NHCC's 'Legacy Project' aims to preserve northern New Mexico Spanish dialect

Aug. 6—New Mexico is a melting pot of cultures that somehow find influence among one another.

A strong example of that is the Spanish dialect in northern New Mexico.

The dialect is known as having roots in pre-18th century Golden Age Spanish, which was brought in by Spanish settlers.

While it's been around for more than 400 years, there's a great chance the dialect will be lost within 18 years, if a new generation doesn't learn it.

This is where the National Hispanic Cultural Center is stepping in.

The center, in Albuquerque's Barelas neighborhood, created "The Legacy Project," which aims to preserve New Mexico Spanish.

"It's a very technically driven anthropological rescue," says Zack Quintero, NHCC interim executive director. "You've seen the news out there of our gente's population and of those who speak the traditional Spanish spoken 400 years ago is going to be gone in about 18 and a half years, according to experts."

Within that time frame, there will only be so much availability to those who speak the dialect, as that generation is dying off.

That's why Quintero and the NHCC are pushing to get it recorded, archived and preserved.

"That's what our team is going to do," Quintero says. "It's going to be a three-year project. It starts with us at the end of this month."

At the end of August, there will be a coalition meeting in northern New Mexico for the project's partners and stakeholders.

The plan is to go into the communities with liaisons and trusted community members to record these stories.

"As you know, in New Mexico, it's very much a trust-based system and respect-based system, which means people have to vouch for you," Quintero says. "The purpose of this is not to take. It's to preserve and let it live."

The NHCC is working with other organizations to have things like a scanner brought to local libraries in rural towns to scan historical documents as a way to keep in perpetuity.

"If they want it preserved at the center, they can," Quintero says. "We're able to do that and show them Smithsonian standards of care."

At the July 25 NHCC Board of Directors meeting, Quintero spoke about "The Legacy Project," which piqued the interest of board members who told their own stories of their parents only speaking Spanish, and yet they weren't taught.

The board was in support of the project.

Quintero, who has been at the helm of the NHCC for five months, says there are two universes of Spanish.

"The community language is different from the technical academic language," Quintero says. "We grew up speaking different dialects of Spanish all across New Mexico."

Quintero grew up in Mesilla, a village located next to Las Cruces. There, he was immersed in culture, danced ballet folklórico and learned Spanish.

"We have a very different dialect," he says of his southern New Mexico roots. "You can hear our accents in different vowels, just like in northern New Mexico. Some folks have a staccato accent when they speak."

Despite the differences in dialects, Quintero says the language deserves to be preserved.

"There's connecting words in Spanish, like blending, that are used in both southern and northern New Mexico," he says. "These have bonded the history for our entire existence before we were even a state."

Though there may be other initiatives to save the dialect, Quintero believes New Mexico should be at the forefront.

"I feel that New Mexico has to be in the driver's seat," he says. "This is our story. It's the legacy of the origins of the Spanish language in North America."

Hearing of the NHCC's initiative also piqued the interest of State Historian Rob Martinez. His parents live in northern New Mexico and speak this dialect of Spanish.

"They grew up speaking it," he says. "I really didn't learn to speak Spanish from them. I learned it through education. We all have different experiences in learning Spanish. I think it's a great idea."

Martinez says when a dominant culture wants to get rid of another culture, it begins with language.

"There have been English-only movements in our country," Martinez says. "It doesn't work. In Spain, there was a push for Spanish-only to be spoken. But there's Basque, Galego, Catalan and other languages spoken here. It's the idea of unifying people. If it's tried, then we are getting rid of different cultures. Language is the key to thrive as a culture. And a language that is part of a living culture doesn't stay frozen in time. New Mexico Spanish is not a dead language, and it needs to be preserved."

Martinez says New Mexico Spanish is from Spain, yet has been influenced by the different cultures.

"Our Spanish is a mix of all these different cultures," Martinez says. "By the 1800s, you have Spanish that has been influenced by mestizos, pueblos and genízaro people. Add later the people from Mexico and then American English, and it reflects our history."

Martinez says the New Mexico dialect is chock-full of archaic words that have been passed down through generations.

"It's not wrong, but it's how we speak," Martinez says. "We are part of the greater Spanish-speaking world. We were part of Mexico and part of colonial Mexico. The area was conquered and colonized by Spanish-speaking people. This is our history, and it should be preserved."

Martinez says it will take a lot of work and hopes that the greater community will support the NHCC's initiative.

"As long as there is the desire and passion, it will come together," he says. "The younger generation also has to have that desire and passion to learn it. Like our history, our language is very complicated. New Mexican Spanish is like hearing our ancestors speak."

Quintero says to think about the urgency to preserve the language as a bloodline.

"If we don't tend to this, then it will go dry in 18 years," Quintero says. "There haven't been initiatives on the national level or any other state to preserve the origin points of our gente's language, it will go dry. So it's upon us, as it normally is for a lot of New Mexicans."