Speaking for Themselves

When New Mexico became a territory of the United States in 1848, the Hispanic population faced an influx of American immigrants. The neomexicanos, residents of some of the oldest Hispanic communities in the United States, found their life-ways disdained, their communal property threatened, and their very existence called into question by aggressive invaders. They quickly began efforts to protect their language and culture against enforced assimilation.One of the major outlets for this resistance was the Spanish-language newspaper. Here poetry, oratory, letters, fiction, and essays helped bridge the gap between the largely oral cultural expression of the region and the print-oriented culture of the Americans. Meyer's pioneering archival research examines these newspapers and their writers. The work of Jose Escobar, Felipe Maximiliano Chacon, Luis Tafoya, and Benjamin M. Read, as well as that of less well known and anonymous writers, displays the diversity and complexity of this literature and its role in the construction of a unique cultural identity.