Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age o. Alarid**

University of New Mexico Press

Hispano BastionNew Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860\nAuthor(s): Michael J. Alarid\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University of New Mexico Press, United States\nImprint: University of New Mexico Press\nISBN-13: 9780826366252, 978-0826366252\nSynopsis\nIn this groundbreaking study, historian Michael J. Alarid examines New Mexico's transition from Spanish to Mexican to US control during the nineteenth century and illuminates how emerging class differences played a crucial role in the regime change. After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, trade between Mexico and the United States attracted wealthy Hispanos into a new market economy and increased trade along El Camino Real, turning it into a burgeoning exchange route. As landowning Hispanos benefited from the Santa Fe trade, traditional relationships between wealthy and poor Nuevomexicanos--whom Alarid calls patrnes and vecinos--started to shift. Far from being displaced by US colonialism, wealthy Nuevome.