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Local History
Rationale
Ever Changing, Ever Growing
Ever Changing, Ever Growing is an ongoing series about the history, adaptability, and resilience of our region. Bimonthly on the second Saturday of the month, speakers share their stories of people, places, and events that have shaped, and are shaping, the place we call home.
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Every Changing, Ever Growing is presented by The Public Library, Historic Albuquerque, Inc., and Oasis Albuquerque. We are deeply grateful for their support.
Ever Changing, Ever Growing
Historic Albuquerque Recordings
Featured Historic Albuquerque Presentations
Check out this and other great videos at the Historic Albuquerque YouTube channel. Many are recorded at the Special Collections Botts Hall
Upcoming Events
Recommended Reading
Relevant Readings
Italians in Albuquerque by
The close-knit Italian-American community has been a strong presence in Albuquerque, New Mexico since the transcontinental railroad first arrived in the city in 1880. In this new book, Nicholas P. Ciotola relays the journeys, struggles, and triumphs of these immigrants, from their hometowns in Italy, to their treacherous journey to the feet of Lady Liberty, and finally across the vast distance of America to make their new home in Albuquerque. Told in their own words and showcased in nearly 200 vintage images, these are the stories of the families who established a foundation for the growth and development of a vibrant Italian community in New Mexico's largest city. Readers will recognize names like Alessandro and Pompilio Matteucci, Antonio and Cherubino Domenici, Ettore Franchini, and Orseste Bachechi, who is known as the "Father of the Albuquerque Italian Community." Also included are images of Colombo Hall, the city's first Italian-American organization, and the Italmer Club, founded in the late 1930s. Collected largely from members of the Italian-American community, these photographs also document integral aspects of the immigrant experience including work, leisure, religion, and family life.
Los Arabes of New Mexico by
"Why were they attracted to this area? What conditions in New Mexico facilitated their rapid and almost seamless acculturation? Hardworking, imaginative, and enterprising, Los Árabes of New Mexico became successful businessmen and prominent entrepreneurs, who enriched this state with their unique culture, their cheerful perseverance, and boundless enthusiasm." -- Sunstone Press
Jews in New Mexico since World War II by
For Jews around the world the defining events of World War II and its aftermath were the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. These seminal events led to an increasingly connected and complex world for Jews, even in once-remote places such as New Mexico. The rapid expansion of organized Jewish activity in New Mexico during the postwar years brought about a heightened sense of consciousness, and the state's small Jewish population witnessed a considerable demographic growth. Building on his earlier work, A History of the Jews in New Mexico, Henry Tobias incorporates new material and sources in this updated volume. He demonstrates how Jewish awareness in New Mexico following World War II gave rise to significant cultural and political influence, introducing writers, musicians, and such artists as Ira Moskowitz, Arthur Sussman, and Judy Chicago to the state's flourishing art scene.
Hispanic Albuquerque, 1706-1846 by
In anticipation of the tricentennial of Albuquerque's founding in 2006, Hispanic Albuquerque presents an engaging, narrative history of the city from 1706 to 1846, its era as a Hispanic community. Written by the foremost historian of colonial and nineteenth-century New Mexico, this book is an abridgment of his award-winning Albuquerque: A Narrative History, first published in 1982 and long unavailable. Here is history to fascinate and inform. In re-examining the founding of the city, Simmons shows how contemporary land and water rights issues are tied to the original document creating the town. His account of commercial activities and relations with Native Americans is a reminder of the complexity of daily life in the colonial period.
- Do Remember Me 2: Black Seniors of Albuquerque and Western New Mexico by "Do remember me 2: Black seniors of Albuquerque and Western New Mexico is the second half of an oral history project that focuses on the history of the black experience in New Mexico"--P. 1.
Germans in the Southwest, 1850-1920 by
Many of the Germans who came to the United States in the nineteenth century ventured far beyond the Atlantic coast to seek their fortunes. Tomas Jaehn examines the experiences of those Germans who settled in the Hispanic Southwest, especially New Mexico, up to the end of World War I. Jaehn relies on literary works by Karl May, Balduin M?llhausen, and Alphonse Bandelier to show how Germans viewed the region and its cultures and how they adjusted to life in the Southwest. His analysis of the Germans' economic, political, and social behavior suggests the region's Hispanic citizens were hospitable to both Jewish and Gentile German arrivals. The arrival of thousands of Anglo Americans by railroad in the early 1880s, however, caused all non-Hispanics to become racially and socially more aware. The long-established Southwest Germans began shielding their cultural identity by celebrating their ethnicity in clubs, churches, and temples that had long exemplified the German presence in the American Midwest. World War I and new immigration laws after World War I concluded the influx of Germans into New Mexico, but those who had arrived before continued their acculturation to the Southwest as well as the celebrations of their heritage.
Indigenous Albuquerque by
Some 30,000 American Indians call Albuquerque, New Mexico, home, and twelve Indigenous nations, mostly Pueblo, live within a fifty-mile radius of it. Yet no study until now has focused on the complexities of urban American Indian experience in the state’s largest city.Indigenous Albuquerque examines the dilemmas confronting urban Indians as a result of a colonized past—and present—and the relationship between the City of Albuquerque and its Native residents. Treating not only issues of identity but also education, welfare, health care, community organizations, and community efforts to counter colonization, Myla Vicenti Carpio explores every aspect of Indigenous life in the city.“Urban” as a lived experience, she suggests, does not occur in isolation from either Indigenous communities’ survival or the legacies of Euroamerican colonization. This experience is integrally connected not only through cultural, religious, political, and economic spheres, but also through the legacy of federal reservation police, and thus cannot be understood as distinct from reservation life. By specifically considering the intersection of city and citizen, Vicenti Carpio expresses the dilemmas confronting urban Indians as a result of their colonized past.While Indigenous Albuquerque reflects the discipline of American Indian Studies, it is also relevant to American Indian history, ethnic studies, public policy, and urban history.
Recognizing Heritage by
Recognizing Heritage explores the social, political, and historical context of recent legislation and other public efforts to interpret and preserve Native American and Hispanic heritage in northern New Mexico. The federal government's recognition of New Mexico's cultural distinctiveness contrasts sharply with its earlier efforts to wipe out Indian and Hispanic cultures. Multiculturalism and colonialism have overlapped in New Mexico since the nineteenth century when Anglos began promoting it strengths in earnest. The book suggests steps toward a more just multiculturalism that fundamentally challenges colonial inequalities.
Silent Voices by
When World War II began, New Mexico had a population of 531,815 inhabitants, one of the least populated of the 48 states. Yet, New Mexico and New Mexicans played a key role in the outcome of the War in the Pacific. The New Mexico National Guard was the first U.S. military unit to fight the Japanese, holding on for four months on Bataan, and then suffering through years in POW camps. The atomic bomb was developed at a secret laboratory in Los Alamos, and tested at a site near Alamogordo. Navajo code talkers helped capture bases from which B-29s bombed Japanese cities. Finally, several thousand Japanese Americans, classified by the FBI as dangerous enemy aliens, were interned in a camp near Santa Fe. These seemingly separate events were related through unique qualities of the arid, spacious land. The authors have now provided a voice for the previously silent heroes of these wartime events: Special Engineer Detachment (SED) enlisted men and women at Los Alamos who actually fabricated the atomic bomb, Navajo Marine privates, National Guard enlisted men, and Japanese American internees. Their stories, obtained through personal interviews by Rogers and Bartlit to supplement the historical record, illuminate the patriotism, human suffering, and courageous humor in these important World War II events. EVERETT M. ROGERS, Ph.D., was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. His special interest in intercultural communication is illustrated here in analyzing American/Japanese relationships, often occurring through barbed wire stockades or at the end of a gun. NANCY R. BARTLIT earned a BA degree in history from Smith College and an MA in international communications from the University of New Mexico. She taught in Japan for two years, tutored Japanese in Los Alamos, and returned to Japan to study technology and industry. This book is a confluence of her unique familiarity with Japanese people and culture--their war museums and battlefields--and New Mexicans, their multiple cultures, and war memorials. She represents a human link between a country that was once the arch enemy and the place that created the weapon causing
