Hispano Culture and Transportation Presentation

Our own El Rito Resident, Historian Dr. Susan Calafate Boyle, will be doing a presentation on the achievements of hispanos in New Mexico during the 19th century and highlighting New Mexicans contributions.  This presentation is on August 28, 2010 from 4:00 to 5:30 pm. 

Dr. Susan Calafate Boyle received her doctorate in American Social History from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She has been a member of the departments of history at Colorado State University, University of Missouri-Columbia and Westminster College and a Fulbright scholar in 1988. She is currently a planning specialist at the National Trails Intermountain Region office of the National Park Service in Santa Fe. Dr. Boyle continues to work as an independent scholar focusing on socioeconomic developments in New Mexico during the 19th century and is the author of Los Capitalistas: Hispano Merchants and the Santa Fe Trade. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.

Dr. Boyle in addition to being an expert on roads and historic trails, has worked on a wide range of topics, such as general management plans, interpretive plans, heritage tourism, the study of cultural landscapes and linear resources, and the development of effective strategies for successful partnerships.

She has also worked extensively in Latin America. She She was a co-leader of an International Workshop for Park Planning in Payogasta, Argentina, 2001, and has participated in numerous international seminars regarding strategies for incorporating landscapes and linear resources to World Heritage Site selection.

The presentation focuses on the contributions that the hispano culture made to the massive transportation of goods associated with the Santa Fe Trail and El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro during the 19th Century.  In the Southwest, the US inherited a tradition of muleteering as the Spanish found that packing was ideally suited to the area’s mountains and deserts. Many argue that the Spanish mule has been the unsung hero of transportation in the southwest.

This Yoruba, indigo, resist dyed cotton textile was collected in Nigeria by the late Kate Peck Kent in the late 1960's.  It appears on the back cover and on page 58 of her book  "Introducing West African Cloth" published by the Denver Museum of Natural History in 1971.

New Mexico Territorial Justice:  1846 – 1912

A history of the administration of justice in New Mexico from the American occupation in 1846 until statehood in 1912.  The presentation will focus on the lives and activities of several Supreme Court justices in the context of territorial times and will address the participation of the one Hispanic Justice in territorial times and since statehood in 1912.

Patricio M. Serna is currently a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court. (biography)

Carnival Front

Carnival Back

Carnival Detail

42" x 59.5"

$150 minimum for the library.

Saturday June 26th at 4:00 p.m.

This lecture will be in our non-fiction room.

Melina Vizcaino-Aleman is a graduate of the American Studies PhD program at the University of New Mexico.  Her work concentrates on the history and culture of the Southwest, particularly as it relates to US Hispanic and Chicana/o literature, folklore, and film.  She also focuses on the significance of race, class, and ethnicity, as well as critical regional studies.  In her dissertation, "Triptych Cultural Critique: Fray Angelico Chavez and Southwestern Critical Regionalism, 1939-2004," she provides a critical biography of New Mexico's twentieth-century Franciscan priest, poet, historian, and man of letters.  The dissertation puts Fray Angelico in dialogue with other Southwestern writers, both Anglo and Mexican American, between the years of 1939 and 2004, and it uses religion as a cultural studies paradigm to engage in the development of regional writing and critical regional studies.

For her presentation, she will be presenting a portion of her dissertation on Fray Angelico's La Conquistadora: The Autobiography of an Ancient Statue, a 1954 text published by the Saint Anthony Guild Press and written in the context of the Nuclear Age.  Fray Angelico penned La Conquistadora after serving with the military during the Korean War (1950-1953), and he visited the Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine in Extremadura, Spain, while stationed in Europe.  He also served as an Army Chaplain for WWII (1942-1946), and he wrote Our Lady of the Conquest, a history of the statue published in 1948 by the New Mexico Historical Society.  The autobiography in many ways disputes this previous history using the voice of the statue.  By writing the autobiography in the voice of the statue "herself," Fray Angelico uses a literary technique that crosses gender, genre, and generations.  The presentation will address the autobiography's cross-gendered voice in three ways: 1) as a way to understand New Mexico's Hispanic religious traditions in a modern era; 2) as a revisionary history and Southwestern cultural performance; and 3) as a response to the US's nuclear development on a global scale.

We are proud to have on view in our Special Collections Cabinet the book work of Julie Wagner.

Julie has been a living and working in the El Rito for over 35 years. She has been producing works of sculpture in wood and now paper, drawings, and artist’s books.

"My books are almost always one-of-a-kind, sculptural in nature, and concerned with form.  I want the pages to have texture, weight, and often translucency.  I see them as interactive, so the viewer is in a sense going on a journey through them as they turn the pages or pass from one page of the accordion to the next.

When I make a book, I often have multiple agendas.  I like to have ideas running along in parallel or interwoven paths.  I like definitions, maps, diagrams, connections between things that seem disparate...vessels to drink from, vessels to travel in, vessels carrying blood or sap, vessels embodying virtues or qualities.  I like to have the images carry the weight of the ideas and rarely use a text. "

Julie's work will be on display Through the Month of May. These works are for sale and proceeds will benefit the library.

Thank you Susan Guevara and all who helped The El Rito Library Celebrate 

Día de los Niños, Día de los Libros

Susan put together a wonderful presentation on how  “Numero Uno”, a book authored by Arthur and Alex Dorros was illustrated by her. El Rito School children were treated to a dramatization using the original models for many of the characters and photo studies she used for reference.

For more pictures of the event please visit our photo gallery.

The El Rito Library would like to thank the Del Norte Credit Union

for taking the time to recognize the importance of this event and becoming our sponsor.