Following the Manito Trail: The New Mexican Migration to Wyoming: Dr. Trisha Martinez

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Welcome to Winds of Change. I am your host, Emy DiGrappa. The winds of Change podcast is centered on the people, places, history and stories of Wyoming. Dr. Trisha Martinez is Wyoming Humanities Council, born in Cheyenne with family roots extending from northern New Mexico and migration experience.         

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She documents in her ongoing research, publications and curated exhibits on the Manito Trail. She’s also sustaining New Mexico culture in Wyoming as a co founder of Wyoming Humanities Council trade company, New Mexico Chile connoisseurs. I love that, love that Dr. Trisha. So I just want to welcome Trisha.         

00:00:52

             

Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. I, I love so much about what you’re doing and, and we’ll talk about your work at the University of Wyoming. But I really want to know how you ended up in Wyoming from New Mexico. What’s that story?         

00:01:08

             

I was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming with family roots extending up the Manito Trail from northern New Mexico, on my mom’s side from the Mora and Sapo area, and on my dad’s side from the Valdez and Taos areas. And so a long time ago they started coming up here for employment opportunities. So of the elders and for work opportunities. My great great grandfather was a sheep herder and he herded sheep in near Hannah, Wyoming. And the trail continued.         

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Our relatives would come up to work in the mines and in the sugar beet fields and on the railroad. And so in time, more of the women came up and decided to be closer to the men. And so my dad was born here in Cheyenne. My mom’s family, like I said, is from New Mexico too. And then they came up and my mom and dad met here and I was born here.         

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But the beautiful thing was that we always went back and forth to New Mexico between New Mexico and Wyoming. So that’s how I ended up in Cheyenne. And I feel like you always have to give that disclaimer like I was born in Cheyenne, but our family comes from northern New Mexico and they extended up the Manito Trail for work opportunities. Okay, so explain the Manito Trail for our audience. So a manito is a term that is short for her manito.         

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It’s a term of endearment that we use to reference our elders from northern New Mexico. And so you’ll commonly hear one reference, Mana Soveda or Mano Miguel. And so it’s a term of respect. And so the Manito Trail is just those pathways that the families would take to sustain themselves economically as they would branch out to various spaces, whether it was to Colorado or Wyoming or California, Utah, and just Those various pathways in life that people travel to. Yeah, I guess to pursue opportunities and to support their families.         

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Okay, so that’s really helpful because every time you say trail, especially when you’re living in Wyoming, you’re thinking of a. A trail trail.         

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But when you talk about the Manito Trail, it’s really not a physical road per se. But that you traveled back and forth between New Mexico and Wyoming, is that correct? I think we can go deep on that concept of the trail. Right. I think just even locally in the village, like there’s the trail down to the river, there’s the trail to the vacinos or the neighbors houses.         

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There’s the trails that people take in life, whether it’s physically or spiritually that I think we can just deeper reflect upon to consider our own walk in this life and what we’re doing. But as a conceptual research project or idea, was this, this i25 corridor coming up from northern New Mexico to Wyoming. And then other projects have extended it looking at the. The migration patterns of people from New Mexico to other places. So did I ever tell you that my dad was born in New Mexico?         

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I don’t think you ever shared that. That’s really cool. And when you said Mora, I was like, okay, because big family in Mora. And he was born in Lucero, New Mexico, which is up above a little ranch community up above Mora. I love that.         

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And I think one of the great things about having these conversations with folks here in Wyoming is as soon as you start that conversation, it’s either their relatives have come from New Mexico, their extended families, or they know someone that has that migration story from the New Mexico territory. That’s just exciting, especially in the classroom when we have our students who once I start teaching this curriculum and talking about this experience, they share the same thing. My family’s from New Mexico. And then I ask them to bring in photos and it’s the same exact photos that would be in my own family album. It’s just so cool and such an amazing experience to make those ties and connections with students in community here.         

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And I want to know, describe to me the curated exhibit that you have and how the book goes along with the exhibit. Following the Monito Trail has a project research team and that was co founded by Levi Romero and Vanessa Fonseca Chavez. Vanessa Fonseca Chavez, when she was here at the University of Wyoming, she kind of heard about the project and wanted to bring it back to life. And so we worked on a curated exhibit that was hosted at the Wyoming Humanities Council in 2017. And that really was a blessing with a lot of family stories and photos and quilts and just a great opportunity to display this work and this history of New Mexicans in Wyoming.         

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And then when I moved to Taos after graduate school, I had the opportunity to push through a proposal for another curated exhibit that was hosted by the Taos Mill St. Rogers Museum and that focused on nine different families from the Taos area and highlighted their migration experiences to different places. And so we included family trees and photographs. And Dr. Perea, she created a beautiful poem, told more of the stories.         

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We had a digital audio oral history set up so you can hear some of the voices and some of the stories from the people themselves. That exhibition will now be housed at Arizona State University with Dr. Vanessa Fonseca Chavez and Dr. Trisha Martinez. They just start in X Oral History Lab and so that will be housed there.         

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The other one’s still housed here at the Wyoming Humanities Council. And then my goal is to curate or to gather materials for a third exhibition that I will host with alongside the other two exhibitions when I released my book. So is your book focused not only on the Manito Trail and just the the migration of the New Mexican people into Wyoming, Is it mostly focused on your family or does it have several family stories that are highlighted in there? I really don’t. Definitely my family, right?         

00:08:12

             

Got to include my family stories because I wouldn’t even know about this project if it wasn’t for the voices and stor from my elders and my grandparents. However, I don’t think you can even tell the story if we don’t include the stories of all of our relatives and families and people that have experienced this migration, including your own father. So like I would love to hear more about his story and his journey and your guys family history and how that connects and how that can even be a part of this next exhibition. Right? Because there’s something so beautiful and powerful when we actually include the voices of our people and we center their stories and experiences.         

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It’s just an amazing uplifting opportunity that we are blessed as scholars and researchers to give to our community. Right. Just to highlight their lived realities and struggles and triumphs and to celebrate those. So here’s kind of a harder, deeper question, and maybe it’s not, but I’d love to hear your answer. What is the difference between calling yourself New Mexican versus Mexican American?         

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1 of the opportunities that I had as a graduate student was better understanding the US Mexico border through my critical regionalism studies. I think if we just trace it back to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. And we think about the border realities and complexities, and we think about identity constructs, and we think about labels, and we think about the way that we identify with ourselves. And then those cultures and traditions that go along with all of that. Like, if we just think about the history of New Mexico, right, we see that we were once Mexico.         

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My grandmother would always say that the border crossed us and we didn’t cross the border. And I would always like to share with her the various ways in which we are still one people. We still share a lot of the same culture and traditions. However, I can easily call out or distinguish the differences between Mexicanos and manitos, right? Whether it’s the traditional food recipes or the sound in the music, there are those differences.         

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But at the same time, I can also highlight those similarities that unite us as a community. I identify as Martinez, Chicana, Manita, Nuevo Mexicana, Manita de Wyoming. And I feel like those are all fluid, interchangeable terms now. I couldn’t agree more. They are very fluid, interchangeable terms.         

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I just feel like my least favorite is to call myself a Martinez, I think, because the cultures that are Spanish speaking are not just Mexico. They are Cuba and Puerto Rico and Argentina and Colombia, and you just name it. And they’re all very, very different cultures. So I guess I don’t like the glumping or glumping or whatever you want to call it. But, yeah, the umbrella terms, like, the larger umbrella terms.         

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I mean, the beauty of it all is, like, to get down to the root of being a manita. I mean, we have such a rich culture and experience and heritage from northern New Mexico. Our ways of living, our ways of thinking, our ways of being, they’re just. And, yeah, like, you just. I mean, I would love to introduce you to my dad because it would just.         

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He’s just full of that, you know, he’s just puro nuevo Mexicano. Like, he’s just carries those ways. And the land of Manana, just with the sheep and with the horse, and he’s doing his thing down there. And it’s. You know, you pull into the valley and you just feel at home.         

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You feel at peace. You feel. I think my kids said it best that you just feel like you belong. And that’s a really important experience for all of us to have. We should feel like we belong and not that we’re outcasted.         

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And when you go back to New Mexico, you just feel that sense of belonging. And that’s important, I think, for all of our. For all of our mental health and identity, you know, just understanding who we are and who we’re who are called to be. It’s beautiful. Well, I love that you’re doing this because I think there’s so many misconceptions about.         

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And I always say New Mexico is its own culture. It’s, it’s, it’s very unique culture. And just like you were saying about the food and even how people talk, you can hear it in my dad’s voice. My oldest sister, she, she’s very distinct in a very sing songy kind of tone that she talks in. That’s very New Mexican is so distinguished.         

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And I just always get a kick about that because I hear it. Maybe other people don’t hear it as much, but I definitely, I definitely hear it in my family. So yeah, my primo Joaquin, he’s. His family’s from Valdez to. He always says that when they moved off to Khalifas and they ran into some other manitos and they said, oh, you know, like you could tell in their, you know, their, their dialect and how they spoke and he would just be like, oh, horales almost, you know, like.         

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And give each other a big old handshake and hug. And that’s what I love. I love it. I love it. Whether it’s again, it’s just those cultural courtesies that we extend to one another, whether it’s the way we greet one another or even just cruising down the road and you see the neighbor where you kind of give that head nod or kind of raise your hand and you don’t get that in other parts of the country, you know, that, that very familial like, hey, I see you, I respect you type of like acknowledgement.         

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Well, I do love that people do that in Wyoming, I really do. But I hear what you’re saying. It does set that familiar. But more than that, just what you said is I see you. That’s so, so important that you respect and recognize people as a valid person.         

00:14:41

             

And I think that’s, that’s just like a. That just makes my heart sort of to hear you say that. But I do want to ask you about the Wyoming Humanities Council Trade Company, New Mexico, Chile connoisseurs. So tell me how that formed and what and what that’s about. Wyoming Humanities Council Trade company is the product of a dream that my partner Trisha Martinez had related to selling green chile.         

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And so my own love for this idea came because I love green chile and biscochitos and pinon and all the other cultural products. That we have down there in New Mexico that I felt like, yes, we are able to access them in a limited capacity up here, but we need to be able to do it in an affordable manner. We need to be able to access those goods regularly. And so for the Chispa Hispanic festival that happened there in Cheyenne in September, we had the opportunity to sell some green chile and some red chile powder from Hatch. And my partner went ahead and brought up 50 sacks, and we roasted for days.         

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And you know what? There is such a demand for it. And more recently, he. He brought up some pinyon and some biscochitos made out of his mom’s kitchen. And the community loves it.         

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The community needs it, the community wants it. And so it’s just the beginning of what I’m hoping will grow into a way, I guess we just want to sustain the culture and the traditional food practices of our new Mexican heritage here in Wyoming. That’s so fun and interesting and so cool. And I want to know how I can get some of that chili. My.         

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My oldest sister. Well, both of my sisters who live in Fort Collins, which is where I grew up, they. They go every year to Pueblo or New Mexico to. To pick up. Yeah, either the Hatch or the Pueblo green chili.         

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I mean, there’s really good stuff out there. Anyway, I’m just like, please go for me. Anyway, they did. I have some chili waiting for me, but. Because my little sister already, you know, begged and has hers in the freezer waiting for me.         

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And then my older sister, she likes to can her green chili. Totally different, but she came with a big bag probably a couple years ago, and it was so fun. And you forgot to say tamales. Okay.         

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Because she brought this big gunny sack full of chili, and she. And we proceeded to grill it outside on my deck. That’s awesome. And then mom and dad and me and Deborah all sat there all day peeling and begging and canning the green chili. So my mom lives in Michigan, and she actually had us send her a bushel of green chile, and we send it fresh, and then the whole neighborhood in Michigan gets to smell the chile roasting from her grill, which is like.         

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They’re like, what’s going on over there? But, yeah, I’m like, mom, it costs so much to send it, right? But she doesn’t care. She wants us to send her some green chile so she can have her fix there in Michigan. And we are going to be bringing up some beans, some Moriarty beans.         

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And so if you know anyone that needs some beans, let me know. But, yeah, No, I feel like there’s a need, right. And there’s just. However we can help continue the traditions of our family and our relatives here is really important to me. So I want to know, do you have a website?         

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I mean, how do people connect with you and how do you. How do you make them part of your community? So we’re in the process of actually developing a website to be able to sell our products and to be connected to the larger community. In the meantime, feel free to find me directly on Facebook or to contact me through Wyoming Humanities Council. But yes, most definitely.         

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I feel like there’s a need to generate that website and to be able to reach the larger community with our mission and our products. And following the Manito Trail and Wyoming Humanities Council. Manito’s Community Memory Project and Following the Manito Trail are two of the partner websites that I work with in terms of documenting this history and building that larger community archive and those connections. So definitely check out the following the Manito Trail web page or Wyoming Humanities Council Memory Project. So is it, is it just www.manitomemoryproject.com?         

00:19:30

             

That one, I believe, is manitos.net. Okay, so I will definitely put it in your description. Okay, I’ll put your Facebook in there too. So this is my last question because I think that this is important and because you are an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Wyoming and that you really promote ethnic studies and cultural initiatives and you serve on numerous campus and community based organizations, I really love that you’re really reaching out and tell me how you are empowering your students to really have a positive, powerful identity in their own cultural upbringing. To empower my students or anyone in that matter.         

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I think it’s important for them to just embrace their own lived experiences and realities for what they are, good or bad. Right. Like, I think that for whether it’s our cultural heritage, where we’re from, what we’ve been through, what we’ve experienced, those are all valuable pieces of our identity and who we are and where we come from. And it helps shape and mold us to better understand those and to embrace those really do really does help shape and mold us into who we’re becoming. And so I like for my students to acknowledge that, you know, to embrace that, to be proud of that.         

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And even those hard experiences that are sometimes stigmatized or we don’t really want to share with others, they’re valuable pieces of who we are. And. And so when we are able to move with the weight of that reality, whatever it is, we gain a certain kind of strength. There’s like this empowering sense of, this empowering sense of embracing, like, by embracing it, like we’re empowered and, and it really, when you have the opportunity to share that with someone else, you make these community connections, you make these other connections where it’s like, man, my family’s from New Mexico too, or I was born here, or you know what, I navigated that hardship as well. And it helps us to just expand our understandings and our perspectives to like, you’re, you’re not much different than I.         

00:22:04

             

Right. Like, we have these commonalities and, and I think that’s what we need in this world. I always say that it’s, you know, you run into people and you’re like, hey, how you doing? You’re like, I’m great, I’m good. And the reality is not everyone’s great.         

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You know, life is hard. Times are troubling. And so when you can really see someone and you can acknowledge who they are, for who, what they are and for what they’ve gone through and just give them a moment of respect. And from there so many opportunities are available. Like, from there, like, you can move together, you can create spaces for belonging, you can create healing opportunities and experiences with one another and you can just do some amazing things.         

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And so, yeah, I guess for, for me it’s just boiling down to just embracing the, the breadth of your lived realities and experiences and moving forward with them. So, and, and, and not being ashamed of it, whatever it is. And that, that’s empowering. That’s inspiring. At least for me anyways.         

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Well, that’s excellent. And I, I think that’s such an inspiration and I hope there’s that you’re touching lots of young Martinez women that are in your classes that really, I feel, need that kind of push to have that self esteem and have that pride about who they are and where they came from. You know, a lot of times when you’re younger, depending on where you grow up, maybe if you grew up in a very Hispanic family, then you don’t have an identity issue. But if you didn’t grow up in a big Hispanic family, you might have an identity issue. Who am I?         

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What am I doing and do people see me? So it’s, it’s an interesting transition. And I just think when young women are in college, they’re really experiencing that, that foothold for themselves to try and figure out their own space and where they’re going. I always say that college is A journey of becoming. And it wasn’t until I was in my first Chicano studies class, when I actually was exposed to curriculum that included things about the Mexican and span land grants of New Mexico, where I was like, I’m a land grant heir.         

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Like, I want to know more about this. Like, teach me. I was that student when the bell rang that I was raising my hand in the classroom, and people were like, okay, the bell ring. And I’m like, I had more questions. And it was then that Dr.         

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Edmund Yost told me, why don’t you become like me? Why don’t you go and get your PhD? You can study anything you want. But it was really in those classes, in Chicano studies and ethnic studies courses, that I found I was figuring things out. You know, like I said earlier about the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the border politics and how we even come up with these labels and these terms and these understandings.         

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And, like, it was in the classroom that I figured so much about myself out because, you know, I had. I had. I’m born in Wyoming. People would ask, like, how did you end up in Wyoming? And that, like, that’s how we started off this conversation.         

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It’s like, well, let me tell you, my family migrated up here. This is like a history that we have. Like, we’ve contributed to this space for a long time. You know, we have community here. We have experiences here.         

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Like, we were from here and living in Michigan with my mom. Like, my mom, I remember she’d always tell people, we’re Spanish, we’re not Mexican. And then, like, at the end of the day, like, she would. You know, she recognized the same similarities as well. And so it’s just, I think, for all of us, like, we’re all just trying to figure it out sometimes.         

00:25:41

             

And when we can read a piece of scholarship or we can have an experience on campus or in the community, that just makes us feel whole and blessed and excited and inspired. I mean, isn’t that what we’re all looking for? You know? And I hope that people that listen to this conversation today, like, take a Chicano studies class, go to New Mexico, eat something yummy, like, have a great and beautiful day, right? Like, just be blessed with the opportunities that not only that you have, but the ones that you can create.         

00:26:11

             

And, you know, I always tell my colleagues, too, it’s like, campus is what we make of it. I tell my students that, like, we. We really, us as faculty, like, we. We need to build off of whatever you’re passionate about and what you’re trying to do and support your experiences as much as they’re able to support my own projects and research and academic pursuits, you know, so, yeah, it’s just life is beautiful, you know, and even hard times, like, we can still find the good in those. And so, yeah, thank you.         

00:26:43

             

That’s beautiful. So thank you so much for joining me for this podcast, Trisha. I really appreciate it. Such a blessing to talk with you again and to have this conversation. And I look forward to joining you again on a different story topic.         

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Thank you for listening. I’m executive producer Emy Di Grappa. Winds of Change is brought to you by Wyoming Humanities Council, our co hosts, and all the people who generously share their stories and their time. For more information, go to thinky.org subscribe and never miss a show.