Joaquín Ortega: Pan-Americanism at the University of New Mexico by Russ Davidson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Joaquín Ortega: Pan-Americanism at the University of New Mexico by Russ Davidson Cynthia E. Orozco Joaquín Ortega: Pan-Americanism at the University of New Mexico. By Russ Davidson. ( Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020. Pp. 248. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index.) Russ Davidson highlights Spaniard Joaquín Ortega's role in developing Pan-Americanism at the University of New Mexico (UNM). This is not a narrow biography focused on one man's greatness in creating a university program; rather, it is a comprehensive study of UNM's uneven development of its Latin American and Hispanic studies programs. The author addresses what specific university presidents, faculty members, and community leaders thought about New Mexico's place in the United States and Latin America and how they did or did not support Pan Americanism at UNM from the 1890s to the 1950s. One result of Davidson's placing the university and the state in a hemispheric setting is that Pan-Americanism can be seen as a response to a famous question from University of California historian Herbert Eugene Bolton: "Do the Americas share a common history?" Following the rise of Euro-American interest in New Mexico's Spanish past and politician Octaviano Larrazolo's long fight for the Hispano cause, UNM first developed a keen interest in Latin American and Hispano studies in the 1920s. The 1930s saw UNM president James F. Zimmerman support these interests by hiring Joaquín Ortega, whom he saw as an "insider" (125) due to his Spanish origin but as an "outsider" (88) [End Page 114] thanks to a century of debate about race that assumed Anglo superiority. The president gave Ortega carte blanche, but when Zimmerman died, Ortega encountered the whims of other presidents and faculty members who cared less about Latin America and the "little Latin America" (80) found in New Mexico. By 1951 UNM had thirty-four courses on Latin America and Hispanos. The United States' global reach into Asia in the 1950s, competing academic interests, and White disinterest in Hispanics led to a declining focus on Pan Americanism. At the national level, high interest in Pan Americanism arose from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy during World War II. The Institute of Inter-American Affairs was created at UNM in 1941, and Ortega was its director from its founding to 1948. U.S. commitment to Pan Americanism reflected short-term strategic goals and not a true commitment to racial equality or empowerment of Latin American nations or its peoples. Nonetheless, Ortega championed Pan Americanism, and established academic excellence at UNM, even creating an artistin-residence program that hosted renowned artist Jesús Guerrero Galván of Mexico. Ortega admired George I. Sánchez's book Forgotten People: A Study of New Mexicans (Calvin Horn Publishers, 1940) about Taos Hispanos that "laid the ideological foundation" (11) for Ortega's institute and its goal of serving both local and state Hispano communities. Ortega advocated Spanish-language instruction in the state's public schools, edited the New Mexico Quarterly, and oversaw one of the first Hispanic studies bibliographies in the United States. Davidson chides Ortega for his "silence" (152) at UNM faculty meetings, but Ortega was walking on thin ice as a foreigner, likely with an accent, and a man of color. Further, there was hardly a cohort of Hispano colleagues. Faculty members Aurelio Espinosa, Arturo Campa, and George I. Sánchez were treated unfairly by UNM, Davidson noted, and there were only a few Hispana professors, such as Anita Osuna Carr in the 1920s and Mela Sedillo Brewster in the 1930s. In Texas, scholars have identified similar barriers confronting Carlos E. Castañeda and Sánchez at the University of Texas at Austin, but both were still prolific writers and activists. Instead of writing an epilogue about several commissioned Pan American artworks at UNM that addresses the continuing, perplexing question of ethnic identities, Davidson might have turned his attention to the rise of Chicano Studies in the 1970s, the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute in the 1980s, and the Center for Regional Studies in the 1990s, all of which showed a continuation of at least some aspects of...