Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation McCune Charitable Foundation, New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts and Viewers Like You At the Albuquerque Museum, High Desert Ballyhoo, and Fred Harvey█s Route 66 explore how tourism shaped the image of New Mexico and the Southwest through photographs, letters and historic ephemera.

Muralist and playwright Clyde Santana reflects on a lifetime of creating art rooted in community, healing and the belief that ordinary people can make an extraordinary impact.

It's all ahead on Colores!

BALLYHOO >> Faith: Thank you for joining me today on Colores.

I'm super excited to talk about the new exhibits at the Albuquerque Museum.

So the High Desert Ballyhoo and the Fred Harvey's Route 66 Exhibits.

What are they all about?

>> Romero: High Desert Ballyhoo, is one of our newest photo archives exhibitions.

That's in our hallway space where people can come and see a lot of reproductions of our photo archives collections focusing on the Ward Hicks advertising agency, and his work with the New Mexico State Tourism Bureau, the Fred Harvey's Route 66 is a little bit of a play on the Fred Harvey Company and Route 66, kind of converging at a similar time and also creating this tourist base for New Mexico.

>> Faith: So what does ballyhoo mean?

>> Romero: And it█s sensationalized, right?

Sensationalism, promotion, that kind of thing.

So, really exaggerated really -- tended to the extreme.

And when we see these really incredible Ward Hicks -- images right from his advertising agency and really from any advertising agency, if we look across the country and probably across the world.

These are staged photographs.

Well, we love to see them.

I love to look at them and they're so incredible -- in so many different ways.

We have to keep in mind that in most cases, these were highly staged.

They were set up, they were constructed to put forward a narrative to sell New Mexico, right?

Or to sell the Fred Harvey Company, or to sell New Mexico Magazine, right?

To sell our local culture and our natural resources, to attract businesses, to attract settlement to New Mexico and elsewhere.

So that's it's really important to think of, “well, they look happy and smiling and everybody's having a great time.” But this was -- this was an advertising agency█s narrative that they were constructing really from New Mexico State Tourism Bureau as well.

>> Faith: Wow, and who was Ward Hicks?

Why was he important or tourism here?

>> Romero: He ran an advertising agency here.

So Ward Hicks moves to Albuquerque with his wife, establishes his advertising agency in 1928, and by 1934, he's contracted by the New Mexico State Tourism Bureau to create this campaign to sell New Mexico.

And he does so for the next 20 years.

>> Faith: Yeah, and I thought it was interesting, too, that before he came, we had issues with having like a successful tourism industry here.

What were some of the problems that he saw and like, what were some of the solutions that he came up with?

>> Romero: I think he really looked at like constructing a narrative that was easily deliverable to outside audiences, right?

What was palatable?

What was marketable?

A unifying narrative because all Spanish speaking people are one way right?

All native people are one way.

And this is, I think, the perspective of Ward Hicks and other people like him is kind of homogenizing some of the communities here and really enforcing this tri-cultural harmony, this myth, as if there had never been conflict, as if, we were the only three cultures, the native, the Nuevo Mexicano, and, you know, Anglo for lack of a better word.

Cultures had all coexisted very peacefully.

And this was a really beautiful country to come move to.

We have wonderful natural resources and availability of land that you couldn't believe, especially if you were coming from the East Coast.

There was lots of opportunity for people to come and make their way here.

So I think creating that homogeneous narrative of a welcoming place, well, that's not you know -- that's not something necessarily negative, but glossing over some of the historic realities and atrocities -- that we've experienced here in the Southwest in order to gain more residence is -- you know, it's not the fault of Ward Hicks, it█s this other advertising agencies all over the country as well.

>> Faith: Yeah, I was interested in what those Ward Hicks images meant for tourism.

And how are they effective?

Because Ward Hicks was very effective at bringing a lot of tourism to New Mexico, right?

>> Romero: Absolutely, yeah.

I love the cowboy image.

And of course, he did hundreds of them where, you know, the chuckwagon type scene or the cowboys on the ranch.

I like to think about that image and maybe what actual cowboys did, you know?

Is this something that they would think of and say, yeah, “that's an accurate reflection of our reality.” or this is just a romantic fantasy, right?

That cowboy's living a solitary life.

While that may be true, living a solitary life really just -- in the rugged terrain, smoking their cigarettes, right?

We think -- the Marlboro Man, in many ways, that does put forward this idea of the American character and exceptionalism, right?

And moving forward, some of those ideas rooted in Manifest Destiny, where we pull ourselves up from the bootstraps we make our way.

We're in control of nature and natural resources.

The flora and the fauna.

And these kinds of images are really effective in moving that type of narrative forward.

Similarly, for The Tourist and the Diné Woman I believe photographing, right, she's photo -- the Diné Woman is turning the tables and photographing the tourist.

It's a really fun narrative to think about as well.

How many indigenous communities are kind of at the mercy of tourists, especially at that time.

Now there's restrictions and now there's -- Right?

You have to secure permissions.

You have to really go in following rules.

Back in those days, there weren't that many rules.

And if there were, there was probably a lot of work arounds to bypass those rules and regulations.

So we think of tourists coming in to Pueblos and reservations and other close communities without thinking about respectful communication and interaction, right?

When is it appropriate to take pictures of people, especially in their intimate spaces, domestic spaces, right?

And ceremony and that image of the Diné woman taking a photograph of this very American girl, right?

Tourist.

It flips the narrative.

And I think that that's really fun and something to be aware of.

>> Faith: There was another one that was actually very interesting.

It seems like it had gone to many different, like magazines and stuff.

It's the one where -- it's the two Diné I believe, artists being photographed in front of the Albuquerque Sun Port?

Can you talk about that?

The image of that was very striking too.

>> Romero: Super popular image, and it really does juxtapose, right?

Two people who were from indigenous communities, I believe, from the Navajo Nation, confronting modernity, indigenous people, people of color, right?

All of our communities have always been part of progress.

But as native people historically being thought of, at least in the American consciousness, as a people of the past, people stuck in history, right?

A people not moving with the times to be photographed next to aircraft in Albuquerque.

I think it's something that maybe interesting in the way that these folks are supposed to be sitting, preserving their, you know, their traditions, historic traditions, cultural traditions.

And they're here at the airport in this aircraft is seemingly coming right at them.

Those two artisans were employees of the Fred Harvey Company, and they worked at the Alvarado Hotels Indian building.

Fred Harvey Company routinely employed native people to come in and really -- literally be on exhibit, be available for tourists that would come to stay at the hotel, and they could see people making their art right in front of their very eyes.

So where that's weaving, whether that's making jewelry and different other kinds of artistic production, right.

Objects and things.

These folks were -- brought to the airport to inaugurate service there and highlight new airline travel at the airport, the old airport.

>> Faith: So, shifting over to Fred Harvey's Route 66 exhibition, how did Fred Harvey help turn New Mexico into a destination rather than just a place people pass through?

>> Romero: Yeah, he was really incredible for working with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to provide incredible service to passengers seeking movement right from one part of the country to the other.

So this is the establishment of this railroad that -- that ultimately Route 66 follows some of that path and this is before 1926.

So Fred Harvey Company is building hotels or establishing hotels for people to stop at that coincide with train depots, right?

So you have a stop for trains, but let's make a stop for passengers and these passenger railway cars.

And it's making the travel fun for people.

So it's not just let's get them from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Let's get them from Chicago to Los Angeles and have them really enjoy a different scenery.

Let's have them see different things and meet different people and try to experience different things.

So in that particular show, Fred Harvey's Route 66, we use a lot of ephemera in the museum's collection.

So ephemera from the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque, and a program that was run out of both hotels called the Indian Detours.

And so whatever happened at these hotels in this program was to give these tourists who were not from New Mexico, had probably never encountered native people or Spanish-speaking people before, and to give them a little bit of a taste -- of the local culture, and people ate it up.

They ate it up on their way here, when they stopped at one of the hotels, they were able to embark on other adventures.

These Indian Detour programs that really -- literally drove people out to the Pueblos and to other New Mexican Hispanic villages and kind of pulled back the curtain and showed them what life was like.

And then they got back in their Harvey car.

They went back to their hotel, and they probably got back on the train and went to their final destination.

So he started this, you know, I mean -- for better or for worse, right?

He really -- started this incredible cultural tourism movement.

>> Faith: Yeah, why did you decide to focus on the La Fonda and the Alvarado hotels?

>> Romero: Kind of a -- easy question for us at the museum because we had an abundance of that collection.

So Fred Harvey operated hotels, Fred Harvey Company, I should say, operated hotels throughout the Southwest, many hotels in Arizona, as well as in California and other hotels in New Mexico.

But we focused on the abundance of the material that we had.

So when I'm looking at some of the ephemera from this Fred Harvey collection, I love the menus.

I love the graphics on the menus.

I love to see how cheap things were in an age where things are increasingly unaffordable and out of reach for a lot of people living in this area around the country.

I love to see how -- the most expensive thing on the menu at La Fonda in 1947 was lobster thermidor for $3.75.

>> Faith: Whoa!

>> Romero: Yeah, and 1947, we think of that as as the immediate postwar period.

People are returning home.

They may have a little bit more disposable income, maybe going out for those family vacations that they weren't privy to before and during the war.

To think that -- lobster Thermidor is on the menu of La Fonda Hotel, you know, where's red and green enchiladas?

We don't see that.

>> Faith: Oh, yeah, there█s no, like, red and green chile on there -- >> Romero: Very little.

>> Faith: Or Christmas?

>> Romero: No, no Christmas, no.

And it's an interesting evolution when we look at some of these menus to see what were the palettes that they were catering to because it wasn't any local cuisine.

Local cuisine that we celebrate now, that's recognized worldwide really wasn't on the menus of the Fred Harvey hotels here in New Mexico, and it took a while for it to get there.

>> Faith: Can you tell me about the letters that were a part of that exhibit?

>> Romero: Yeah, we have a couple letters that some guests at the Alvarado Hotel were mailing to their loved ones.

This is 1934, and folks are not able to receive the adequate automobile services that they were seeking.

At that point in time, by 1934, Route 66 did not yet go through Albuquerque, through Central Avenue, right?

It went through fourth Street and Isleta Boulevard North and South, but it had not yet been re-routed East and West.

So people were coming to Alvarado Hotel, right?

On the train, or maybe yes, they're driving through or whatever the case may be.

And this one particularly downtrodden traveler was stuck at the Alvarado Hotel because his car broke down.

And this is in early November 1934.

And also, let's remember, this is the Great Depression.

This is the Dust Bowl era, right?

Times are hard, really hard for people.

And he's waiting to get his vehicle serviced.

So he's sending this letter, it's like six pages.

And he's like, my family, I'm probably not going to be there for the holidays.

And this was early November thinking that maybe he wasn't going to be there for Thanksgiving.

Maybe there wasn't a chance for him being there during Christmas time either.

But he's talking about what's going on at the hotel and really his struggles and his stripes, trying to get his vehicle back on the road so he could get out of Albuquerque.

And we see some of those letters, like that, and a lot of postcards where people are sending from the Alvarado Hotel to their loved ones, postcards with pictures of native people, right?

Like, these are the kinds of people that are here.

So, you know, even mailing back these stereotypes to their friends and families in different parts of the country is extending this narrative via post, right?

Not necessarily in person, that one would have to experience it.

But a lot of people remark on Albuquerque, whether they loved it or they hated it.

And I think those perspectives varied.

But it was certainly different for a lot of people when they came into New Mexico just to see the landscape had shifted dramatically from Texas, from Oklahoma, from Illinois and the deserts, the people, the food, the things that we do here are very markedly different than what others had experienced.

>> Faith: Wow.

So they had a really different experience here -- >> Romero: Culture shock.

>> Faith: Culture shock, yeah.

>> Romero: Total culture shock.

>> Faith: That's interesting.

>> Romero: Yeah.

>> Faith: And why is it important to revisit these historical images and narratives today?

>> Romero: I think for anybody who looks at history, I certainly do.

It's important to know where we came from, right?

And somehow these narratives were constructed because we don't just get stereotypes out of nowhere, right?

They come from somewhere and they -- unfortunately are crafted in some ways to serve a purpose.

Maybe it was for tourism and we were talking about earlier, it can be difficult to escape those stereotypes, particularly if they're harmful and damaging to your community.

If you're not able to progress because somebody has an idea of you, you know, the one that comes to mind for me is the image of -- you know, the Mexican taking a nap under a Saguaro cactus.

We see that a lot here that may not have been a product of Fred Harvey.

In some ways, we see that in the Ward Hicks, that image of the individual sleeping or napping or resting outside the Billy The Kid bar, in Mesilla, New Mexico, taking a nap, maybe with their hat pulled over their face.

But it's an idea about Mexicans, Mexicanos, Spanish-speaking people being lazy, taking a rest, right?

“The land of Mañana” as New Mexico is often referred to by somebody who was not from here.

But we can't move on from these stereotypes in many ways, right?

The way that we think about communities of color, all the contributions that local people have made to New Mexico and in some ways are seen differently because of the promotional material created about them, that wasn't created for them, right?

It was created about them to sell to other people.

ORDINARY HEROS >> Santana: I'm a public artist.

Public art just means that you go out there and you -- don't own the work anymore, it's for the community.

I went to Springfield College, I was Pre-Med.

I needed a job, and I wandered over to the art department building because I heard they needed somebody to clean up.

And I ran into -- the Chairperson and he said, “you think you█d want to transfer?” Well, I have an Art in Urban Life program.

“Art in Urban Life program, what is that?” And he said, “you make art relative to the work and the people and the type of environment that's out here.

Plus, I have a job for you too.” [laughs] “I can give you 20 hours a week.” Well, that sparked my interest because I was broke.

As this first mural was started in 1971, at the African American Cultural Center at Springfield College, and I started painting it in 1971.

I finished it in early spring of 1972, and that was the beginning of me painting murals.

I was a loner.

I was kind of a quiet kid.

After I graduated, I became a traveling muralist, and I ended up down here.

I went to the police department, I tested for the Norfolk PD, and when I got in, I started to see there was a few people that I saw in the community.

They were doing art and they were doing theater, and I hooked up with out a little small group.

I can design -- sets, and I can write plays and I can work with teaching.

That was my beginning of teaching writers, and I started taking writing classes and playwriting and screenwriting in New York, and I was starting to date my first wife, Gail Davis, and she started to go with me and she got into it.

We met at UMass.

Several years later, I ran back into her after I graduated, and we found out that basically both of us needed each other.

And we ended up eventually getting married.

And several months later we had a child, my son, and that was probably one of the happiest moments of my life.

Children's Theater didn't have money, but I kept saying, if you're working with these kids we can give them a nice program and we can do plays that let them do the work, let them be the hands on the stage.

So create a fantasy world for them, and I said, well, I know how to do that.

And, you know, as a result, the kids just loved it.

During that time, we had -- Derek Williams and Tominita Booth.

She went to the Mickey Mouse Club and Derek Williams went to Wicked on Broadway and The Full Monty and House of Mormon.

At the same time now, my wife is getting sick, so I had to run back and forth to chemo.

As she gets worse and worse with the cancer.

she was into working with other people, and helping them, because some of the young playwrights would come to her and say, “hey, how do I get this done?

How do I do it?” And she would just sit there -- even though she had the cancer, she would help them through.

When everything went upside down and she really took a turn for the worst.

I realized that I was going to be in the house.

I got to do something to keep my sanity, and I started painting, and it gave me something to focus on.

Other than all the death and despair that was around me.

And then she passed, and I said, “I need to do more painting.” This is from Dr.

Valli Meeks when she was in Rwanda.

You see her with the little mirror and one of the tools that you do for cleaning.

She had gone over to Rwanda to do some work.

Harvard Initiative was doing the dental school.

They were creating a first dental school in Rwanda.

You know, right after the genocide, it was set up to treat people who were HIV positive or who had AIDS.

So you had to be very confident of yourself in working with patients and not being afraid of them.

And that's one of the things that I was asked.

I said, “well, you know, we█re you afraid of the patients?” She said, “no, I'm a doctor.

I'm supposed to help people.” I can't be afraid of them.” And that was interesting to me.

And then I said, “well, there's a happiness in this clinic.” So I had to make it so that in this world that they created, it was like I wanted to give it a feeling of happiness.

That was dignity, because that was one of the things that she wanted them to have.

She did not want them to walk out of them without their dignity.

One of the patients that she had, they had asked, “who was the person who had the most influence on your life?” and he said, “Dr.

Meeks.” “She gave me back my smile.” So I thought about it, I said, “this always has to be about smiling.” There's the teeth here.

They're bright, there's the tooth brushes.

And she always used to tell them, “you gotta brush.” And of course, the sunlight.

And they're happy up here.

And the angel was up there, and we don't have enough public servants that care about people.

We need to write more stories about public servants and people, just ordinary people who rise to greatness because of what they give.

We didn't know each other that well.

I was working with a group of alumni people, so we were trying to get a scholarship.

So we were calling around the people we knew, and I happened to know Valli.

You know, we just became like phone pals.

But she always encouraged me to keep painting and keep doing this.

She pushed me.

I think it's the support that she gave me.

And finally, I started going up and seeing her and we ended up, you know, coming together.

She was that voice, that was kind of like a Grief Counselor for me.

Valli was a lifeline to me.

We ended up getting married.

I looked at it like, “yeah, you know, I will never forget Gail, but I moved on to a new life.” I'm just happy that Norfolk gave me this exhibit.

I█ve had people tell me that they have seen it, you know, and they loved it.

So I think that the arts is something that brings people together And sometimes we find out that in the humblest of circumstances at the lowest level of the arts is where the community really grows.

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Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation McCune Charitable Foundation, New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts and Viewers Like You