New Mexico Overview

According to Abbreviationfinder, New Mexico is one of the states with the most personality in the United States. Its geography, its history and the variety of its cultures and its residents give it a unique character within the set of states that make up this huge country.

It is a state in the southwestern United States of America. It limits to the north with the state of Colorado, to the northeast with the state of Oklahoma, to the east and southeast with the state of Texas, to the southwest with the states of Chihuahua and Sonora (Mexico), to the west with the state of Arizona and to the northwest with the state of Utah being one of the so-called “Four Corners States”.

Population

The total population of the state is about 2 million residents. 47.5% of the population is of Hispanic origin. Most of the Hispanic residents are descendants of the Spaniards who, coming from Mexico, arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. There are also immigrants who arrived from Mexico more recently. It is a migratory flow that still continues.

Another 9.1% of the residents are Native Americans, descendants of the primitive settlers of these lands. This is the state with the largest indigenous population in the United States. The New Mexico Indians belong to one of the following tribes: Navajos, Pueblo Indians, spread over 21 independent towns, and Apaches. A large part of the Indians live on reservations scattered throughout the state. The Pueblo Indians are the ones who became the most Hispanized and the most mixed with the descendants of the Spaniards. Most of the rest of the state’s residents are Anglo-Americans, descendants of those who arrived after 1848, the year in which New Mexico became a territory of the United States.

According to CountryAAH.com,the most populated cities in the New Mexico are Albuquerque (450,000 residents), Las Cruces (80,000 residents) and Santa Fe (66,000 residents). These figures refer only to the urban area, not including the rest of the residents of each county. In the case of Albuquerque, the metropolitan area is 750,000 and that of Santa Fe, 150,000.

Flora

The type of flora of the state is nearctic and neotropical, in the higher areas there are species that survive snowy rains and droughts such as blue spruce, stiff cone pine and shrubs; in the Hudsonian zone of mountain ranges and gorges are the spruce, the trembling pine and the ponderosa pine. Going down in height you can find oaks, junipers, oyameles, Douglas pines, alamillos, Canadian poplars., the columbine, the pennyroyal and the horse grass, maple and wild flowers due to the humidity that descends from the snowy mountains having a great color during the fall. In much more arid areas, the following stand out: grasslands or zacatales; the stone pine; the oak; the Alamo; the olive; the cedar; the huizache; the chollas or biznagas; the nopales or prickly pears; the cardones; the magueys or agaves; and great variety of cacti.

Fauna

The American black bear is a symbol of the state of New Mexico. The fauna of the state is very diverse, here are species typical of the high mountains that predominate in Canada or animal species that predominate in subtropical regions of Mexico. Among the mammals, you can find the American black bear that is a symbol of this state; Other mammals that inhabit here are mountain lions, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, deer, marmots or smaller rodents such as the kangaroo rat and endangered species such as the Mexican wolf, the American bison and the pronghorn. . Among the birds we have the colorful wild turkey, the roadrunner, wild ducks, quail, centzontles, woodpeckers, etc. Among the reptiles, rattlesnakes and coral snakes stand out, among others.

Primary and secondary education

There are important efforts for the recovery of the Spanish language in the state of New Mexico, bilingual education is essential for the population due to its linguistic diversity. Not only Spanish is in recovery, but also the native languages ​​of the state such as Navajo, Zuñi, Comanche among others.

Spanish and bilingual education

Virtually all New Mexicans speak and communicate normally in English. Only part of the recently arrived immigrant population from Mexico or Central America, and some elderly native Hispanic New Mexicans, speak only Spanish. Some indigenous groups living in New Mexico still speak their own languages. You can also find very old people who only speak some of the Indian languages ​​of the state. According to the 2000 Census data, 28.76% of the population over 5 years old spoke Spanish at home, while 4.07% spoke Navajo.

Although the New Mexico Constitution of 1912 reflects the intention to protect the languages ​​and cultures of New Mexicans, the use of Spanish as a medium of instruction in public schools, as well as its social use, declined dramatically throughout the years. throughout most of the rest of the 20th century. There were some institutional efforts by the Senate to have the Spanish language taught in all public schools in the early 1940s. However, it was in 1968 when the first statement in support of bilingual education was produced by the “State Board of Education”. That declaration materialized with the signing of the “Bilingual Multicultural Act” in 1973.

Neo-Mexican Spanish is a unique variety within the Hispanic linguistic panorama due to the isolation of New Mexico since the early times of the colony and for this reason it has been able to preserve traits of medieval Spanish, in addition to making use of a large number of indigenisms (from Nahuatl first and of local languages ​​later) and Anglicisms (after American annexation in 1848).

Sports

The rodeo is par excellence the favorite sport of the New Mexicans, its colonial origin has made it a tradition that it shares with other neighboring states and in the same way with the Mexicans, the lot of mounts and ropes are essential elements among the participants. In the state of New Mexico you can practice snow skiing and it also has an excellent infrastructure that allows the practice of this sport almost most of the year where national tourists and Mexican tourists come due to the proximity to the alpine ski areas. Ice hockey is another of the sports that is practiced in this state, mountain biking, fishing, hiking, baseball, basketball and American football, whose state team is called Lobos de Nuevo México.