The Border Archives Bazaar is a free, fun, and educational event that showcases unique and historic archival materials from the border region. The event will be held Saturday, October 19th, 10am-4pm at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces. Organized by the Border Regional Archives Group (BRAG), the Bazaar features rare documents, photographs, maps, publications, and more, that highlight the unique history and cultural heritage of our region. The theme of the bazaar, Celebrating Borderland Communities, highlights the role archives play in preserving the stories and legacies of the many communities found throughout the region.
The event brings together resources from more than a dozen libraries, archives, and museums of southern New Mexico, west Texas, and the borderlands. Participating institutions include: NMSU Library Archives and Special Collections, El Paso Public Library Border Heritage Center, Doña Ana County Clerk’s Office, the UTEP Library’s C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections, San Elizario Los Portales Museum, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, U.S. Border Patrol Museum, Sul Ross State University Archives of the Big Bend, and Eastern New Mexico University Special Collections, among others. The Bazaar highlights the role that archives play in preserving and promoting our cultural heritage. Archivists, librarians, and museum curators will be on hand to discuss and answer questions about archives, regional history, and preservation of original documents.
The Border Archives Bazaar also includes two 90-minute panel presentations, one at 11:00 a.m. and one at 1:30 p.m., with scholars and researchers who are utilizing regional archives to document and preserve borderland community histories, including Crypto-Jews of the Southwest; Black students at NMSU; El Paso’s Black Wall Street; Mexican settlements in Mesilla, New Mexico, and Ascensión, Chihuahua.
Panel 1 – 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Sean Schifano, “The Crypto-Jewish Historical Archives: Preserving a Community and Identity”
Sean is an MA student in Public History at NMSU, with a supporting graduate certification in Museum Studies. His current work focuses on Sephardic Jewish history and identity-formation in North America. Other present and past research has drawn on his academic backgrounds in environmental history and the history of science, particularly ecology.
The Crypto-Jewish Historical Archives (CJHA) is an effort to gather and preserve materials on modern claimants to converso descent in the American Southwest and northern Mexico. Both a community archives and an identity archive, CJHA serves as the first sustained repository of records on how this community has emerged; how publicity and fierce scholarly debates have shaped members’ identities; and how its members have understood these identities with respect to categories in the region (Catholicism, contemporary Jewish religion and culture, Latinx ethnicity, and the Hispano past). This presentation will review CJHA’s development in these contexts, with an eye toward current archival theory and practice.
Lauretta King, “Preserving NMSU Black Programs: Black History, On Purpose”
Lauretta received her M.A. in Communication Studies from New Mexico State University in 2024. Her area of interest is in Cultural Studies; she is the curator of the NMSU Black Programs archival collection.
This presentation stresses the importance of preserving the participation of underserved groups and how minority history within an organization is often not perceived as history at all. It is important to recognize that minority participation within an institution is part of institution’s total history not an ancillary footnote. Archiving these histories creates a permanent space to preserve documents that validates the participation of those who may be small in numbers or those who traditionally participate in the shadows.
Daniel Webb, “Crossing the Border, Creating a Community: The Settlement of Mesilla under the Leadership of Father Ramón Ortiz, 1848–1853”
Before joining the staff at Taylor-Mesilla, Daniel worked as a Visiting Scholar at the University of New Mexico’s Center for Regional Studies and as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has research experience in local, regional, and national archives relating to the history of Mesilla, southern New Mexico, and the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands region.
As part of my work as an Interpretive Ranger, I conduct archival research at the New Mexico State University Library Archives & Special Collections. Among the collections I consult are the Mary Daniels Taylor Papers, which contain extensive manuscript, printed, and photographic sources examining the history of Mesilla and nearby communities. My presentation will focus on archival sources collected by Mrs. Taylor that document the initial settlement of Mesilla under the direction of Father Ramón Ortiz, a devoted and patriotic priest from El Paso, who served as the first Commissioner General of Emigration during the early 1850s.
Panel 2 – 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Joel Gonzalez Parra, “Shaping Border Identities: Nineteenth-Century Repatriate Colonies in the New Mexico-Chihuahua Border”
A Communications Studies and History Undergraduate at NMSU, Joel focuses on Borderlands History with an approach that aims to apply transnational archival practices in the study of the American Southwest and Mexican-American History.
After the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848, New Mexicans faced a particular situation that forced them to decide to stay and become US citizens or move across the new boundary to retain their Mexican citizenship. The creation of colonies along the Mexican border, while lacking extensive scholarship, offers an opportunity to study the particular circumstances in which New Mexican residents were forced to think about their national allegiances through socioeconomic conditions and cultural relations and how the American and Mexican nation-state projects developed in the borderlands.
Joseph Ramon Michael Longo, “Anita Lee Blair: The Girl from Texas and Her Dog”
Joseph has a B.A. in Political Science from UTEP with a minor in museum studies and a master's in museum studies from the University of Oklahoma. He has given lectures and written articles relating to El Paso women, political history, and education. He is the former curator and archive chair of the El Paso County Historical Society, and has curated exhibits for the Magoffin Homesite and the El Paso Mission Trail Association.
Anita Lee Blair was the first woman elected to the Texas State House of Representatives from El Paso. Blair was also the first blind woman to hold legislative office in Texas. Blair was a freelance safety lecturer speaking to various schools, factories, and civic groups around the county from 1946 to 1950 with her seeing-eye dog named Fawn. This program will also show how I used archival collections to research her life and career
Micheal E. P. Davis, “El Paso’s ‘Black Wall Street’”
Micheal was born and raised in El Paso, where he graduated from Austin High School in 1971. A retired Army office, Lieutenant Colonel Davis is the CEO and President of Davis-Paige Management Systems LLC a company that provides integrated preparedness, security, and risk management services. Davis is the son of Estine Davis who was the longtime owner of Estine Eastside Barbershop, future site of a museum whose mission is to educate the public on the contributions of Black business owners to El Paso’s prosperity.
El Paso, Texas, had a thriving energetic close-knit Black community with its own Black Wall Street. The Eastside-Central Coalition Association, an 501(c) (3) non-profit group, is working to establish a “Living Museum-Black Businesses.” The museum highlights the contributions to the El Paso region by generations of Black residents as they built homes, established businesses, and developed neighborhoods during slavery, the Jim Crow era, and beyond. The museum will be a site where visitors can learn of the important successes and tragedies that befell the African American population. The museum will be housed at 106 North Piedras Street in central El Paso. The organization is working with the El Paso Museum of History, El Paso Historical Society, and El Paso City and County Councils to create this educational resource.
For more information, please contact: Dennis Daily, Archives and Special Collections, New Mexico State University Library, ddaily@nmsu.edu, 575-646-4756 or Claudia Rivers, Special Collections, University of Texas at El Paso Library, crivers@utep.edu, 915-747-6725.
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