Michael Trujillo | University of New Mexico (original) (raw)
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Books by Michael Trujillo
"Michael Trujillo's Land of Disenchantment is astonishing, both for its scholarly depth and, more... more "Michael Trujillo's Land of Disenchantment is astonishing, both for its scholarly depth and, more importantly, for its honesty. As an ethnographic study of the Espanola Valley it offers a searing account of the negative realities that trouble Nuevomexicanos: poverty, drugs, violence. And, yet, Trujillo probes into these social and material difficulties with a spirit that suggests how creativity, identity, and will to survive emerge from tragedy to produce a positive aesthetics of joking, storytelling, weaving, and cultural ritual that keeps people alive to their long history and to their dreams."
--GENARO PADILLA, Associate Professor of English, University of California at Berkeley
NEW MEXICO'S ESPANOLA VALLEY IS SITUATED IN THE NORTHERN PART OF THE state between the fabled Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains. Many of the Valley's communities have roots in the Spanish and Mexican periods of colonization, while the Native American Pueblos of Ohkay Owingeh and Santa Clara are far older. In this experimental ethnography, Michael Trujillo presents a vision of Espanola that addresses its denigration by neighbors--and some of its residents--because it represents the antithesis of the supposedly "positive" narrative of New Mexico. Contradicting the popular notion of New Mexico as the "Land of Enchantment," a fusion of race, landscape, architecture, and food into a romanticized commodity, Trujillo probes beneath the surface to reveal the struggle and pain brought about by colonization and the transition from a pastoral to an urban economy, as well as the limits of common ethnographic representations. Land of Disenchantment contains both Trujillo's original ethnography and his explorations of creative works by Valley residents Policarpio Valencia, Jim Sagel, Teresa Archuleta, and G. Benito Cordova."""
Reviews of My Book by Michael Trujillo
Articles and Reports by Michael Trujillo
This essay analyzes the historical construction of "Spanish" icons in northern New Mexico and the... more This essay analyzes the historical construction of "Spanish" icons in northern New Mexico and the complex Hispanic and Chicano identities they both evoke and mask. It focuses on the January 1998 vandalism of a statue depicting New Mexico's first Spanish colonial governor, Don Juan de Oñate. The removal of the Oñate statue's foot references a brutal colonial encounter in 1599, when Oñate ordered the amputation of one foot each from Pueblo men in the rebellious Native American village of Acoma. In this case study, national and regional narratives as well as self-consciously oppositional narratives collude, conflict, and supplement one another. I conclude that the vandalized statue offers a dynamic and "open" icon that powerfully represents the contradictions of New Mexican Chicana/o identity, shedding light on the complex and contradictory identities of all Mexican-origin peoples in the United States.
Sandwiched between the artist colonies and tourist centers of Santa Fe and Taos, northern New Mex... more Sandwiched between the artist colonies and tourist centers of Santa Fe and Taos, northern New Mexico's greater EspaÒola Valley is a New Mexican Hispanic or Nuevomexicano enclave and often considered a bastion of traditional Nuevomexicano culture. Despite the valley's location, this area remains off the artist and tourist track. Moreover, regional and national media sources report that the valley is a site of widespread heroin use. This article focuses on the act of using drugs in a place elaborately scripted by discourses that idealize Nuevomexicano traditional culture. In particular, this article (1) unpacks the conceptualization of culture as a cure for the problems that affect the community, (2) situates the study of drug use in EspaÒola in a wider ethnographic context of drug use, and (3) suggests that drug use provides a momentary ‘fix’ that both reconciles and manifests the contradictions of many Nuevomexicanos’ lived experiences.
This is a popular article concerning Arizona's recent passage laws that target ethnic studies and... more This is a popular article concerning Arizona's recent passage laws that target ethnic studies and immigrants.
"It was a peculiar experience to read Arizona's House Bill 2281. This bill threatens to ban ethnic studies in Arizona. It was even stranger to read Arizona Superintendent Tom Horne's open letter to the citizens of Tucson, which calls for the termination of the city's public schools’ ethnic studies programs. . . . I felt as if someone was talking about me and people I know well without ever having engaged us in a conversation, with no idea about what we actually do. . . . Arizona's superintendent would . . . learn a lot in a sincere dialogue with Chicana/o studies students."
New Mexico Epidemiology Report, Jan 1, 2004
Annual Meeting of the American Society for Applied …, Jan 1, 2005
Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological …, Jan 1, 2000
World Literature Today, Jan 1, 2007
Journal of American Folklore, 2009
Museum Anthropology, Jan 1, 2009
Western American Literature, Jan 1, 2009
The Journal of American Folklore, Jan 1, 2009
Page 1. Book Reviews 243 engaging, and the illustrations wonderful. In the end, though, I feel th... more Page 1. Book Reviews 243 engaging, and the illustrations wonderful. In the end, though, I feel that the book reinforces cer tain popular notions of what constitutes "Eng lishness," despite the author's best efforts to avoid doing so. ...
Papers by Michael Trujillo
Hispanic Review, 2012
TRUJiLLO, Michael L. Land of Disenchantment: Latina/o Identities and Transformations in Northern ... more TRUJiLLO, Michael L. Land of Disenchantment: Latina/o Identities and Transformations in Northern New Mexico. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2009. 265 pp.Michael L. Trujillo's engaging study Land of Disenchantment is an extended meditation on and important debunking of the notion of New Mexico as an enchanted space. The view of an exotic New Mexico was created in large measure by New York socialites and foreign artists and intellectuals who settled there from the 1920s on. This migration would only increase exponentially between the world wars. The artworks this group produced, the important collections of Hispanic and pueblo Indian folk arts they amassed, and the museums they founded, all led to the establishment of New Mexico as a magical place. This idea, underpinned by visions of tricultural harmony, has spread to the entire US, and New Mexico is now seen (and increasingly marketed) as a place that does not correspond to the space and time of the greater US. The result is that New Mexico's exoticism is so often confused with Mexico's alleged exoticism that the state's license plate has to clarify: "New Mexico, USA: Land of Enchantment." Trujillo grapples with an ethnographic tradition that - inadvertently, perhaps - reproduces the idea of New Mexico as an enchanted space when it focuses on village and folk life. This privileging of the idyllic, magical aspects of the state stands in stark contrast to the dearth of anthropological studies of Espanola and other poorer cities in the Greater Espanola Valley. It is reflected in the marketing of Taos and Santa Fe as tourist destinations while poor areas are marginalized from this circuit, thereby reinforcing cycles of poverty.Trujillo's focus on Espanola and his alternative ethnography is informed not only by the stories he grew up hearing at home in central Washington state of what life had been like in New Mexico for his parents and parts of his extended family, but also by several years spent in New Mexico working variously as a reporter for the newspaper The Rio Grande Sun; a detox attendant and facilitator of drug rehabilitation groups in Espanola; and at the University of New Mexico in a drug treatment study. These experiences with what largely constitutes the negative, disenchanted underside of New Mexico overlooked by promoters of its enchantment inform the main chapters in the book, making it very readable (and fun to read). Indeed, this ethnography's focus on what Trujillo theorizes as the "negative" is perhaps best embodied by jokes told in the area that go like this: "Who discovered Espanola?" And people reply, "Marco Cholo." But the negative is also most visible in the shocking statistics that show Rio Arriba County, which is the focus of his study, to be one of the "poorest counties in New Mexico," and what is perhaps even more troubling, that the entire state of New Mexico "maintains some of the worst poverty rates in the United States" (11). …
"Michael Trujillo's Land of Disenchantment is astonishing, both for its scholarly depth and, more... more "Michael Trujillo's Land of Disenchantment is astonishing, both for its scholarly depth and, more importantly, for its honesty. As an ethnographic study of the Espanola Valley it offers a searing account of the negative realities that trouble Nuevomexicanos: poverty, drugs, violence. And, yet, Trujillo probes into these social and material difficulties with a spirit that suggests how creativity, identity, and will to survive emerge from tragedy to produce a positive aesthetics of joking, storytelling, weaving, and cultural ritual that keeps people alive to their long history and to their dreams."
--GENARO PADILLA, Associate Professor of English, University of California at Berkeley
NEW MEXICO'S ESPANOLA VALLEY IS SITUATED IN THE NORTHERN PART OF THE state between the fabled Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains. Many of the Valley's communities have roots in the Spanish and Mexican periods of colonization, while the Native American Pueblos of Ohkay Owingeh and Santa Clara are far older. In this experimental ethnography, Michael Trujillo presents a vision of Espanola that addresses its denigration by neighbors--and some of its residents--because it represents the antithesis of the supposedly "positive" narrative of New Mexico. Contradicting the popular notion of New Mexico as the "Land of Enchantment," a fusion of race, landscape, architecture, and food into a romanticized commodity, Trujillo probes beneath the surface to reveal the struggle and pain brought about by colonization and the transition from a pastoral to an urban economy, as well as the limits of common ethnographic representations. Land of Disenchantment contains both Trujillo's original ethnography and his explorations of creative works by Valley residents Policarpio Valencia, Jim Sagel, Teresa Archuleta, and G. Benito Cordova."""
This essay analyzes the historical construction of "Spanish" icons in northern New Mexico and the... more This essay analyzes the historical construction of "Spanish" icons in northern New Mexico and the complex Hispanic and Chicano identities they both evoke and mask. It focuses on the January 1998 vandalism of a statue depicting New Mexico's first Spanish colonial governor, Don Juan de Oñate. The removal of the Oñate statue's foot references a brutal colonial encounter in 1599, when Oñate ordered the amputation of one foot each from Pueblo men in the rebellious Native American village of Acoma. In this case study, national and regional narratives as well as self-consciously oppositional narratives collude, conflict, and supplement one another. I conclude that the vandalized statue offers a dynamic and "open" icon that powerfully represents the contradictions of New Mexican Chicana/o identity, shedding light on the complex and contradictory identities of all Mexican-origin peoples in the United States.
Sandwiched between the artist colonies and tourist centers of Santa Fe and Taos, northern New Mex... more Sandwiched between the artist colonies and tourist centers of Santa Fe and Taos, northern New Mexico's greater EspaÒola Valley is a New Mexican Hispanic or Nuevomexicano enclave and often considered a bastion of traditional Nuevomexicano culture. Despite the valley's location, this area remains off the artist and tourist track. Moreover, regional and national media sources report that the valley is a site of widespread heroin use. This article focuses on the act of using drugs in a place elaborately scripted by discourses that idealize Nuevomexicano traditional culture. In particular, this article (1) unpacks the conceptualization of culture as a cure for the problems that affect the community, (2) situates the study of drug use in EspaÒola in a wider ethnographic context of drug use, and (3) suggests that drug use provides a momentary ‘fix’ that both reconciles and manifests the contradictions of many Nuevomexicanos’ lived experiences.
This is a popular article concerning Arizona's recent passage laws that target ethnic studies and... more This is a popular article concerning Arizona's recent passage laws that target ethnic studies and immigrants.
"It was a peculiar experience to read Arizona's House Bill 2281. This bill threatens to ban ethnic studies in Arizona. It was even stranger to read Arizona Superintendent Tom Horne's open letter to the citizens of Tucson, which calls for the termination of the city's public schools’ ethnic studies programs. . . . I felt as if someone was talking about me and people I know well without ever having engaged us in a conversation, with no idea about what we actually do. . . . Arizona's superintendent would . . . learn a lot in a sincere dialogue with Chicana/o studies students."
New Mexico Epidemiology Report, Jan 1, 2004
Annual Meeting of the American Society for Applied …, Jan 1, 2005
Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological …, Jan 1, 2000
World Literature Today, Jan 1, 2007
Journal of American Folklore, 2009
Museum Anthropology, Jan 1, 2009
Western American Literature, Jan 1, 2009
The Journal of American Folklore, Jan 1, 2009
Page 1. Book Reviews 243 engaging, and the illustrations wonderful. In the end, though, I feel th... more Page 1. Book Reviews 243 engaging, and the illustrations wonderful. In the end, though, I feel that the book reinforces cer tain popular notions of what constitutes "Eng lishness," despite the author's best efforts to avoid doing so. ...
Hispanic Review, 2012
TRUJiLLO, Michael L. Land of Disenchantment: Latina/o Identities and Transformations in Northern ... more TRUJiLLO, Michael L. Land of Disenchantment: Latina/o Identities and Transformations in Northern New Mexico. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2009. 265 pp.Michael L. Trujillo's engaging study Land of Disenchantment is an extended meditation on and important debunking of the notion of New Mexico as an enchanted space. The view of an exotic New Mexico was created in large measure by New York socialites and foreign artists and intellectuals who settled there from the 1920s on. This migration would only increase exponentially between the world wars. The artworks this group produced, the important collections of Hispanic and pueblo Indian folk arts they amassed, and the museums they founded, all led to the establishment of New Mexico as a magical place. This idea, underpinned by visions of tricultural harmony, has spread to the entire US, and New Mexico is now seen (and increasingly marketed) as a place that does not correspond to the space and time of the greater US. The result is that New Mexico's exoticism is so often confused with Mexico's alleged exoticism that the state's license plate has to clarify: "New Mexico, USA: Land of Enchantment." Trujillo grapples with an ethnographic tradition that - inadvertently, perhaps - reproduces the idea of New Mexico as an enchanted space when it focuses on village and folk life. This privileging of the idyllic, magical aspects of the state stands in stark contrast to the dearth of anthropological studies of Espanola and other poorer cities in the Greater Espanola Valley. It is reflected in the marketing of Taos and Santa Fe as tourist destinations while poor areas are marginalized from this circuit, thereby reinforcing cycles of poverty.Trujillo's focus on Espanola and his alternative ethnography is informed not only by the stories he grew up hearing at home in central Washington state of what life had been like in New Mexico for his parents and parts of his extended family, but also by several years spent in New Mexico working variously as a reporter for the newspaper The Rio Grande Sun; a detox attendant and facilitator of drug rehabilitation groups in Espanola; and at the University of New Mexico in a drug treatment study. These experiences with what largely constitutes the negative, disenchanted underside of New Mexico overlooked by promoters of its enchantment inform the main chapters in the book, making it very readable (and fun to read). Indeed, this ethnography's focus on what Trujillo theorizes as the "negative" is perhaps best embodied by jokes told in the area that go like this: "Who discovered Espanola?" And people reply, "Marco Cholo." But the negative is also most visible in the shocking statistics that show Rio Arriba County, which is the focus of his study, to be one of the "poorest counties in New Mexico," and what is perhaps even more troubling, that the entire state of New Mexico "maintains some of the worst poverty rates in the United States" (11). …