On Tejanas and Nuevo Mexicanas

The recent political case of foot in mouth award comes to us from New Mexico democrat Lt Governor candidate Brian Colon who has taken to describing Republican Gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez as a “Tejana” or translated from Spanish, a Texan female. The Albuquerque Journal has published an article going through the psychological elements to this term and boils it down to a matter of dividing Hispanics in New Mexico. How typical of democrats. The term, the Journal notes, is meant to invoke images of affluent Texans, invading New Mexico to hunt, fish and ski. In this case, this slur is based on the fact that Martinez was born and raised in El Paso, TX moving to New Mexico in 1986.

There are two points that are not in the well written Journal piece. The first is that El Paso, while now a part of Texas, in colonial times from the 18th century to about the mid 19th was a part of New Mexico and the home of the Lt Governor. Second, I think that the Tejana term is used to disparage Martinez as a dreaded Texan. I often joke that as a good New Mexican I hate Texas. This stems from water rights issues where Texas took advantage of New Mexico by way of Rio Grande water rights contracts in the mid 1800s that are in affect to this day that they refuse to re-negotiate given modern understanding of exactly how much water is in the Rio Grande. Basically New Mexico must provide more water to Texas through the Rio Grande than actually flows naturally which is very bad for a state made up of mostly desert. This is insane and many lawyers in the Las Cruces area have made their careers working to rescind this centuries old injustice.

Anyway, there are a few reasons why the idea of a “Texan” running our state may be unpalatable to many New Mexicans and this sentiment is what the Diane Denish campaign is hoping to put into people’s minds. Logically though, it is difficult to consider Martinez a Texan. She has lived in the state for twenty four years. Twenty four. And she is in her fourth term as DA in Dona Ana country. It isn’t like a certain governor that moved to New Mexico in order to run for congress. It is silly that the democrats think silly games like this will move the people into voting for them while not providing evidence as to why they deserve to be voted for. This kind of thing will not work because people pay attention and the only voters that this matters to are already democrat sheep with no need to be herded because they are already in the barn.