Connecting across Cultures: Turning Neighbors into Friends and Allies

Connecting

across

Cultures

Carol Paradise Decker

© 2015 by Carol Paradise Decker

All Rights Reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Decker, Carol Paradise, 1927-

Connecting across cultures : turning neighbors into friends and allies / by Carol Paradise Decker.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-63293-034-7 (softcover : alk. paper)

1. Multiculturalism. 2. Culture. 3. Interpersonal relations. 4. Multiculturalism--New Mexico. 5. New Mexico--Social life and customs. I. Title.

HM1271.D44 2014

305.8--dc23

2014036241

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This book is dedicated , with appreciation, to all vecinos of whatever varieties who are working to improve communications and relationships in their respective multicultural communities.

About This Book

Is it about Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the 1990s?

Yes. That’s where it all began.

Is it about the people who live in this multicultural area?

Yes, and how they get along.

That’s race and culture, problem areas.

It doesn’t have to sound so divisive.

Then it’s about relationships?

Yes, and how to make them better.

I hope the experiences described here will help you cope with increasingly multicultural populations in your community, wherever you may be.

A Word About Santa Fe

La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis

(Yes, really, this is the official name for our city)

It was founded in the early 1600s as the capital of Las Provincias Internas of the Spanish Colonial province of New Spain (Mexico). It was built on the remains of an abandoned pueblo in this beautiful valley bounded by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the east and the Jemez range to the west. The settlers, landholders, ranchers and missionaries quickly spread throughout what is now Northern New Mexico.

The Spaniards were not all white-skinned Europeans who actually came from Spain. Many were mestizos with various mixtures of Spanish and Indian blood. Others were Mexican Indians, particularly Tlaxcalans, who came as servants and helpers in the heavy work of constructing the community and farming the land. New Mexico was a long way from the cities and resources of the south: trains of heavy freight wagons periodically lumbered across the deserts and rough country bringing supplies the colonists could not make themselves. The journey took about six months. Few women came with the settlers; so liaisons with Pueblo women were common, producing the next generations of sturdy, brown-skinned New Mexicans

Many pueblos, ancient communities of Indian farmers—the name in Spanish simply means villages—sprinkled the area, particularly along the Rio Grande. Franciscan missionaries came to save the souls of the poor, heathen Indians, and to make them contributing vassals of the Spanish Empire. The Pueblo people provided labor and tribute to their overlords and helped construct the mission churches that arose in every pueblo.

The Pueblo Revolt in 1680 drove out the Spanish settlers for twelve years. After their return, led by Don Diego de Vargas, Spanish oppression eased and alliances formed, Indians and Spaniards joining forces for survival in this harsh land.

In the 1800s, the Anglo invasions began. They swarmed in, especially after the Mexican War when the United States annexed the northern half of the Republic of Mexico in 1848. Great changes followed. A new language superseded the common Spanish. New laws conflicted with traditional Spanish legal patterns. New religions arrived and the familiar local Catholicism was revamped along French practices. New customs and values often conflicted with what the people had known for generations. Racism and exploitation followed, as did Anglo contempt for the little brown people and for the treaties enacted in good faith. Though many of these changes were good and necessary, the resulting cultural conflicts still affect our communities today.

Today, tourist brochures celebrate the tri-cultures of New Mexico, where Indians, Hispanics and Anglos live together in apparent harmony. After all, we have Indian and Hispanic markets that show and sell the best of traditional and contemporary arts that bring thousands of visitors to Santa Fe. Museums and galleries promote their arts along with those of the burgeoning Anglo community. Restaurants serve up the tastiest of local ethnic dishes. Music and dances on the Plaza, and in the Pueblos, fiestas and countless smaller events bring people together. All our cultures are richly and frequently displayed for all to see and appreciate. And truly, it is a rich place.

But that’s only surface veneer. New Mexico stands almost last in national statistics about education, alcoholism, drugs, violence, school dropouts, teen pregnancies, incarceration, abandonment, and a whole range of additional social problems.

Why? Theories abound. Read on.

1

An Introduction

A transplanted Yankee, I came from Connecticut with my retired husband in 1980. For years, I had been teaching Conversational Spanish and Hispanic Heritage to adults and working in various intercultural situations. Here, I continued teaching Spanish; and as I explored New Mexico, I wondered how I could help bring people together across the cultural gaps I was seeing.

What a lot I had—and still have—to learn.

For eight years, mostly in the 1990s, I developed an organization we called Vecinos Del Norte. Doesn’t Vecinos mean neighbors? What’s the difference?

Well, according to the dictionary, both words refer to someone who lives near you. But the Spanish word goes farther than the English one. Vecinos implies not only someone who lives near you but also someone with whom you have a relationship. It’s someone with whom you talk, share, celebrate, combine resources, build alliances for your mutual benefit. It’s a caring, supportive connectedness that goes beyond the geographical implications of the English word at a time when neighbors barely notice each other.

Here in Northern New Mexico, people of many cultures live side by side, as neighbors. Yet, with happy and notable exceptions, most of us do not relate comfortably with neighbors of other backgrounds. We are separated by history and heritage, by our values and ways of doing things, by our experiences and language—even when we are speaking English.

Although some people are comfortable with their cultural identity, many others feel confused, besieged, angry. Some are eager to reach out to others across the cultural gaps; many others become anxious, defensive, insensitive. For many of us intercultural relationships seem threatening because they challenge us to look at our own values and lifeways from different perspectives. For others, these same relationships are welcome as a way of expanding knowledge of human experience, including our own.

Northern New Mexico, as in many other parts of the United States, has been changing rapidly over the past few years. New residents are swarming in; developers are overbuilding on huge tracts of ancestral land; prices are spiraling upward beyond the reach of local people; TV, computers, electronic gadgets and economic pressures are threatening old values. As people are displaced and traditional cultures eroded, a seething undercurrent of anger, despair, defensiveness and frustration exacerbates the ethnic tensions that in some areas threaten to explode in violence.

This undercurrent of intercultural distrust is real and growing. Things haven’t changed much in the years since Vecinos started in the 1990s. Yet the problems we face—education, employment, justice, violence, exploitation, abuse, dropouts, to name just a few—affect ALL of us. These problems should bring us together across the cultures as we attempt to resolve them to our mutual satisfaction.

It’s too common and easy to insist that one thing is an Anglo problem, or that something else is a Hispanic concern, or that another issue is for the Indians to deal with. It takes energy, sensitivity and commitment to see that we are all involved and needed for creative solutions to complex problems.

But we don’t know how to talk with each other across the cultures. We don’t know how to build trust, to listen to each other’s concerns to develop cross-cultural relationships that will not only enrich our own perspectives, but also help us become allies in our battles for common goals.

It was hard to describe what Vecinos was trying to do. One attempt went like this:

Vecinos Del Norte has been bringing people together across the cultural lines to explore and celebrate our respective heritages, to consider current issues, to build personal relationships and to help us all in working together for our common future as more sensitive and caring neighbors and Vecinos.

How were we trying to do all this?

We hosted many informal conversaciones with resource people from various backgrounds, people involved with their Indian, Hispanic or Anglo communities, people working in cultural preservation or intercultural affairs. There were lots of them who were eager to share their perspectives—if asked. Word of mouth, flyers and notices in the newspaper brought in interested participants who contributed their own concerns and insights to the general discussion. We videotaped many, edited them down to half-hour programs, and showed them weekly on Public Access TV.

We made field trips to Indian Pueblos, to Hispanic villages, to schools and clinics and to community centers; and we hosted potlucks in return. We visited potters, weavers, saint-makers, churches, small businesses and more, and everywhere received warm welcomes. We joined work projects, plastered old adobe churches, cleaned up after a fire, loaned our assistance and technical know-how to many struggling groups. Panel discussions were lively, with varying viewpoints illuminating current situations. Workshops helped us consider such things as breaking stereotypes, listening and conflict resolution. Small group discussions that just happened around cups of coffee and cake were often intense. Personal invitations to Pueblo dances or Hispanic fiestas enriched our experiences. Many of the contacts we made have lasted for years.

We shared our developing perspectives through newspaper columns, through the videotapes already mentioned, through flyers and small brochures, through three years of A Directory of Intercultural Resources (and there were lots of them), and through frequent talks in churches and community groups.

Who were the we I refer to here? We were mostly Anglos but with large numbers of Hispanics, Indians and others joining us frequently. We had contacts and welcomes all over the north, from Cochiti Pueblo to Tierra Amarilla. Well over a thousand participants were actually involved in one way or another, and the spin-off spun far. Some events brought out only half a dozen participants, while others filled a meeting room with eighty or a hundred. Everything was volunteer, nobody was paid for anything. Donations covered our basic expenses of postage and printing. I was general creator and coordinator with substantial assistance from a varying group of helpers. Borrowed spaces in churches, schools and homes were our meeting places, and the telephone our major communications link. The numbers of events we hosted were staggering. Eventually, exhaustion and politics closed us down.

The results? Well, I can’t say we changed the intercultural climate of the community very much, but we raised some important questions, suggested some possible solutions, and for many participants of all backgrounds we provided rich, perspective-changing experiences.

When we began the project, I consulted with several local Hispanic leaders. Each one exclaimed in amazement, What’s going on here? When you Anglos want to learn about us, you go down to the University of New Mexico to the professors with fancy PhDs who have studied us and are the experts. But you are asking US for OUR knowledge and experience! This is something new!

This book is dedicated, in a spirit of gratitude, to all who have participated in Vecinos events, and to those who have shared their perspectives and experience, their homes and work places, their stories and laughter, to help us build a more sensitive community.

So, Reader, sit back and consider with us some of what we were hearing and learning through our Vecinos experiences. Perhaps some things will be useful to you in your own intercultural contacts.

But this is a handbook, a workbook, and invites you to respond to the various situations described here. Argue, fight, cheer, jeer, celebrate. Make this your book as well as mine.

✥✥✥

On the following pages, I’ll share with you some of the lessons our Vecinos experiences taught us about crossing the cultures. Though it’s written from an Anglo perspective, many of them should be useful to people from other cultures too.

The themes I tackle are crucial. They include: the power of names, the tri-cultural trap, culture and cultures, stereotypes, heritage, values, racism, communications, conflict, bridges—and more. All of these themes must be considered as we interrelate. And though the focus is on relationships, the implication is that these relationships will lead to action and alliances as we work together on community and individuals’ problems.

Somebody commented that nobody knows how to create a true intercultural community here in New Mexico. It has never been done. We’re constantly experimenting, exploring, trying out ways that may, or may not, work out. Vecinos is one of these experiments.

Some of this text is commentary, by me and others, introducing a theme or reflecting on some of its manifestations. Illustrative stories are sometimes included to add to the account.

A large part is Vecinos’ Voices, quotations more or less intact, by individuals that reveal perspectives on some of the larger issues we’re dealing with. Vecinos is committed to listening to people as well as to academics and experts. Though there are plenty of resources—books, documentaries, articles, films—they must not substitute for contact