UNM professor emeritus Tony Mares and author Nasario Garc°a agreed Tuesday that in order to preserve New Mexican Hispanic culture, people need to learn and revive Spanish language.
Mares and Garc°a spoke during a Regional Scholars and Writers Series presentation at Zimmerman Library. The event, which focuses on Southwestern culture, also featured American Studies professor Gabriel Melendez, who co-edited "Multicultural Southwest: A Reader."
Mares, who is writing a book about New Mexican historical figure Padre Martinez, stated that Garc°a's work is extremely important because so much of it is in the native Spanish of northern New Mexico, where Garc°a does much of his research.
He added that Garc°a shares the same concern that Spanish culture will die when the language disappears.
Mares said he wrote a column in Spanish for the Albuquerque Journal North until the paper decided to stop publishing its Spanish page, proving people's declining interest in New Mexico Hispanic culture.
Mares said he believes that once the language is gone, whatever is left of Chicano studies will only be small entities on college campuses that will wither and eventually evaporate.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
He said that while he is not optimistic about the chances of Southwestern Hispanic culture's survival, he also is not pessimistic. Mares said if the language is revived and people pay attention to their history, then the process of cultural disintegration can be reversed.
Garc°a, author of "Brujas, Bultos y Brazas: Tales of Witchcraft and the Supernatural in the Pecos Valley," added that parents have also been remiss in teaching their children Spanish and are guilty of raising their children as "cultural orphans," or people who don't understand or know about their own cultures.
He explained that his book drew from interviews with older people in the Pecos Valley who still retain their folk traditions, but said he fears that as soon as these "old timers" die, their traditions also will die.
"Old timers are special for their loyalty to their native language," Garc°a said.
He added that these people's stories are a mere microcosm of what is to be found throughout New Mexico and most people don't bother to sit down with their own families to record their oral histories.
Garc°a has written more than a dozen books, culminating almost 50 years of work, and said that the process is very important when researching his books. He added that it takes an average of seven years to write each book because he tries to painstakingly recapture his interviewees' Spanish.
"I have been very loyal to individuals' _ the old timers' _ language because I think you have to," he said. "You have to honor the dialect and the kind of language that still exists in Northern New Mexico, because if you were to put the language in so-called modern Spanish, then what do you do? You prostitute their own language and it sounds very nice, but you don't have an appreciation for the language that they have maintained throughout the centuries."
