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Descendants Of Native American Slaves In New Mexico Emerge From Obscurity

Santo Tomas Catholic Church in Abiquiu, N.M., is the site of an annual saint's day celebration in late November that includes cultural elements of the <em>genizaros</em>, the descendants of Native American slaves.
John Burnett
/
NPR
Santo Tomas Catholic Church in Abiquiu, N.M., is the site of an annual saint's day celebration in late November that includes cultural elements of the genizaros, the descendants of Native American slaves.

Every year in late November, the New Mexican village of Abiquiu, about an hour northwest of Santa Fe, celebrates the town saint, Santo Tomas. Townfolk file into the beautiful old adobe Catholic church to pay homage its namesake.

But this is no ordinary saint's day. Dancers at the front of the church are dressed in feathers, face paint and ankle bells that honor their forebears — captive Indian slaves called genizaros.

The dances and chants are Native American, but they don't take place on a Pueblo Indian reservation. Instead, they're performed in a genizaro community, one of several scattered across the starkly beautiful high desert of northern New Mexico.

After centuries in the shadows, this group of mixed-race New Mexicans — Hispanic and American Indian — is stepping forward to seek recognition.

Genizaros are descendants of slaves, but not Africans who crossed the Atlantic in shackles to work in Southern cotton fields. They are living heirs to Native American slaves. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Native American women and children captured in warfare were bought, converted to Catholicism, taught Spanish and held in servitude by New Mexican families. Ultimately, these nontribal, Hispanicized Indians assimilated into New Mexican society.

"Who is the genizaro?" asks Virgil Trujillo, a ranch manager in Abiquiu. "We know who the Apache are, the Comanche, the Lakota. We know all this. Who's the genizaro? See, in our history that was suppressed. Spanish people and white people came in. [They said] 'bad Indian, bad Indian.' "

Ranch manager Virgil Trujillo wants the world to know that "the <em>genizaro</em> people of the pueblo of Abiquiu are alive and well."
John Burnett / NPR
/
NPR
Ranch manager Virgil Trujillo wants the world to know that "the genizaro people of the pueblo of Abiquiu are alive and well."

The name genizaro is the Spanish word for janissary, war captives conscripted into service to fight for the Ottoman Sultan. Some New Mexican genizaros gained their freedom by serving as soldiers to defend frontier villages like Abiquiu from Indian raids. By the late 1700s, genizaros comprised one-third of the population of New Mexico.

The territory changed hands from Spain to Mexico to, in the early 20th century, the United States. Genizaros intermarried with Hispanics, and their identity as Native Americans was effectively erased, at least in the historical record.

"Today we have a little tiny opportunity to get our word out," says Trujillo. "The genizaro people of the pueblo of Abiquiu are alive and well."

The Santo Tomas fiesta moves from the church grounds to the home of the festival chairman. A trio of musicians entertains. People sit at outdoor tables in a chill wind, eating bowls of steaming pozole, or hominy stew, with red chile.

One of the dancers is Gregorio Gonzales, a 28-year-old man in a black skullcap with a red arrow painted on his cheek. If asked, he says, he would say he is a genizaro.

Today, genizaro is a neutral term. But it wasn't always so, Gonzales says. He's a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, writing his dissertation on genizaro identity.

"Genizaro, the term, was actually used as a racial slur by people, especially here in northern New Mexico, the equivalent of the N-word," he says.

Gregorio Gonzales, 28, is a dancer in the Santo Tomas festival as well as a Ph.D. candidate writing his dissertation on <em>genizaro</em> identity.
John Burnett / NPR
/
NPR
Gregorio Gonzales, 28, is a dancer in the Santo Tomas festival as well as a Ph.D. candidate writing his dissertation on genizaro identity.

What's happening in New Mexico today is a sort of genizaro renaissance.

There have been recent symposia on genizaro history and identity. A pair of scholars at the University of New Mexico is putting out a book. The working title is Genizaro Nation.

"There was a lot of Native American slavery going on. It's just an eye-opener to the average Americans when they discover this," says co-editor Enrique Lamadrid. He is a distinguished professor emeritus of Spanish at the University of New Mexico who has done some of the groundbreaking scholarship on genizaros.

While Native American slavery was commonplace, New Mexico was the only place where free Indians were called genizaros.

Enrique Lamadrid (left) and Moises Gonzales, professors at the University of New Mexico, are co-editing the forthcoming book <em>Genizaro Nation</em>.
John Burnett / NPR
/
NPR
Enrique Lamadrid (left) and Moises Gonzales, professors at the University of New Mexico, are co-editing the forthcoming book Genizaro Nation.

They were often Comanches, Utes, Kiowas, Apaches and Navajos taken as slaves by each other, and by colonists.

"In the 1770s, if you were going to get married, one of the best wedding presents you could get is a little Indian kid who becomes part of your household. They took on your own last name, and they became part of the family," says Lamadrid.

One thing the new genizaro scholarship does is smash the conventional notion that New Mexican identity is somehow defined as either the noble Spaniard or the proud Pueblo Indian.

"The Spanish fantasy is a myth," says Moises Gonzales, an architecture professor at UNM and co-editor of Genizaro Nation. "I think it's great that we're finally having a very elevated conversation about what it means to be genizaro in contemporary times."

In the 300-year-old villages tucked in river valleys of New Mexico, the genizaros are finally telling their stories.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

John Burnett
As NPR's Southwest correspondent based in Austin, Texas, John Burnett covers immigration, border affairs, Texas news and other national assignments. In 2018, 2019 and again in 2020, he won national Edward R. Murrow Awards from the Radio-Television News Directors Association for continuing coverage of the immigration beat. In 2020, Burnett along with other NPR journalists, were finalists for a duPont-Columbia Award for their coverage of the Trump Administration's Remain in Mexico program. In December 2018, Burnett was invited to participate in a workshop on Refugees, Immigration and Border Security in Western Europe, sponsored by the RIAS Berlin Commission.