Here's Where It Gets Interesting - New Mexico: The Land of Enchantment with Austin Graff
Episode Date: December 13, 2021In this episode, Sharon tells Austin Graff fascinating stories about New Mexico and its 60-year journey in becoming a U.S state. New Mexico - or the land of enchantment, as some call it -Â is home to ...ancient cultures and breathtaking landscapes. The region has been continuously inhabited for over 1,000 years and some of the artifacts found in New Mexico date back to the time of the Egyptian pyramids. Unfortunately, due to prejudice against Indigenous and Hispanic people, Congress was hesitant to add New Mexico as a state. Join Sharon and Austin as they uncover how New Mexico became a state and explore the many wonders within its borders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello, friends. Thank you so much for joining me today. I am here with my friend Austin Graff,
who is a fantastic contributing writer for the Washington Post. I absolutely loved chatting
with him about the land of enchantment. What a fascinating history. I have so many fun facts for
you. Your minds are going to explode. So let's dive into
my conversation about New Mexico with Austin Graff. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the
Sharon Says So podcast. Well, Austin, thank you so much for joining me. I am absolutely
delighted to know you and delighted to be able to chat with
you today. We've been chatting before about your experiences as an American growing up in Russia,
which is, I could literally like, how much time do you have to talk about this topic?
Oh, no, thanks for having me. And it was quite the experience. One that you actually might be
able to relate to because Russia and Minnesota are very cold places. It is true. And it is also very true
that geography, weather, et cetera, shapes a culture. Yes, it is a hundred percent does.
Oh, it really does. Even in just how the colors people use in just buildings. So in Russia,
if you're not used to it, it can be
a little bit jarring, but a lot of the buildings are truly gray and white and brown, kind of similar
to winter, more like darker, just cold colors and not much color. And so if you're not used to that,
they recommend that you take a little break from Russia every few months and kind of go to like
Spain or Turkey, where there's a lot of bright colors. But it really does affect the culture,
the landscape, the architecture, everything. It shapes who you become when you grow up where the
weather is such an obstacle to overcome. It shapes who you become. And I personally love it because
I love cold weather and I find cold weather exciting.
And I always want to visit cold weather destinations.
If I could just like be teleported to the South pole, I would love that.
I live here at this research station and it's minus 60 outside.
Sign me up.
I agree.
Like top of my travel list is Antarctica and I've researched like how to make it possible.
And there's several options now for a tourist to visit Antarctica, but it really is like,
I would love that because it's cold and there's penguins and it's just darker. There's not much
sunlight. Whereas most of my friends think that sounds crazy. So you're invited when I go to
Antarctica, let's take a, to people who love winter tourist trip to Antarctica.
That's right. Yes. Tell everybody just what you do. Just give us a description of who you are so people can put this into context.
Yeah, definitely. So once I grew up in Russia, I came to the United States and moved to Washington,
DC, a city that I still live in. And I work at the Washington Post and I'm on the business side
of the post where I lead what's called talent marketing and brand and social media.
So essentially, we wanting to encourage people to come join us and work for the Washington Post because we're hiring the biggest newsroom we've ever hired in the history of the Washington Post,
which is exciting. But I also was invited to be a contributing writer. So what I am part of,
I write and cover all the cool things to do in Washington, D.C. on the Washington Post official local guide
through what's called By the Way,
which is our kind of travel destination.
There's around 70 city guides from all around the world
written by locals.
So when you travel, check them out.
But it's a fun job.
So I explore every single day.
And on my Instagram,
we'll show the real side of Washington, D.C.,
the kind of beyond politicspolitics side of this
city that I just have come to love. I just love exploring, and especially like alleys and
off-the-bean path spots. And before I was 18, I've been to around 70 different countries and
kind of continue that to this day, even now when I'm a dad. At month two of my daughter, we took her to
Cuba and I'm kind of started her very young on the traveling bug train. And you were like,
we're not just going to go sit at a Sandals Jamaica. No, ma'am. That's so funny, which I
love that you said that because the editor of, by the way, she'll kill me for saying this.
We always joke that even though she leads the team of writers and designers and other people who focus on off
the beaten path travel, she loves going to resorts like Sandals, Jamaica, truly. And it actually like
kind of makes it the perfect editor for this team. It's such a stark contrast. Yes. To Cuba.
for this team. It's such a stark contrast. Yes, to Cuba. Okay, have you researched Svalbard yet?
No. What's that? Okay, Svalbard. I've never been there, but I'm like a Svalbard evangelist. It's a polar island near the North Pole, and you would especially find it interesting because
there is no indigenous population of Svalbard. It has been settled in the 20th century by various
European groups. There's a large amount of Norwegian and Swedish people there. There are
Americans who moved there. So there's like the main village, which has about 2,500 people.
And that is where most people who are going to Svalbard visit. And then there are two Russian villages.
One of them has been completely abandoned and is like a ghost town where there was a terrible
plane crash where a lot of the residents died. And you can go there now. There are still
skis propped up by the door and people's shoes in the closet. And it has been abandoned now for
decades, but you can just walk right
into the houses. Oh my goodness. I'm surprised. This is the first time I'm hearing about this.
As you were describing this, I Googled it and truly this is like what I love to do. I
is in what's called an urban explorer on the side. And, um, and it's people who love abandoned
places and you go in and you just explore and you wander. And so every time, like the first thing I
do when I book a trip somewhere is I don't look at food. I don't look at the tourist destinations.
I type in Google abandoned places in Copenhagen or wherever it is. And I just looked at all the
images and this ghost town is now beating Antarctica in my places to visit. Thank you.
beating Antarctica in my places to visit. Thank you. Svalbard has thousands of polar bears,
tens of thousands of miniature reindeer that live nowhere else in the world. They're called Svalbard reindeer and they're super short and super chunky. They're like, if you took a regular
reindeer and like miniaturized it and made its legs way too short, that's what they look like.
reindeer and like miniaturized it and made its legs way too short. That's what they look like.
It is the ecosystem. There is unlike anything else in the world. There's also like tons of walrus and whales and seals. They don't have penguins, but there is the diversity of ecosystem,
lots of birds, transit, migratory birds, et cetera. It's fascinating. But then they have
the incredible polar night where the sun does not rise for three months.
And because they're so close to the North Pole and they're so uninhabited, they have
one of the largest telescope research stations in the world.
And NASA does lots of research on Svalbard.
They also have the World Seed Vault, which is where like nations of the world send their seeds in the event of some kind of catastrophe. Like we would want to be able to repopulate the Brazilian rainforest in the event of like some kind of nuclear Holocaust.
of seeds inside the world seed vault. And there are, it's like this crazy amount of security.
And like, you cannot just go there as a visitor because they cannot risk the contamination.
It's not Disney world where there's just like, and over here, we have the seeds of Morocco. You know what I mean? Like they can't risk the contamination from your clothes.
Wow. They also have the world digital archive there, which is where a lot of
countries are now storing their digital copies of important documents like constitutions and things
like that. Like if the country is wiped off the map by some kind of nuclear attack, you don't
think about it, but like, yeah, I guess all the servers would be destroyed. Yeah. And so they're storing digital copies on Svalbard.
All right.
I'm going to quit my job tomorrow and join, move to this place and start collecting
seeds from Azerbaijan.
That's right.
And also you can move there without a visa, as long as you can support yourself.
That's the rule.
You've told to support yourself.
You can move there.
Wow.
I could do that. I could try to support myself. All right. New life plan. Thank you.
Well, I have another cool place to tell you about, and I picked a cool place because I know
you love to travel. I know you love to write about traveling today. I want to tell you a story about
the land of enchantment. You've been to New Mexico before? I have. I used to live in New
Mexico, actually. You did? Where in New Mexico did you live? I'm doing air quotes around live.
So we spent six months in New Mexico because the University of New Mexico randomly has a very good
Russian language program. And so to kind of help my parents be equipped to move to Russia,
And so to kind of help my parents be equipped to move to Russia, we moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico for six months and loved it.
Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, you know how absolutely stunning the New Mexico landscape is, right?
People have never been there, tend to prairie, to desert, and so much biodiversity. So many kinds of animals from like
javelinas to black bears, to bighorn sheep, to bison. And again, we always just think it's deserts and in reality,
it's really not. And I, I love the story of how New Mexico became a state. Do you know the story
of how New Mexico became a state? I am ashamed that I do not. Well, perfect. By the time we're
done, you will have learned something new new which is always fun in my opinion
that is a lot of fun and you're right new mexico that's one of my favorite things about spending
six months there was every weekend we'd go out and explore and it was so diverse and as a kid
i was confused because one weekend we were literally in snow-capped mountains like you
described and next we were in like a painted desert seeing all different types of like tumbleweed to animals.
And it kept me curious as a child because of that constant just change.
It's such a mystical place.
I love it.
New Mexico is so unique in that it has portions of New Mexico have been continuously occupied,
like the Santa Fe Pueblo area have been continuously occupied for over a thousand years.
And some of the regions of New Mexico have ruins that are as old as the Egyptian pyramids.
So I absolutely love that this is, it's such a hidden gem in the United States. The
Egyptian pyramids are incredible, clearly, for a variety of reasons.
But the idea that history that old also exists in North America, that you can visit it.
I love that.
That's amazing because you're right.
A lot of people say the United States in particular doesn't have as deep history as where I grew up in Russia.
My hometown is over a thousand years old.
as deep history as like where I grew up in Russia, my hometown is over a thousand years old,
but that's kind of a, to say that it's kind of a European centric view of the United States, because in fact, there's very old and very deep and very rich history in New Mexico.
To your point, you're absolutely right. Spanish begins exploring that region of the United States
in the 16th century. And they came there after they defeated the Aztecs thinking,
I wonder if there is another wealthy indigenous population that we can conquer and take their
riches. It was not named New Mexico after the country of Mexico. In fact, it was named New
Mexico hundreds of years before Mexico became a country.
Wow. It was named New Mexico by Europeans who had recently defeated the Aztec. And there was
a valley in the Aztec region that had the word Mexico in it. And so they named this New Mexico
because it reminded them of the place they had just come from in the Aztec region. It's
been called New Mexico well before the United States was even a thing. Wow. That is fascinating.
Yeah. It kind of does make you see that area in a new light. I think so. I agree.
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The new region that is today's New Mexico became part of the country of Mexico in the 1820s. And then after the Mexican-American War,
that region was annexed by the United States. Texas, for a long time, tried to claim ownership
of a big chunk of New Mexico. The New Mexico Territory incorporated a big chunk of what
is currently Arizona and also a big chunk of what is Southern Colorado today.
And it really wasn't until 1850 or so that the United States paid off Texas to leave New Mexico
alone. It was like, we will give you money if you will drop your claim to this portion of New
Mexico. They paid that the United States government paid them $10 million in 1850 to like,
stop trying to say that this is the border, okay?
The border is actually over here.
So much so that they gave $10 million.
$10 million.
Stop trying to come over this river,
stay on this side of this river
and here's your $10 million.
That's interesting. That's interesting that money kind of played in two parts where it is. After
Aztecs, they wanted to see if there's more money out there. And then this $10 million border deal.
Yes, that the borders were not formed just because we all mutually agreed upon, okay,
well, the Rio Grande is the southern border of Mexico and Texas. Like, we think that they're always formed by natural boundaries or some kind of thing that we actually
agree on. And in some cases, they're formed by how much money would it take for you to let this
part of the state of this territory go? $10 million? Okay. We should try that today with borders and see if that works. I'll give you $10.
I'll give you $10 if you will move the border of Maryland. No. So one of the historians who is best
known for his really exhaustive history of how New Mexico became a state, His name is Robert Larson. And he said this about New Mexico becoming
a state, an unfortunate, but instinctive distrust of New Mexico is essentially foreign culture
because New Mexico was mostly inhabited by indigenous populations and Hispanic people.
indigenous populations, and Hispanic people. Essentially, foreign culture was the last and most durable brick added to the strong wall of opposition that prevented the territory from
joining the union until 1912. Wow. It is very well noted in the historic record that a lot of the reason it took more than 60 years for New Mexico to actually become a state when it met the criteria far before is because of nativist sentiment throughout the United States Congress that the majority of the language that was being spoken in New Mexico wasn't English. The majority of the people who lived there were not Caucasian.
And it seemed like foreigners, quote unquote, air quotes around foreigners were living there
and that they did not fit in with the rest of the United States.
And so dozens of times people made moves to try to make New Mexico a state,
and it kept getting shut down in Congress. Wow. Then what changed in 1912?
Well, I'll get there. I'll tell you. Okay. I'll be patient.
So in 1848, the United States signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which is what ended the war with Mexico and what helped establish the boundary of the Rio Grande.
And here is where the boundary of Mexico is going to be.
Here's where the boundary of the United States is going to be.
And so it was that treaty that was signed that gave the territory of New Mexico to the United States.
But it was still a territory.
New Mexico to the United States, but it was still a territory. And one of the things that was interesting I found is that Zachary Taylor, who was a president of the United States, was a big
sort of war hero in the Mexican-American war. And that was sort of how he had risen to prominence.
That was how he catapulted himself onto the political stage. And he was a big advocate for making New Mexico a state. So he gets elected,
he gets to Washington, and then he eats some bad cherries and drinks some milk and some contaminated
water and died in office not long after he arrived. Shortly after they became a territory,
they adopted a new constitution. They wrote a constitution, adopted it, overwhelmingly adopted it. The statistics of New Mexico's constitution were that something like
8,300 people voted yes, and like 39 people voted no. Those are some good odds.
Yeah, very good odds.
One of the other very interesting things about New Mexico that again contributed to this idea that maybe it should not become a state is, you know, that territories of the United States don't have full representation in Congress.
They get to send delegates, but they don't get to vote. that New Mexico sent to Congress was a Catholic priest who spoke no English and required a
translator to do anything in any kind of meeting with Congress. And so it only spoke more to
Congress about the quote unquote foreignness of New Mexico. So some historians have said if New
Mexico had played their cards a little differently,
if they had sent somebody else as a delegate, if they had pushed a little harder, maybe it
could have happened sooner. But that was obviously who they felt like represented the best or they
wanted to have represent them. So every single time a new bill got introduced to Congress to
try to make New Mexico a state, there were always the same reasons to shut it down.
As I mentioned, there was always the bricks of the language, the foreignness.
There was a majority of people who were non-white.
They just have a very different culture.
And in many cases, a very ancient culture, right? And it was not as easy for Europeans to
come in and wipe out the culture as it was in some other regions of the United States. You've heard
about like Apache warriors and, you know, those kinds of stereotypes that there were a lot of
fighting and people were not interested in just sort of being like, fine, you can have
this region when their people had been living there for thousands of years. Finally, at the
turn of the century, there began to be moves in Congress of like, we should just make it happen.
So of course the accumulation of states throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century
of the United States, accumulating states meant more power.
You know what I mean? Like we get bigger, we get more powerful. You can mess with us less.
We have more people, we have more money. Adding states was a sign of success at the time.
And during the industrial revolution in particular, this idea that you wanted to like project power. So early in the 1900s, there began to be this movement building in Congress to add Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma as states.
I don't know. Like they don't speak English. There's not enough white people living there. And so somebody in Congress finally made a proposal and you can find this on old maps of
the region. They made a proposal that they would admit one new state that encompassed almost all
of Arizona and New Mexico and its capital would be Santa Fe. And it's like double the size of both those states shut together
and it would be called Montezuma. Ooh, Montezuma. The state of Montezuma. And you can find Montezuma
as a region on maps, old school maps. Wow. The U.S. mistel. That'd be cool. So fun to have a state named that. I live in Montezuma, but of course, um, New Mexico was like, okay, okay, we can do that.
And Arizona was like, come on, we're not going to be part of the state of Montezuma. No. And they
did not want to be joined together with New Mexico. Arizona was like, there is a mountain
range between us. We are not one region. Just because
we are near each other does not mean we are the same. We're not interested in being all one state.
So in 1906, Arizona decided we are going to be called Arizona. This is who we are,
New Mexico territory. You stay over there. And it really was not until
William Taft, who is a very fascinating president. Of course, everybody knows him as the largest
president. Everybody knows the one fun fact about him that he got stuck in a bathtub.
I like to remember him as being a constitutional law professor and going on to being the chief
justice of the Supreme Court after he was president.
I find that more interesting.
But it was really him who was like, enough.
He went down there and toured the region.
It took eight months, by the way.
They had all these little quibbles where they were like, Arizona, your constitution makes
judicial recall too easy.
Rewrite it. New Mexico, it is too difficult to amend your constitution. Rewrite it. And Taft was finally like, their constitutions
are better than any of the states y'all are coming from. So drop the pretense that their
constitutions aren't good enough and let's make it happen. And so in early 1912, New Mexico became the 47th state
and a couple of months later, Arizona became the 48th state. But New Mexico, 60 years struggle
against the United States Congress to actually be admitted as a state, even though they
had the right population, they had a constitution, they had a governor, they had schools, they had
railroads, like they had all the things you were supposed to have to be able to be a state.
It was really a prejudice against people that lived there that prevented Congress from moving
forward with incorporating them.
Wow. That's so interesting. That is fascinating. So do you think by 1912, was there that shift
of people being more open to people that didn't look like them? Or was it really because of the
lobbying of Taft that he was able to at least convince people politically to do this?
I don't think it had to do with people necessarily having a massive change of heart, but I do think because we had such an incredible
tidal wave of immigration happening during that time through Ellis Island during the period of
the industrial revolution, I think the argument became less strong. I want to give you a couple
of other fun facts about New Mexico too, though, because it made me want to go like spend three months living there.
It also has more UNESCO world heritage sites than any other state. There are three of them in New Mexico and some other states have one, like the statue
of Liberty is a world heritage site.
The Florida Everglades are a world heritage site.
And if somebody is not familiar with that, that is a special designation that is given
by the United Nations that says that this place is either culturally or geographically
or some other type of incredible significance to the world and that it should be preserved.
So it's a very prestigious designation.
it should be preserved. So it's a very prestigious designation. One of the world heritage sites that is in New Mexico is the Chaco Canyon. And that is where some of those ruins that are older than
the Egyptian pyramids. Another one is the Taos Pueblo, which is the city or the area that I
mentioned, part of which has been occupied for over a thousand years. And the other one that I find very interesting is Carlsbad Caverns. Have you been
there? I have been there. That was our first weekend getaway when we moved to Albuquerque.
It's beautiful. Oh my goodness. Did you hear how they became popularized? No. Okay. So this cowboy in the late 1800s saw smoke in the distance
and was like, oh no, because forest fire, obviously extraordinarily destructive and
dangerous. And you need to be able to move your livestock and cows can't run that far.
You know what I mean? They can't run that far that fast. So you needed to spot those things
well in advance.
And it was also really hard to put them out.
So he immediately took off on his horse towards the smoke to see where the smoke was originating
from, how far away it was, how much time they had to move.
And as he got closer, he realized that in fact, it was not smoke.
It was millions of bats and it looked like smoke
from far away. That is how many bats there were. Millions of bats. And he looked and he saw
millions of bats emerging from a hole in the ground, a crevice in the ground. And he was like, what is this? By this time,
it was dark, but he knew that he needed to visit again when it was light. And so he went back to
his camp because he knew his buddies were going to be worried about him. And he did not tell anybody
about the bats because he felt like if he said, I thought I saw smoke, but then it was bats.
Like they would discredit him, think he was crazy.
You know, nobody thinks bats are smoke.
That was, it wasn't going to bode well for him.
But the next day he went back with some nails, some pieces of wood and a kerosene lamp and
built himself a small ladder down into the cavern to see what is down here.
Wow. Very brave man. So brave. Oh my gosh. I, if you could not pay me enough money to explore an
unexplored cave. Yeah, totally. And how you're describing it, it sounds like it's like the next
horror movie coming to a theater near you. Like it's smoke, but then it's bats.
It's bats. It's bat smoke. Yeah. No, no, no. Gracias. I'm not interested in that.
He then began exploring every day. He would go back with his kerosene lamp and begin exploring the caverns. And of course there is now a national park, Carlsbad caverns, national park.
the caverns. And of course there is now a national park, Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
There are 119 caverns that are in the national park, but there are actually 300 caverns that make up the entire region, which of course was formed by acid eating away the native limestone.
And it was him that named a lot of the areas inside the caverns that are still in use today. And the names are
things that are kind of like left arm, you know, like right side. They're, they're not at all
scientifically named. Some of them are like snake pit cavern. You know what I mean? Just, he just
named them, which is whatever I'm just making these up. He just literally invented names. And it was him that began telling people about these caverns
and explorers began coming and wanting to wanting him to show them, how did you get down in there?
And soon there were enough people visiting the caverns that local officials had to build a better ladder because
they were worried that people were going to start, they were going to plummet to their death and they
wouldn't be able to get them out. Eventually they had to build a set of steps because the ladders
were still too risky. And now of course, there's a whole system and lights and all that kind of
stuff that are in there. But I loved what he had to say when he began exploring the caverns that he discovered. He said, I shall never forget the feeling of
awareness. It gave me the beauty, the grandeur, the omniscience absolved my mind of all thought of a world above. I forgot time, place, and distance.
You just loved being under there. Like it just, it literally was being transported to a new place.
Wow. And that's a very poetic thing to say from a man who named things.
Eh, kind of looks like an arm. Yeah. Left arm.
A left arm.
A very poetic from a cowboy who thought that the bats were smoke. I also loved
what the very first elected governor of New Mexico, whose name was William McDonald had to say
his inaugural speech after New Mexico became a state in January of 1912. he said, now we, the free independent citizens of New Mexico have at last
come victorious from the battle, waged for full citizenship in a sovereign state in that union
established by their wisdom. As we look into the future, bright hopes of promise appear to some and dark forebodings may dim the
horizon of others. And the past is the dawn of the future. It is to the future we look and the
future will be what we make of it. Wow. That's beautiful. Isn't that beautiful? Yes. So New Mexico, who knew all this stuff was there
and who knew how hard it was to become a state? Yeah, seriously. Thanks so much for sharing that.
I love to learn. So that was fascinating. Tell everybody where they can find you.
People can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Austin K Graff, G-R-A-F-F as in Frank.
If I don't clarify that,
people think my last name is grass,
like something you mow with a lawnmower.
It's Graff, not Graff.
F as in Frank.
And not P-H like geometric graph.
Yes, exactly.
To us.
I love it.
Oh, this was so fun.
It was super fun. Thanks for having me. Yes, I would Oh, this was so fun. It was a blast.
Thanks for having me.
Yes, I would love to do this again anytime.
Done.
Thank you so much for listening
to the Sharon Says So podcast.
I am truly grateful for you.
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