Black History Month in New Mexico II: The "Battles for Socorro"

Photo credit Bureau of Land Management

This is the second of three posts designed to bring you a taste of the contributions African Americans have made to New Mexico history and culture.  As I said yesterday, nothing in any of these posts is intended to be all-inclusive; it's merely a sepia-toned snapshot of three distinct points in the state's historical timeline that go too often unremarked and unremembered.  

New Mexico makes much of its triracial inclusion and harmony (which, truth be told, is not so much as an inch deep, but that's another diary).  What isn't obvious to folks from elsewhere is that the three races to which it refers are, as they are known in the polite version of local parlance, "Anglos," "Hispanics," and "Indians."  In most of the state, African Americans aren't even on the public radar screen (nor are Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders, people of South Asian and Middle Eastern descent, or those of Caribbean ancestry - but, again, that's another diary).

According to the 2010 census, African Americans constitute 12.6% of the national population.  In New Mexico, that figure drops to a scant 2.1%.  [Despite the fact that the U.S. stole this land from Mexico, which in turn had stolen it from the indigenous populations, 68.4% of New Mexico's total population comprises "Anglos," whether "Hispanic" or "non-Hispanic."]

African American history and culture are a bit of a unicorn in this state:  occasionally reported, but mostly elusive, and largely invisible to all but those who actually go looking for it.  And yet, Black Americans have a long and storied history in New Mexico, with a vibrant presence predating statehood by half a century.  It's long past time for that presence to assume its rightful place in the state's past and present.

Come with me.  I'm going to take you on a little tour of three New Mexico towns that play a role in African American history.




SOCORRO

Today is Day 2 of our tour, and we're heading west, to the geographic heart of the state:  a little town called Socorro.  A stop on El Camino Reál, the old Spanish "Royal Road," it sits in the northeast part of the state's southwest quadrant, in the Rio Grande Valley about an hour south of Albuquerque.  Further south, in the exposed and sun-baked heart of La Jornada, lies White Sands National Monument, home of the infamous Trinity nuclear testing grounds and modern-day missile and weapons testing.

Pronounced "sō-KŌ-rrrrrō" [yes, to say it properly you must roll your "rr"s, although only native Spanish speakers ever do], the Spanish name translates literally into English as "succor," but is more generally understood today simply as "help" or "aid."  And, indeed, it was all of the above to the surviving members of the Oñate expedition at the close of the 16th Century.  Emerging from La Jornada del Muerto, the Journey of Death, through some of the state's driest, hottest, harshest terrain, the straggling group, barely alive, encountered an Indian village.  The people there, known as the Teypana, provided the Spanish with food, water, directions, and ultimately, a gift of their corn.  The Spanish called the village a pueblo, which is Spanish for both "people" and "village" or "town," and the name stuck; numerous Indian nations in the Southwest, both current and long gone, are now denominated "Pueblo" Indians as a result.  The language spoken by the Teypana is known as Piro, and a number of other Indian groups from that area and time are now classified as "Piro Pueblos," for their related language.  Three are memorialized in the area's Salinas Missions National Monument, including the famed Gran Quivira.

The Spanish abandoned Socorro in 1680, as a result of the fist Pueblo Revolt.  Their descendants returned en masse to ref-found the town only in 1816.  Some 38 years later, the U.S. Army would establish its own outpost, Fort Craig, just south of Socorro:  initially to aid in exterminating Apache, Navajo, and other Indian tribes pursuant to the U.S. Government's Indian policy; subsequently to serve as a Union Army base to hold the Southwest in the Civil War.

Today, Socorro is best known as the home of famed outlaw/lawman Elfego Baca, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (a/k/a New Mexico Tech), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array and Very Long Baseline Array; and the Sevilleta and Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuges.  [When I think of Socorro, Bosque del Apache is what comes to mind, because it is the winter home of my namesake:  thousands of migratory sandhill cranes.]

THE "BATTLES FOR SOCORRO"

You'll notice that I consistently put this phrase in quotation marks.  That's because historically, there was no group of battles known as the "Battles for Socorro."  No local linguistic iconography, like say, the Battle of Bull Run or the Battle of New Orleans.  There was one major Civil War battle, commonly known as the Battle of Valverde, fought some thirty miles south of what is now Socorro (along, undoubtedly, with smaller skirmishes, and with the Indian Wars), but the highfalutin' title is just one ginned up by modern-day Civil War reenacting Confederate symps.

So what really happened there?

First of all, the New Mexico Territory was officially Union territory.  Yes, the Confederacy captured a portion of the southern part of New Mexico, renamed it a part of the Provisional Confederate Territory or Arizona, and tried to use it to claim ownership of the entire Territory of New Mexico, but officially, it remained a holding of the North.  Its location between Texas to the east and the Southern-held Arizona Territory to the west made New Mexico particularly attractive to the Confederacy:  Taking it would consolidate its power and primacy in the Southwest, allowing it to take California on its own march to the [other] sea.

In February of 1862, General H.H. Sibley of the Confederate Army launched what became known as the New Mexico Campaign, intending to capture and claim the entire Territory for the South.  On February 21st, he launched a battle at Valverde Ford, along the Rio Grande between Ft. Craig to the south and the settlement known as Socorro to the North.  Ft. Craig's commander, Col. R.S. Canby, led the Union opposition at Valverde.  At the end of a day of particularly vicious fighting, Canby raised a truce flag, so that his men would be allowed to cross the Rio Grande to recover their dead; under that white flag, they carried the bodies back to the fort.  The South, of course, labeled it a retreat and surrender, and to this day its adherents claim victory in the Battle of Valverde.

Buoyed by this success, Sibley pushed northward, intending to take Santa Fe, and thence the entire Territory. Unfortunately for him and his men, Canby's troops at Valverde had managed to decimate their numbers and destroy some half of their wagons and the supplies they held. Unprepared for the colder temperatures and harsher conditions further north, they were finally halted on March 28th with a resounding defeat by Union troops at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, not far south of Santa Fe.  Glorieta Pass would prove to be decisive for New Mexico's status in the Civil War:  The South lost all claim, and it became a solidly Union Territory.

So what, you may ask, does all this have to do with Black history?

Well, not merely Black history, but also the Black here and now.

A MODERN-DAY INSULT

Socorro has an even smaller African American population than does Portales:  a mere 1.5%. It has a self-reported white population of more than 80%, with more than half of Hispanic descent.  Nonetheless, African Americans played a significant role in the town's history and development.  As I noted in yesterday's diary, the Buffalo Soldiers have a long, valiant, storied history in New Mexico - one that is far too little known and honored —  and many of them were based directly out of Ft. Craig and the greater Socorro area.

And yet . . . who gets the monument?

Not the Buffalo Soldiers.

Certainly not the Indians from whom the land was stolen.

Not even the Spanish, or the Union Army.

No.  The latest monument, dedicated In February, 2012, amidst much NeoConfederate reenactment fanfare, is to the Confederate soldiers.

Let that sink in for a moment.

In the local cemetery (albeit on allegedly private property — "private" because the Sons of Confederate Veterans badgered the cemetery into giving them a plot), where there is no monument to Black soldiers who lost their lives for the Union, and during Black History Month, a group whose national leadership has ties to the Klan erected a monument to traitors.

It gets worse.

The inscription refers to the "War for Southern Independence," and is dedicated to those "gave their all to liberate our beloved Texas and southland." 

A long-term project of a local Neo-Confederate crank by the name of Charles Mandeville, the monument and its supporters feed every negative stereotype about modern southern white privilege and racism.  In the words of one of Mandeville's modern-day comrades-in-[faux]arms, one Jim Red:

"It represents history. Everything we put on there is historical fact," he said Thursday. "It's a monument to the Sibley Brigade, but also a monument to all the Confederates who moved out here after the war, who wanted to get out of the South. There's not some right-wing, neo-Nazi, neo-Southern agenda.

People who say the monument expresses an excessively revisionist view of the war are "ignorant of their own history," Red said. "One of the things the Sons of Confederate Veterans do, because we are a historical society, is we give the southern viewpoint of the War Between the States.

"And, during the war, it was called the Second American Revolution, the War Between the States, the War for Southern Independence — a lot of things. It wasn’t until after that they started calling it the Civil War."

Let's see:  "Second American Revolution?"  Check.  "War Between the States?"  Check.  "War for Southern Independence?"  Check.  Historical revisionism and contemporary denialism?  Check and check.

And if you don't happen to know anything about the Sons of Confederate Veterans, here's a description from the local [Socorro] newspaper of some of their national ties, all of which have been extensively reported in national media through the years:

Over the past 10 years, members of the leadership of the Sons of Confederate Veterans have been linked in the national press with hate groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens, the League of the South, and Free Mississippi, and with such public figures as Ku Klux Klan leader and international spokesman for Holocaust denial David Duke and attorney Kirk Lyons, a one-time member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.  But these ahistorical bigots now have a monument in a local cemetery and a certain percentage of the local population turns out annually for their repulsive "War Between the States" "reenactments."  It's a slap in the face to every African American in Socorro, and to the memories of the Buffalo Soldiers who fought and died there.

But as I also said yesterday:  We do not forget.


Author's Note:  Second in a series of three.  Still to come:  Blackdom.



Copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.






This was originally posted at Daily Kos on February 28, 2012; it is being reposted here, with very minor edits, in honor of Black History Month.