| Chapter 1: | New Mexico's Genesis as Symbolic Landscape |
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graze in canyons and on rocky hillsides, and if one ignores the barbed wire fences, she can see much of the same open space as it existed in the seventeenth century. Unlike the modern American northwest and east, deforestation does not mark the high desert. Outside of New Mexico's cities and towns, property is usually open grazing and farming space. Most ranch houses are far from highways so that they might be undetected as one drives between cities and towns. Further, many of New Mexico's cities take on the characteristics of the early pueblos.
The state government mandates that Santa Fe's business and public structures be modeled after the traditional pueblo style—square, sand-colored buildings, most no more than two stories, with rounded corners and irregular symmetry. This style is meant to make structures appear to be made of adobe. The inside of La Fonda Hotel, cater-corner from Archbishop Lamy's cathedral, is white-washed concrete. The hotel's doorways and window frames are more than two feet thick—all standard traditional adobe style. Traditional New Mexico pueblo adobe houses have thick walls for insulation and outside wooden ladders between structures. Traditional pueblo ceilings are supported with long wooden beams, the ends of which are exposed to the outside of the structures. Many contemporary private residences are made of adobe rather than concrete and steel, and they have outside wooden ladders tied together with leather. However, these ladders are usually for aesthetic purposes as the insides of the homes have staircases. Many Westerners appropriate pueblo architecture in order to feel as if they are living an authentic New Mexican life—a life of pre-industrial simplicity.
Tom Lynch writes that “at a time when industrialism and the consumer-driven market economy were altering the economic landscape, Santa Fe was…a place where one could, or so it seemed, interact with an authentic, pre-industrial economy” (383). Even today, Pueblo and Navajo natives sell their handmade goods in many of New Mexico's town plazas. Many Western tourists feel that they are experiencing an earlier time as they walk past natives who wear richly dyed woolen shawls and silver and turquoise jewelry—the same wares that these natives are selling to Westerners. Authentic goods are displayed on rolled-out Navajo