Hispanic Vision

Hispanic heritage is not peripheral to America. It is part of America's very foundation. St. Augustine, Florida, was founded in 1565—forty-two years before Jamestown. Santa Fe, New Mexico was laid out by the Spanish as a provincial capital in 1610, a decade before the Mayflower, and, as the capital of New Mexico, is the oldest continuously used seat of government in the United States. The dates matter less than the continuity. In northern New Mexico, communities still irrigate through acequias—shared ditches dug in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, run by an elected mayordomo. State law recognizes them as political subdivisions, civic institutions older than the nation within which they exist. The inheritance traveled far beyond the region.