Cowboy boots, a blazer and a bolo tie are considered appropriate business attire here in the Land of Enchantment. The New Mexico culture and cowboy attitude is rooted in hard work, individualism and a love of the frontier. New Mexico’s beautiful blue skies and wide open spaces provide the perfect setting for the Wild West era and the legendary cowboy, whose traditions still exist today.

Today the Wild West isn’t quite as unruly as it used to be, at least not when compared to the original Wild West era. In the early- and mid-1800s when the western expansion movement was getting underway, a great deal of the land was in the public domain, open to raising livestock and to homesteading. There was little to no local law enforcement, and the military had a concentrated presence only at specific locations. Buffalo hunters, railroad workers, drifters and soldiers scrapped and fought, leading to shootings where men died “with their boots on.”

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When you visit New Mexico, whatever you do, don’t get New Mexican culture confused with Mexican culture. The two are very different, and the locals will let you know it. For starters, the Mexicans I know never eat Sopapillas like this one I had in Albuquerque.

But it goes deeper than the culinary differences. As a California Mexican, I always heard about New Mexicans who insisted they weren’t “Mexican,” they were “Spanish.” Even in my own neighborhood, some fair-skinned kids came from families who preferred this label. I don’t know if their parents came from New Mexico or what, but it didn’t matter; we insisted that by preferring to call themselves “Spanish,” they were in denial about their ethnicity, ashamed to be linked to the Mexican Indian blood that many western Latinos share.

It’s a complicated issue, but ultimately, whatever label we Latinos choose to use, the fact is, we all have our unique ancestral histories, some that we relate to more than others.

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