Prof. Enrique Lamadrid

Genízaro Nation 

In 1979 Fray Angélico Chávez reminded New Mexico who the Genízaros were and their place in history. Genízaro was the designation given during Spanish colonial times to indigenous people of mixed tribal origins living among the Hispano population in Spanish fashion. They got Spanish surnames from their masters, Christian names through baptism, spoke a provisional form of Spanish, and lived together or sprinkled among regional households, towns, and ranchos. Since the term was abolished in the 1821 Treaty of Córdoba with independence from Spain, historians had always assumed that the cultural memory of the people who comprised as much as a third of the population of New Mexico by 1776 was erased by time. In 1979, historian-anthropologist Gilberto Benito Córdova reminded New Mexico that in Abiquiú and other towns and barrios, many descendents of Genízaros indeed remember who they were and re-affirm who they are in their sense of community, and through ritual dance, song and ceremony. Enrique Lamadrid’s lecture recapitulates the work of successive generations of scholars, the awakening of what sociologist-philosopher Tomás Atencio in 1985 called "Genízaro Consciousness."

Professor Enrique Lamadrid (Ph.D. University of Southern California) taught folklore, literature, and cultural history in the UNM’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese. He edits UNM Press' Querencias Series. He still organizes local and international field schools in ethnographic documentation and cultural cartography, most recently based in Ecuador, Mora and Rudolfo Anaya's home town, Puerto de Luna. Lamadrid was awarded the Chicago folklore prize for his 2003 ethnography Hermanitos Comanchitos: Indo-Hispano Rituals of Captivity and Redemption and the Américo Paredes Prize for his cultural activism and museum curatorial projects.