Book Review

Da New York a Santa Fe sets southwestern art and culture in the broader context of an American identity, exploring the development of how eastern-based ideals of the Southwest—driven by commercial and political self-interests—formed both the image and the reality of Santa Fe itself.	1
Bruno Cartosio's Santa Fe is a richly spiced cultural stew, blending Native American, Mexican, and Anglo-Saxon values, customs, and aesthetic ideals. But to appreciate its true complexity requires untangling the northeastern ("New York") myth of the West, the saga of heroic warrior-expansionists perpetuated in the paintings of Frederic Remington, the war stories of Teddy Roosevelt, and the Hollywood heroics of John Wayne—a Eurocentric perspective assuming cultural "superiority."	2
The book begins with a social and political history of the New Mexican territory, recounting a story virtually opposite the rugged and bellicose stuff of cinematic lore. It traces how legal institutions, political offices, and theEnglish language took hold, usually to the benefit of an Anglo minority of speculators, backed by East Coast financial institutions. It is a history forged not by generals and cowboys, but by bureaucrats, judges, lawyers, engineers, speculators, ranch owners, merchants, and railroad executives.	. . .