With about 500 years of history behind it, a trail known as the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro is said by some people to be responsible for New Mexico’s culture, language, religion and folklore.
Because of its role in both Mexico’s and New Mexico’s history, representatives from both places have gathered for the past six years to preserve existing parts of the trail and to honor the memory of the portions of it that have already vanished.
Today, representatives from UNM, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Mexican Consul and the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Historia will meet at the National Hispanic Cultural Center to prepare for the Seventh Annual Colloquium on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.
“It’s how our ancestors got to New Mexico,” Joseph Sanchez said of the trail. Sanchez is the director of the Spanish Colonial Center, which is a partnership between UNM and the National Park Service.
The colloquium is an annual event Mexico and the United States take turns hosting. This year, people celebrating the trail will gather in Aguascalientes, Mexico, from Oct. 17-19.
Sanchez said the colloquium is important because the trail has influenced a diverse array of cultures throughout its existence.
“People coming to settle New Mexico were the predominant users and the traders who came up into the area,” he said. “The road itself is a frontier all by itself. On it was a lot of movement by traders, miners, black slaves and Indians.”
The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro is about 1,200 miles long, with 400 miles running through the United States and the remaining 800 miles running through parts of Mexico. The trail originated in prehistoric times and became a main passageway in the 1540s when Spanish miners, traders and missionaries used the trail to move from Mexico City to places as far north as Durango, Colo.
“The prehistory is also very important,” Sanchez said. “The Camino Real is formed from indigenous trails and routes. The Spanish converted it into the route that it became. The Camino Real is a transmitter of people and history and culture — it explains how these things got up here.”
Though the trail has influenced the way many New Mexicans and Mexicans live today, Sanchez said it has also been responsible for the roads used by Albuquerque residents. Sanchez said some local roads are built over the original trail.
“Isleta Boulevard is pretty much the route,” he said.
Because the trail is something that belongs to and is shared by both the people of Mexico and the United States, Sanchez said the camino holds hope of a continual and healthy relationship between the two countries.
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“The colloquium is a good example of cooperation between Mexico and the United States to commemorate its common history,” Sanchez said. “It allows us to showcase our long Spanish colonial and Mexican period histories with modern times and it should also serve as a tourism attraction.”
The meeting to plan the colloquium will be at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, at 1701 4th St. S.W. from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is free.
