Tri-Culturalism Today

For many inhabitants of New Mexico, the tri-cultural myth is a source of harmful stereotypes and a seductive fiction that obscures both a history of conflict and also present-day challenges. For others, the invisibility of their culture(s) within the tri-cultural narrative not only negates a sense of belonging and representation, but can lead to a lack of resource allocation.

This New Deal painting, made to hang in a public school, reflects the ways that the mythology of tri-culturalism, so embedded in New Mexico’s visual culture, persists in preempting a full reckoning with New Mexico’s past. J. R. Willis’s tribute to Juan de Oñate here mirrors the many memorials honoring the Spanish conquistador that have occupied public spaces in the state. Though convicted and penalized in his own time for extraordinary brutality against Indigenous peoples, Oñate has often been given a hero’s treatment. Recent protests against two equestrian statues in particular have focused on the argument that depicting Oñate in a heroic manner denies the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples. 

Visual culture in New Mexico continues to be terrain where identity and culture are negotiated. It is in constant flux as artists and cultural producers share their multifaceted and complex experiences.

For many, this looks like a direct confrontation with the ways in which the tri-cultural formation of identity and belonging in New Mexico continues to manifest in the present.