Spanish in Official U.S. Settings: New Mexico’s Territorial Language Use

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed in 1848 deeded one-half of the Mexican nation to the United States and with it the citizens in the former northern states. Granted United States citizenship by the treaty, these monolingual Spanish speakers entered a nation that spoke a language that was different from them and had distinct legal, economic, political, and social systems. New Mexicans proved to be resilient and adopted many of the practices of the United States. They did so largely in the Spanish language. Euro-American settlers to New Mexico often found they needed to speak Spanish in order to further their career in the territory. Census collectors, judges, notary publics, postmasters, legislators, and teachers – society in general really – spoke to one another in Spanish. Spanish language newspapers proliferated and federally appointed officials found they could do nothing without Spanish speakers in their employment and that they must concede to New Mexico’s language realities. This delayed New Mexico’s statehood for 60 years  (it became a state in 1912).  

This talk seeks to do two things. The first is to establish New Mexico as an internal colony that functions in the United States by using Spanish forty years prior to any discussion of America as an empire. The second is to place the New Mexico experience and the United States response to Spanish language usage into the larger context of international language politics. Was the United States experience unique? Does it deserve to be studied in isolation from other international colonial contexts? What can be learned from scholars of the politics of language in other nations? These questions serve as larger framing questions for my book project that examines the politics of the Spanish language in California and New Mexico in the century following the Mexican American War.