“Overrun all this country…”: Two New Mexican lives through the U.S. Civil War

Izzy Hannigan, Oberlin CollegeFollow

Location

King Building 237

Document Type

Presentation

Start Date

4-27-2018 1:00 PM

End Date

4-27-2018 2:20 PM

Abstract

My History Honors thesis reconstructs the lives of two elite Hispanic New Mexican men who grappled with the upheavals on the North American continent during the nineteenth century. Union army officers and influential patrones Nicolas Pino (1820-1896) and Jose Francisco Chavez (1833-1904) serve as the center of this paper’s narrative chronological historical analysis. Intensive primary source work in the New Mexico State Archives reveals their footprints in the military, political, and legal spheres before, during, and after the war. The biographies of Chavez and Pino serve as a microcosm of the changes and continuities in Nuevo Mexicano social, cultural, and military practices during these turbulent years, revealing historical moments as they were lived by individuals. Their responses to American Indian conflicts, shifting borders, fluid borderlands identities, two international wars, and the penetration of Anglo-Americans into the territory reveal how two members of the elite Hispanic New Mexican community worked to maintain their elite status in the face of massive change.

Keywords:

New Mexico, Hispanic New Mexico, U.S. history, Mexican history, colonialism, U.S. Civil War, U.S.-Mexico War, microhistory, social history, biography

Notes

Session III, Panel 10 - Gendered | Labor
Moderator: Tamika Nunley, Assistant Professor of History

Major

History; Latin American Studies

Award

Artz Honors Research Grant

Advisor(s)

Danielle Terrazas Williams, History
Claire Solomon, Hispanic Studies; Comparative Literature

Project Mentor(s)

Tamika Nunley, History

April 2018

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Apr 27th, 1:00 PM Apr 27th, 2:20 PM

“Overrun all this country…”: Two New Mexican lives through the U.S. Civil War

King Building 237

My History Honors thesis reconstructs the lives of two elite Hispanic New Mexican men who grappled with the upheavals on the North American continent during the nineteenth century. Union army officers and influential patrones Nicolas Pino (1820-1896) and Jose Francisco Chavez (1833-1904) serve as the center of this paper’s narrative chronological historical analysis. Intensive primary source work in the New Mexico State Archives reveals their footprints in the military, political, and legal spheres before, during, and after the war. The biographies of Chavez and Pino serve as a microcosm of the changes and continuities in Nuevo Mexicano social, cultural, and military practices during these turbulent years, revealing historical moments as they were lived by individuals. Their responses to American Indian conflicts, shifting borders, fluid borderlands identities, two international wars, and the penetration of Anglo-Americans into the territory reveal how two members of the elite Hispanic New Mexican community worked to maintain their elite status in the face of massive change.