Ownership and Order in the Fiesta de Santa Fe

Abstract

The Santa Fe Fiesta, an annual commemoration of the 1692 Spanish reconquest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, has highlighted Hispano belonging for almost a century, yet garnered criticism for the way the festival downplays colonial violence. This paper explores how coloniality has influenced the relationship between ownership and belonging in the contemporary Santa Fe Fiesta by focusing on the Fiesta Court's performance of New Mexico's "Spanish" past in the public schools. I argue that the narrative of reconquest the Santa Fe Fiesta seeks to preserve is not only entangled with the religious underpinnings of coloniality but also what I call the "folkloric difference." The folkloric difference is a local, critical response to global coloniality. During the early twentieth century, Hispanos used the Santa Fe Fiesta—a "folk" festival largely promoted by Anglo Americans—to reassert their presence and define the terms of their difference in Santa Fe. While the variant of Catholicism adopted by Hispanos and perpetuated through the Fiesta emerged as a result of their physical and social displacement at the turn of the nineteenth century, the same religious devotion has become a tool for justifying the displacement of others, even those who have much in common culturally with Hispanos.