Colorado. Durango. Camino del Rio. Flor-ee-da Road. Vestiges of the Southwest’s Hispanic heritage are evident throughout the area, and that heritage will be front stage for the next couple of days when more than 160 members of the Rocky Mountain Council of Latin American Studies hold their annual conference in Durango.
“Don’t let the Rocky Mountain part fool you,” said Jay Harrison, executive director of the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College and president of the council. “The organization was founded in the mid-1950s when some professors at the University of New Mexico got together, but it quickly became national and then international. It’s the oldest regional council in the hemisphere.”
Most of the conference, which will take place both at the center and at the Strater Hotel, will be academic.
“We’ll have 47 sessions ... ,” Harrison said. “A large number of scholars will be presenting papers.”
The program includes panels on themes such as “Chile and Brazil During the Dirty Wars,” “The Catholic Church in Latin America” and “Fear, Persecution and Death in Mexico City.” Harrison said registration is requested for those who want to attend the sessions.
“This is important for putting FLC back on the academic radar and getting it more respect,” Harrison said. “When UNM, the University of Arizona, Boulder, Stanford, the University of California system are all coming to you, it’s a pretty major deal.”
Not just for scholars
Several cultural events have been planned for the public in conjunction with the conference, including exhibits at both the Gallery at the Center of Southwest Studies and the Durango Arts Center, an artists market at the Arts Center, lectures by textile expert Mark Winter and a concert of Latin American music reflecting diverse musical traditions from salsa to tangos by the FLC Symphonic Band at the Community Concert Hall at FLC.
Winter guest-curated the exhibit at the Arts Center with his wife, Linda. The bulk of the exhibit is from their own collection, which DAC Exhibits Director Mary Puller helped fill out with items from a few Santa Fe collectors who prefer to remain anonymous. The Winters have been “impassioned” collectors for more than 40 years, Mark Winter said.
“He planned everything for our space,” Puller said. “It’s a world-class show.”
As one would expect from Winter, the exhibit is full of textiles, including Saltillo serapes, costumes and colcha embroideries. Religious arts from retablos and bultos to crucifixes, talavera ceramics, silver and leatherwork also are on display. Items date from 1750 through the early 1900s and hail from throughout Latin America as well as New Mexico.
“People tend to think of products from Mexico from the last 100 years as ‘Early Taiwan,’” Mark Winter said. “A century of revolution didn’t do them any good. But for more than 200 years, Mexico had goods coming from all over the world and was fabulously wealthy. Items they made were highly detailed and ornate.”
One problem during the rounds of revolutions beginning in the early 1800s in Mexico was that the gold and silver embroidery was made of real gold and silver.
“They would wear them for a while to have something from a rico (rich person),” he said, “but then they would cut the threads and melt them down, making these items even more rare.”
Two standouts in the exhibit are the intricate saddles, including a wooden, leather and silver one given by Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles to New Mexico Gov. Richard Dillon in the 1920s.
“I got that one from some good friends of Dillon’s who had a big ranch, thousands of acres, near Estancia (N.M.),” Winter said. “That embroidery is century plant cactus fiber, and embroidering it on the hard leather is so much work. With all the silver and wood inlay, that one’s very decadent.”
Winter bought his first saddle, which had been put up for sale by a children’s museum in Rhode Island, at an auction in Boston, apparently after someone left it to the museum as part of an estate.
“When I had a house in Santa Fe,” he said, “we had a housekeeper who said, ‘I see all these saddles, but I don’t see any horses.’ I like horses, but I love saddles.”
Winter also helped create Rio Grande Textiles, the new gem at the Center of Southwest Studies. Originally aggregated for a St. Louis collector, it now belongs to the center thanks to a gift from Richard and Mary Lyn Ballantine, who added it to the Durango collection they already donated to the center. Twenty textiles from the 1880s, out of the 50 diverse pieces in the Rio Grande Textiles donation, will be on display for the rest of the year, Curator Jeanne Brako said.
The rest of the year
The Rocky Mountain Council of Latin American Scholars conference is one of four the Center of Southwest Studies will host this year in honor of its 50th anniversary.
The others include the Consortium of Southwest Centers and Old Growth Forestry Conference, both in early August, as well as a private gathering for the descendants of the members of the Ansel Hall expedition in Monument Valley in the fall.
“The Old Growth Forest Conference will also have several events for the general public,” Harrison said, “but all these conferences are meant to put the Center of Southwest Studies back on the map in our 50th year.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
If you go
The Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies is primarily an academic conference, but several activities have been planned for the general public:
Spanish Colonial Arts Exhibit: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday in the Barbara Conrad Gallery at the Durango Arts Center, 802 East Second Ave., until May 10.
Latin American music concert reflecting traditions such as salsas and tangos will be performed by the Fort Lewis College Symphonic Band, 7:30 p.m. today at the Community Concert Hall at FLC. Tickets are $15 and are available at the Welcome Center at Main Avenue and Eighth Street, online at www.durangoconcerts.com or by calling 247-7657.
Spanish Colonial Marketplace featuring New Mexican colcha embroidery by Santa Fe artist Julia Gomez, Rio Grande weaving tradition by master weaver Sophia DeYapp, straw appliqué, retablo carving and painting by artist Krissa Lopez and carved painted bultos by artist Joseph Lopez. 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday at the Durango Arts Center.
Beauty and Necessity: Rio Grande Textiles from the Durango Collection. Soft opening at 1 p.m. today, with opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday in the Gallery at the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College. Keynote lecture by textile expert Mark Winter at 6 p.m. Open 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays until Dec. 17 and until 7 p.m. Thursdays until the end of April.