Room at the Inn
Last weekend Santa Fe held the traditional Las Posadas celebration for Christmas. It's a procession through the square put on by the New Mexico History Museum. Las Posadas means "the inns" and people dress up as Mary and Joseph to wander the streets looking for an inn for the night.
Innkeeper actors on rooftops shout denials: "no room", "move on", "no place for you!"
In past years there was also an actor dressed as Satan on the rooftops who would taunt Mary and Joseph, but like so much in 2017, it became controversial (not historically accurate, scary for kids). So there were no rooftop devils this year, and some welcomed the change, others lamented tinkering with an oddball tradition that had been in place for decades.
Santa Fe loves staging quirky (and inaccurate) history processions through the square. We were there for La Entrada in September, which is a ragtag string of people dressed as Spanish conquistadors who march around to mark the peaceful entry of the Spanish into Santa Fe in 1692 to retake the city after the Pueblo Indian revolts of 1680 had driven them out.
Again, controversy. The Spanish entry into Santa Fe was not all that peaceful, and cruelty and disaster befell the Pueblos in the years that followed.
Indian groups and native sympathizers protested the procession as one-sided history and a misplaced glorification of conquest, and we watched the police cart some of them off forcibly as people dressed as priests and conquistadors shuffled through the plaza in a line.
We come from New England, an area just as deeply rich as the southwest in controversial native and religious and colonial history, but growing up there I absorbed it as background context, not realizing how unique it all was. Here the traditions seem exotic to me because I am seeing them as an outsider for the first time.
I miss Connecticut.
I'm enchanted by New Mexico.
Innkeeper actors on rooftops shout denials: "no room", "move on", "no place for you!"
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| A gift from the Nava Ade homeowners association welcoming us "for our first winter" to New Mexico. |
In past years there was also an actor dressed as Satan on the rooftops who would taunt Mary and Joseph, but like so much in 2017, it became controversial (not historically accurate, scary for kids). So there were no rooftop devils this year, and some welcomed the change, others lamented tinkering with an oddball tradition that had been in place for decades.
Santa Fe loves staging quirky (and inaccurate) history processions through the square. We were there for La Entrada in September, which is a ragtag string of people dressed as Spanish conquistadors who march around to mark the peaceful entry of the Spanish into Santa Fe in 1692 to retake the city after the Pueblo Indian revolts of 1680 had driven them out.
 |
| A gift from Francie, our realtor. |
Again, controversy. The Spanish entry into Santa Fe was not all that peaceful, and cruelty and disaster befell the Pueblos in the years that followed.
Indian groups and native sympathizers protested the procession as one-sided history and a misplaced glorification of conquest, and we watched the police cart some of them off forcibly as people dressed as priests and conquistadors shuffled through the plaza in a line.
We come from New England, an area just as deeply rich as the southwest in controversial native and religious and colonial history, but growing up there I absorbed it as background context, not realizing how unique it all was. Here the traditions seem exotic to me because I am seeing them as an outsider for the first time.
I miss Connecticut.
I'm enchanted by New Mexico.
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