Shaping our state: A look at five historical figures that helped forge New Mexico
Dec. 24—Editor's note: The last Sunday of each month, Journal Arts Editor Adrian Gomez tells the stories behind some of the hidden gems you can see across the state in "Gimme Five."
New Mexico is a land where its ancestors are as important as ever.
It's a state that values the land it encompasses.
For centuries, humans have come to the area for different reasons.
If you live here long enough, one will realize that it's more than just landscape — it's a place people call home.
Conversations with State Historian Rob Martinez often find a way to back to the rich stories.
Iconic names such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Billy the Kid have helped shape a narrative of the area.
Martinez says while there are more than the five mentioned, each of these people have left an impact on the state.
1. Clara Belle Williams
Clara Belle Williams was born in Plum, Texas, on Oct. 29, 1885.
Martinez says she attended a small independent college — Prairie View Normal and Independent College, where she graduated valedictorian in 1905.
She also studied in 1910 at the University of Chicago and got married in 1917.
Martinez says she made her way to New Mexico, where she started attending New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now New Mexico State University.
"She had a tough go of it," Martinez says. "She had to sit in the hallway and take notes because professors wouldn't let her sit in the lecture halls. She was the first African American student to graduate from the college. She was 51 years old when she graduated. She's an amazing example of determination and intelligence. She's an amazing person who, against all odds, succeeded."
Martinez says Williams went on to become a teacher in Las Cruces.
She taught at Phillips Chapel, as well as, Booker T. Washington school in Las Cruces.
"But it's her legacy that I love," Martinez says. "She had three sons that became doctors. She passed away in 1994 at the age of 108, I didn't know that."
In 1961, NMSU named a street after her on campus. She was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Law degree from NMSU in 1980.
"The university also apologized for the treatment of Williams when she was attending the college. The English department was renamed Clara Belle Williams Hall. And there's a scholarship program in her name at NMSU," he says. "That's quite a legacy. She was a pioneer in so many ways. A woman making her way in a man's world and succeeding as an African American fighting against racism. Can you imagine her sitting in the hallway? Somebody needs to do a movie about her."
2. Padre Martínez
Padre Martínez was born Antonio José Martínez in Taos.
"I think he's so fascinating because he lives in the Spanish Colonial period, the Mexican period and the U.S. Territorial period," Martinez says. "He helped guide New Mexico in all of those phases."
He came from a prominent Martínez family of Taos and the family moved from Abiquiú to Taos in the early 1800s.
He got married and had a child with his wife, who died.
"So he ended up going to Durango, Mexico, to study for the priesthood," he says. "He studied with the Jesuit down there and he had a real sense of duty to the people of New Mexico that education was important. That you could not take away someone's education. You could take away their land, you could try to take away their culture, but you could not take away their knowledge."
Martínez published an early new newspaper in New Mexico so people could read. He also published cuadernos, workbooks for people to learn how to read and write, to spread literacy in the Spanish language.
He advocated for the poor, as New Mexico was a poor area.
"He helped New Mexico to transition from being a province of the Spanish Empire to being a territory of Mexico," Martinez says. "He participated in Mexican government representing New Mexico. And then he also was an advocate for the Penitente, which has developed over the centuries."
When New Mexico became a territory in 1850, Jean-Baptiste Lamy was the first bishop.
Martínez got along with him and they worked together.
"But Lamy has a superiority attitude towards New Mexican people, New Mexico culture, and even the local New Mexican priests like Martinez and other priests," he says. "He didn't consider them to be very holy or very Catholic or so he felt he needed to kind of re-Christianize that. So he brought in the Christian Brothers, the Sisters of Loretto, and eventually in 1867, the Jesuits. But Martínez and Lamy clashed on how to treat the people."
Martínez often disobeyed Lamy, which led to change.
"Padre Martínez is instrumental in helping New Mexicans become citizens of the United States," he says. "He's always very involved with the local politicians. He's this amazing personality. For me, he's possibly the most fascinating person in New Mexico history."
3. Doña Tules
María Gertrudis Barceló, known as "Doña Tules," is one of the most infamous women in New Mexico history.
She was from Sonora, Mexico, and she came up to the area around 1815, in the late Colonial period, with her family.
"By the time we become part of Mexico in 1821, the Barceló family settled south of Albuquerque where the father, Juan Ignacio, worked as a farmer and rancher."
She married in 1823 to Manuel Antonio Cisneros — a New Mexican. The couple had two sons and both died as infants.
"But what makes her so amazing is when she starts to learn," he says. "She's a very savvy person. She adopted a number of children and learns the ways of gambling and gambling houses."
By 1830, she moves to Santa Fe with her husband and opened a gambling house in 1839, west of the Santa Fe Plaza, where Burro Alley is.
"Obviously, this is an interesting time in New Mexico. It's a transition away from our Colonial period into our Mexican period, and the Santa Fe Trail is open."
Martinez says with the area bustling because of the Santa Fe Trail trade, there were all types of people living in the area.
"You can imagine what it would be like to go into this gambling house," he says. "All kinds of people enjoying themselves. She was making money."
Doña Tules' gambling house was attracting Santa Fe's elite crowd.
"She amassed a lot of wealth because of this," he says. "She used the money to support children. She adopted and she became an advocate for children and their education. She's an example of a strong woman who did not have access to wealth or higher education, yet became a member of Santa Fe's elite society."
4. Cristóval María Larrañaga
Cristóval María Larrañaga was one of the first trained physicians in New Mexico.
He was born in the mid-1700s, probably about 1750.
"By 1775, he's in New Mexico and marries at Isleta, a local woman," he says. "In the marriage record, it states that he was a native of Mexico City. So he was Spanish, but from Mexico, a Mexican and Spanish man. He worked locally in various capacities as a notary, for the state."
Martinez says what makes him most fascinating is in the 1780s, about five years after he got married, there was an outbreak of smallpox in New Mexico that killed about 5,000 people — about a quarter or even more of the population.
Larrañaga went south to what's now Chihuahua, and he brought children of soldiers, who were carrying a vaccination, up to New Mexico.
"About 124 children up to age six," he says. "Keep in mind back then they carried it in their bodies and they had scabs and it was a very primitive way of doing it. They would take pieces of the scab and then scratch the person. Then your body would build up the antibodies. He is said to have saved a generation of New Mexicans because of this."
5. J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City in 1904.
"He's obviously responsible for The Manhattan Project and is called the father of the Atomic Bomb," Martinez says. "His role in history is controversial, of course, which makes him interesting."
Martinez says Oppenheimer was an amazing physicist and a talented man.
He had visited New Mexico as a young boy and gone to the Boys Ranch and knew the area and loved it out there.
"When the U.S. government and military were looking for places that were kind of out of the way and isolated to develop an atomic weapon project. Ultimately, the area just northwest of Santa Fe, became the location and he was the leader of it," he says. "And it went from abruptly 1942 to 1945, with the development of the atomic bomb, and that awesome turning point in world history, when the bomb was detonated in an experiment at Trinity site, south of Albuquerque out near Alamogordo, and White Sands. Just a stunning, stunning event that put New Mexico in the center of world history, world politics, and world military events. I think that the role of Robert Oppenheimer is not just New Mexico history, but national history and world history — and that cannot be disputed."
