responding with a new dynamism. In Nob Hill, the Albuquerque neighborhood favored by the city’s eclectic, creative set, the retro 1940s and ’50s architecture along Central Avenue—renowned Route 66—has been revitalized. Scalo Northern Italian
“Evidence of the Culture� offers intriguing examples of the cultural opportunities to be enjoyed at destinations served by Delta and its SkyTeam partners. To visit this month’s featured destination, Albu querque, New Mexico, flights can be booked on Delta. For more information about the SkyTeam travel network, turn to page 214 or visit www.skyteam.com.
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november 2005
Sky 93