A website maintained by José Antonio Esquibel

A collaborative book project under the direction of Art Historians Claire Farago (Department of Fine Arts/ University of Colorado at Boulder) and Donna Pierce (New Mexico Spanish Colonial Arts Society)

One of the projects I am currently working on is a chapter for an art history book. Curiously, my subject is not art, but rather the cultural and ethnic milieu of the restoration period of New Mexico's history (December 1693-1700), and the formative era of New Mexico's Hispano cultural traditions (1700-1720).

I am exploring the diversity of the people who converged in New Mexico during the Vargas era (1691-1697). There are scholars today who perceive New Mexico's colonial culture as having stagnated and even regressed over the centuries from the founding of the New Mexico colony in 1598. Contrary to this common misconception, my research is placing the formation of the Hispano cultural tradition which was inherited by our grandparents as beginning in 1693, not 1598. Although there are roots that extend to 1598, there are significant influences that came from diverse geographic and ethnic origins in Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Galicia, and Nueva España which have not been previously examined in any detail.

A draft of my paper is being completed and will be submitted for the first round of editing. I will keep an update on the progress of the paper as it is prepared for inclusion in the book and eventually published with chapters from other scholars including: Marianne Stoller (Art Historian), Kelley Donahue-Wallace (New Mexico Colonial Art Historian), Keith Bakker (Furniture Conservator), Paul Kraemer (Independent Historian), David H. Snow (Anthropologist), Hillary Scothorn, Teresa Wilkins (Historian), Thomas Reidel, and Claire Farago and Donna Pierce.