Zane's World
400th Flu
By: Zane Fischer 10/28/2009
You know what I’m all done with? Santa Fe’s quatrocentenario—the 400th anniversary celebration. Sure it’s scheduled to go on for more than a year, but that’s no excuse for sucking at the outset. Like many Santa Feans, I think I’ve given it a fair shake, a tolerant smile and an opportunity to convince me—or anyone, really—that it’s going to be an important, useful, fun, celebratory, economically advantageous event.
But no. So far nothing has really happened to convince me that it’s anything other than a weird post-colonial seizure—the fevered gasp of a misunderstood and violent history. Even before Corey Pein’s excellent reporting on SFReeper.com—in which he detailed some of the shocking and reckless expenses dominating the 400th’s budget—the apparent lack of organization or any economically justifiable slate of events or publicly instructional sense of what, exactly, is being celebrated had begun to wear thin.
More than a year ago, when Santa Fe Mayor David Coss insisted that additional funds be directed toward the quatrocentenario just as the country dipped into economic catastrophe, I read it as leadership in a storm: Rather than rolling into a little ball and whimpering, Santa Fe was taking steps to ensure its vitality through rough times. But you know, I assumed (yeah,I know) that there was a there there. I made the rookie mistake of thinking that funding the thing equated to infusing the thing with substance.
But the map is not the territory and, in this case, the territory is looking increasingly like a black hole. If there was a motivational factor other than fear of bruising Santa Fe’s Hispanic pride when the city Finance Committee recently acted to “fast-track” an additional $750,000 to an obviously bloated budget under dubious management, I have yet to discover it. The funding issue, which goes before the Public Works Committee on Oct. 28, won’t even save the event—the 400th dropped its executive director, PR firm and corporate fundraising contract after requesting the cash.
Thus far, there is no evidence of anything more than token attempts (ie, celebrity lectures versus community dialogue) to justify the glorification of colonial history and the correlative neglect of Native American culture, and the manifold factors in the sculpting of the city’s essence and soul. Oh, there’s lip service aplenty, but nothing concrete to justify so manic and substantial a public investment. The success of events thus far has depended on the goodwill of participants and organizers such as the Santa Fe School of Cooking, and those participants have issued a steady stream of qualifications about the arbitrary marker of 400 years on the development of the city we know today as Santa Fe.
The slate of upcoming events remains alarmingly empty. Sherman Alexie, Carlos Fuentes and Anthony Bourdain are some top-shelf lecture guests—and ones who can address some of the whole event’s failed underpinnings with humor and wit—but they alone (well, they and a dinner gala and a New Year’s party) are an unconvincing excuse for Santa Fe’s apparent blind devotion to a poorly constructed and mysteriously expensive commemoration.
More prevalent on the 400th website than engaging content or the promise of events that sound fun, educational or worthy of public funds is a slate of commemorative products. There are 1.5 humdrum T-shirts for each scheduled, legitimate, original event. Of course, the “store” is packed with traditional and contemporary iconic art of Santa Fe like, um, tank tops and toddler beanies. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the “eco-friendly” tote bags had to be shipped across an ocean—like a Chinese consumer conquistador—before arriving here in Santa Fe to capture hearts, minds and groceries.
In other words, the quatrocentenario is already making such previous disasters as Design Week look successful in retrospect. What is it with this town that makes financial accountability and competence so shockingly elusive? If it’s the lithium in the water, it’s understandable, but I’m starting to suspect it’s just that we’re still an easy mark, especially when we get our cultural pride played off our cultural guilt while someone whispers “tourism” in our ears.
Is it justifiable to celebrate Santa Fe’s manifold cultural influences and drive economic activity through the trumpeting of the city’s age and history? Absolutely. Is it justifiable to do so through the overarching theme of colonialism with a veneer of post-millennial cultural sensitivity? For some, probably it’s fine, but it’s still shortsighted and in poor taste. Is it justifiable to do so through the laughingly predictable mechanism of connected contractors and patron hookups and overpriced experts? Not so much. That’s not a celebration or an economic driver, it’s just another racket.
Welcome to Santa Fe. That’s, right—according to the king of Spain—the city is 400 years old. But not much has changed since its start. We’re still desperately searching for gold and, when we can’t find it, we just take it from each other.
Comments (2)
Zane, I defended you last week and although the column is RIGHT ON---I think you might face a fire storm on this one.
Instead let me give some "reflections" for the 400th Anniversary by an Agua Frian:
Agua Fria Village has lived in the “shadow” of the City of Santa Fe for many years. However, without this tiny community, the City may not have prospered to the point it has today. Before 1950, almost every stick of wood that kept Santa Feans warm or every ear of corn that kept Santa Feans fed came off of the backs of a Agua Fria burro or wagon. The land for the three major electric lines and the gasline entering Santa Fe; the major roads of Rodeo Rd, Cerrillos Rd, Rufina Street, Agua Fria St, West Alameda, and SR599; the sewer lines of Cerrillos, Rufina, Agua Fria and Santa Fe River North; were “donated” by the people of Agua Fria. Without this “corridor” the City would not have any utilities.
We offer congratulations on Santa Fe’s 400th Anniversary Celebration. We also had our 300th anniversary in 1993 and are preparing for our 175th anniversary of San Isidro Catholic Church next year.
Agua Fria became a place of modern recorded settlement in New Mexico when two of the Sergeant Majors in the 1692 “Reconquest” of NM by the Spanish Crown, were given land grants in 1693 by Gen. Don Diego de Vargas for their service. Other land grants were given and the ditches from the Santa Fe River (acequias) were extended and carried precious water to the flat lands of Agua Fria, which became the breadbasket of the City of Santa Fe.
The grants of the Agua Fria Village residents stretched from the Arroyo de los Chamisos (near SFe Place Mall) to the Arroyo Frijoles/Buckman Road;some 5-7 miles in length.
The Village population in 1776 was 29 families and 257 people, according to Fray Francisco Dominquez's study; the study referred to Agua Fria as “Quemado”, referring to the pueblo on the north bank of the Santa Fe River about equal distance between Henry Lynch Rd and San Isidro Crossing, and also identified active springs in the area. It was not until the 1800s however, that the small Village was referred to as Agua Fria. San Isidro Church built in 1835 gets its name from the patron saint of farmers, an appropriate icon for the area’s major profession.
The State Engineer's 1914 Acequia maps show that 170 fields were under cultivation, but 93 percent were less than five acres each. The study titled: The Traditional Village of Agua Fria:Ours Today, Ours Tomorrow by Jane Whitmore (1983), was submitted to the Historic Preservation Division and illustrated the Traditional Village’s strong attachment to the land and its connection to the Santa Fe River which extends back in time through generations. These were a simple people that made adobes for sale in summer and sold firewood or pinion nuts from the Caja del Rio Grant in fall. The moral of the story is don’t forget your little neighbor.
FYI - here's the historical marker text for Agua Fria:
http://www.stoppingpoints.com/nm/Sant...
regards,
Bill Lawson
Editor-in-Chief
http://www.stoppingpoints.com/