I Was an Out Gay High School History Teacher, until I Was Fired Without Cause

When Sandia Preparatory School terminated my contract in the middle of the 2022 school year, I did not yet understand that I was a casualty of what would become two national (and still on-going) waves of social persecution sweeping across these United States: one against gay, lesbian, and trans folks (LGBTQI+ people) and the other against teachers of American history and civics. At one time I proudly identified as both of these identities. I am still a proud, out gay man, but I no longer teach high-school history.

In the spring of 2021, Sandia Preparatory School, a private, independent school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, hired me to teach American History to its Middle and Upper School students. After more than 10 years teaching at the college level on various contracts, I decided that rather than move again, I would stay put and do something else. Teaching at an independent school seemed like a good option for me. With terminal degrees in both history and visual art (three masters and a doctorate), I hoped I could combine both of my passions into innovative lesson plans that would get students excited about American history.  

I threw myself into my new position with zeal. Before my contract started, I met several times with colleagues to create a new American Studies curriculum that combined history, literature, and art. Besides writing lesson plans, conducting field trips, and developing creative projects, I volunteered at school events, served as a senior advisor, sponsored extracurricular activities, and attended parent-teacher conferences and faculty meetings.

Perhaps most significantly (in light of what happened), I undertook two initiatives aimed at promoting an inclusive and equitable culture at Sandia Prep. First, I was asked to participate in discussions with some faculty and administrators in advance of hiring a new Head of School, about how to make DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) a priority at Sandia Prep. As part of this work, and also as the faculty advisor of the school’s social justice activity, Empower Prep, I was asked to represent the school at a national conference about diversity and inclusion put on by the National Association for Independent Schools (NAIS).

Second, and along with another (female) gay colleague, I started the first LGBTQI+ affinity space at the school, True Colors Prep. Sandia Prep already had a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA): a mixed queer and straight group for (younger) middle school students. Responding to the stated needs of our students, my co-sponsor and I conceived of True Colors as an upper school only activity, for young people who already had a sense of their identities as LGBTQI+ people. It was to function much like similar groups for African-American or Native American students.

Based our own experiences as queer faculty, as well as the stories many students told us of the harassment, bigotry, and even violence they had experienced at Prep because of their LGBTQI+ identities, we believed such a group was vitally needed.

I became aware of the hostility at the school towards the LGBTQI+ community after my first day. The Head of School, Bill Sinfield, sent me an email stating that a parent of one of my juniors accused me of “harming children” because I had identified as “the gay, white, descendant of settlers on the Front Range of the Rockies” – a true statement. He said his white, straight son felt singled out, and recommended to Sinfield that I be punished with more than just a “slap on the wrist.” I know this because my boss, the man who had just the previous week signed my contract, wrote back to this parent “well said Pete,” and then forwarded me the entire thread, not realizing that I could see his response. He said to me, “obviously, we need to discuss this.” We never did.

Having this traditional blood libel invoked – that we gay men are inherently predatory – on my first day of class, and then to have my boss condone such bigotry, was deeply shocking and disturbing to me. I wondered if taking this job had been a mistake. Now, of course, I know that some people in this country equate being a gay man with being a groomer and a pedophile.

I expressed my dismay at this incident to the head of my department. He was unsympathetic. He recited a litany of complaints and criticisms I was receiving from anonymous sources. My tone of voice, how I talked, the readings I assigned, how I tested, what movies I showed – nothing seemed to be right for some people. On the other hand, many students were enthusiastic and vociferous in their praise for my courses, as were some parents. They often expressed surprise at learning about the things I was teaching, and declared that based on what they were seeing going on in the wider world, they had often felt that their history education had been misleading or even dishonest.

When my co-sponsor and I submitted True Colors to the school administration for approval as an official activity, the Head of School stated that there was “no room on campus” for another activity. However, many colleagues offered to supply us a space, and so he reversed course. True Colors met at lunch for the first time in the second week of January 2022, and we had between 20-30 students sign up. We shared our coming out stories, and then we listened as students began to share about what they had experienced at Prep, experiences which were uniformly discriminatory and hostile.

About 2 weeks after True Colors first met, the Head of School’s secretary came to my classroom and tearfully told me that I was required to go to the office. When I got there, Bill Sinfield told me that he had some bad news for me. I was fired. When I asked the reason for my termination, he told me that the school’s legal counsel had told him he could not tell me. I offered to finish the school year out for the benefit of my students, but he said no; I would have to leave the school immediately.

He offered to purchase my silence with the remainder of my annual salary and health care benefits through the end of the school year. Campus security accompanied me to my classroom, watched as I packed up all my stuff, and escorted me off the campus. The security guard said to me: “It’s a shame Dr. Spence. I always thought you were a decent guy.” I was not allowed to speak to anyone, colleague or student. My name was stripped from the school, its walls, and its website. An email went out to the entire Sandia Prep community: “As of 2 pm today, Dr. Taylor Spence will no longer be employed at Sandia Prep. Please direct all inquiries to the Head of School, Bill Sinfield.”

The Head of School had fired me with no provision for my replacement, leaving 100 students, seniors preparing to graduate, and parents, who had presumably paid a premium for a high-quality historical education, with no qualified American history instructor. He simply forced the other history faculty to take on my students and teach material for which they had little expertise. The parent who had singled me out as harming his children had been wrong. Objectively speaking, it was Bill Sinfield who hurt Sandia Prep’s children.

I signed the non-disclosure agreement the school offered me because I needed the money. But then after a little thought, I realized I could not live with such dishonesty. Contrary to what the school’s email implied -- that I had done something so egregious as to have required my immediate termination -- I knew I had done nothing wrong. Moreover, I had never received any written indication that my work was subpar, or that my contract was in jeopardy. They could not or would not tell me why they fired me.

The day after I was fired, I received an email with the subject: “What You Meant to Me:”

 

Hi Dr. Spence. 

 

I know this is absolutely none of my business. But I heard what happened and just wanted you to know how crushed I am that you will no longer be teaching me. Your class was the only class I looked forward to . . .I felt comfortable to speak my mind and I learned so much from you. Not just about history but life. I will miss you dearly and I’m so sorry. 

 

I have no doubt this happened for a reason and you are destined to move onto a place where you’re able to teach freely and be allowed to speak about things that actually matter in this day in age. Again. I’m quite literally tearing up writing this knowing I won’t be taught by you any longer. 

 

Thank you for what you’ve done for me. 

Students like this were the reason I had to disavow my acquiescence to Sandia Prep’s silencing tactics. I hand-delivered a recension letter to the Head of School (the NDA allowed me to rescind my signature within 2 weeks), and made sure to receive a receipt with his signature on it.

Two weeks later, I heard that my co-sponsor of True Colors had also been let go.

Why am I telling this story now, more than a year since my firing? Obviously, litigation is not my aim. I am telling my story because all across this country and every day demagogic politicians and feckless school boards are hurting queer and trans kids. They are doing so to gain power and influence, and because a few vocal parents, who themselves received poor historical education, think they can stem the tide of change with suppression, discrimination, and cruelty, rather than listening and learning. Young people show us the future.

I worry every day for the mental health and safety of all queer kids in this country, including those at Sandia Prep. The person who ran Prep’s gay-straight alliance was one of the most toxic and dishonest people I have ever met. She still works there and I worry for the kids under her control. Did the trans kid get their own bathroom yet? Is True Colors still around? I really hope sharing my experience can help bring a little more care and attention to the LGBTQI+ community at Prep.

I also worry for the many wonderful and dedicated teachers and administrators at Sandia Prep. I have heard of several other teachers wrongfully dismissed as I was. How many people are living out there, silenced by non-disclosure agreements? I hope the new Head of School is making things safer, more inclusive, and more ethical for the many dedicated people who work at the school.

I want to add my story to the historical record. Journalists are writing about this wave of discrimination against the LGBTQI+ community. They are exploring why so many teachers are leaving the profession, why the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – the “National Report Card” – for American history is going down, and why and how America’s overall educational system is failing our youth. Someday historians will research and write about these topics as well.

The tragedy of discrimination, prejudice, and harassment is that they make people feel smaller and cause them to not want to share their gifts with the world. The truth is I did feel smaller after my experiences at Prep. But now, after rereading the many letters I received from students and parents, and understanding that being smaller (or non-existent) is exactly what the forces of darkness currently assailing this democracy want people like me to feel, I am surer than I ever was that I will continue to teach American history. Enlightment for everyone has been the idealistic aim of this democratic nation from its origins. All people ARE created equal, but they can only learn the truth of that statement, and how to fight for that inborn right, in the honest, safe, and belonging classroom. This is an ethic and an ideal for which I am willing to fight.

"Our Story Continues"

Today is the 340th anniversary of the Pueblo Revolt, and was supposed to be the day that Kathryn (my friend and assistant) and I started the mural project. The Revolt represents the potential of Indigenous Technology (IT) to help people resist oppression and create better, freer lives. The events of August 9-11, 1680 “shaped the world we live in today,” according to San Ildefonso Pueblo member and University of Pennsylvania archeologist Joseph Aguilar. The Revolt continues to reverberate throughout region and the entire continent: the evidence of Puebloan ingenuity and courage, as well as a case study of what people can accomplish when they devise the means to communicate and collaborate together. More broadly, it stands as an enormous achievement, for it was the only successful and lasting reclamation of Indigenous space and time from European colonizers in the history of North America.

The significance of this reset to a time before colonialism cannot be underestimated. Today, many Indigenous Americans live with the awareness of incredible loss, the effects of intergenerational trauma, and a righteous sense of indignation born from historical and present-day injustice. This knowledge and these feelings make up part of the legacies of conquest. Yet they are not new. They fueled Indigenous resistance movements on this continent for hundreds of years. From Metacomet’s War in the seventeenth-century, to Neolin, the Delaware Prophet in the eighteenth, up through the Ghost Dance Religion of the nineteenth, Indigenous Peoples have cherished the hope of a return to a time before the shattering of worlds brought with Europeans. Part of the lineage of the history of colonialism is a longing to return to a time before its violence became a way of life.

The twelve years after Puebloan Peoples drove the Spanish out of New Mexico were probably times of both rejoicing and struggle. Indigenous archeologists such as Aguilar, working with the Pueblos, are bringing to light new stories from that interregnum. Puebloans rightly suspected that the Spanish would return and try to take back their colony, and so they spent a considerable amount of effort constructing new fortifications and preparing for war. Some abandoned Spanish-founded missions and relocated back to original home places. Puebloan spiritual practices and cultural traditions resurfaced. Digs at several sites reveal evidence that Puebloans destroyed Catholic iconography.

There was healing, but there were also probably nightmares. The effects of colonization had marked the faces and bodies of the colonized. It is well known that Europeans brought deadly pathogens with them, for which Indigenous New Worlders had no immunity. Contentious debates continue about the population of the Americas on the eve of contact with Europeans, debates which inform our awareness of the devastation wrought from pandemic disease. Yet all agree that 95% of Indigenous Americans perished over the span of the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, from diseases such as smallpox, typhus, cholera, and dysentery. Think about that. 95%. As Charles Mann writes, at that rate New York’s population would be reduced to just 56,000 people — “not enough to fill Yankee Stadium.” This loss of life constituted perhaps the single most horrifying tragedy in human history.  

(Photo: Author) Petroglyph found at Chaco National Historic Site

(Photo: Author) Petroglyph found at Chaco National Historic Site

Part of the shattering of Puebloan communities was the ongoing effects of epidemic disease. Some diseases, smallpox for example, caused pustules that blistered, scarred, and left marks on the face and neck. Other diseases like dysentery left people so weak they could not walk or work. Typhus destroyed the liver. Diphtheria smothered the lungs. Scarlet Fever weakened the heart.  Spanish depositions record that after killing Franciscan friars and other Spaniards, Puebloan people plunged into rivers to wash themselves, perhaps aware that physical contact with colonialism brought death in seen and unseen ways. The marks diseases left testified to both suffering and survival.  

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Thinking about the ravages of an unseen killer brings seventeenth-century Puebloan fears, losses, and experiences into the present, where COVID-19 is bringing death, wrecked lungs, and a deep sense of worry about the future. The two experiences of epidemic disease are in no way comparable. Yet, as I daily wash my hands, wear a mask, and stay in my house for the next two weeks, I will have a chance to ponder the remarkable resilience of New Mexicans. When I imagine multiple, simultaneous epidemics, COVID-19 and four or five other diseases all at once, my admiration for Puebloan Peoples’ will to survive and ability to adapt rises into awe. Amidst sickness, suffering, and death, Puebloans and other Indigenous Americans continued to marshall their I.T. in order to resist, persist, and ultimately prosper. As Aguilar opines, “We are living where we are and we are the people we are thanks in part to the Revolt.” The Pueblo Revolt was only a symptom of the deeper and more enduring continuity of this region and its people.     

“Our Story Continues”

When I found out I was not going to be able to officially start the mural on such a symbolic and historic day, I asked Duane Arruti, the Chief Information Officer for UNM and Alesia M. Torres, its I.T. Director, to come down and write inscriptions on the wall about what the project meant to them. They made the first marks on the wall, which is only fitting, for they have been enthusiastic and open partners in this creative process, and the words they inscribed on the wall reflect their sincere aspirations for what public art, history, and technology can accomplish when done in community.


Duane Arruti, Chief Information Officer, University of New Mexico

Duane Arruti, Chief Information Officer, University of New Mexico

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Alesia M. Torres, IT Director, University of New Mexico

Alesia M. Torres, IT Director, University of New Mexico

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Their words are very personal, but also reflect their larger engagement with the layered meanings of information technology, painting, and history as forms of mark-making. History comes down to just that: marks on a wall, which will hopefully last to tell future generations stories about what particular moments of the past meant to the people who lived them.

Marks on a wall. Marks on a face. Both are archives.  

The Work of Public Art in a Decolonizing Age

This summer, as I have prepared to begin painting Can You Hear IT?, the world and my painting have come closer together.

I originally conceived of this project in the conviction that Indigenous New Mexicans hold the ground on which the University of New Mexico resides. I wanted any creation of mine built into UNM’s architecture to reflect that fact. August 10, 2020 will mark the 340th anniversary of the beginning of the Pueblo Resistance War (AKA the Pueblo Revolt), and will be the day that I begin this project. IT (Indigenous Technology) enabled Puebloan People to expel the Spanish and cleanse (at least temporarily) their lands of invaders. It has continued to enable diverse New Mexicans to resist layers of re-invasion and colonization. Now it can guide us towards decolonization. By embracing IT can we New Mexicans, and the University of New Mexico, move forward together and live into our promise as a learning community in this place..

Po’pay and the other Puebloan People who rose up against the Spanish in 1680 did not want to share the Upper Rio Grande Valley and its great riches and wealth with the Spanish. They communed with a return to the the time before the coming of the brutal and exploitative colonizer. I cannot blame them, and I salute their resistance and brilliance. That is why the center line of the mural is the maguey rope, the information technology that enabled many dispersed pueblos to rise up together united. This was and remains a great achievement, as I tell my students. That genius, on par with the many forms of IT which have supported all of us over these past months (and which will make the university viable this coming semester) would be enough to build a mural around and to celebrate.

But Po’Pay’s Indigenous Technology offers all of us another valuable lesson. The rope was just the symbol of his need — our need — for communal action. I and my assistant, artist Kathryn Villeneuve, will paint the mural. It’s hard to see the details of such a large canvas on a small computer screen, but we will stamp thousands of little network symbols to compose each figure in the mural and then connect them with thousands of lines. The ideas is to create a web of individuals utterances, communications, messages, ideas, that make up the aggregate, a whole. Each figure should be a cloud of connection.

I knew about Indigenous Technology before this project. My historical scholarship looks for the ways that Indigenous People have found to resist colonization. I have learned much more here at UNM from my students. The rewards of teaching at a Minority Serving university have been to teach me to be a better communicator, and open up to new technologies, new ways of testing, dialoging, and teaching: all of the possibilities of a new era in pedagogy. I thank my students for their brilliance and wisdom in helping me along my way of decolonization.

I knew very little about information technology before this project. As I sat with UNM IT’s employees and leadership, and listened to their hopes for what information technology could do for UNM and New Mexico, I thought they were impossibly utopian and idealistic. Yet, over this past several months, COVID-19 has brought me (and us) closer to how they are envisioning the future world. At the same time, the organizing and resistance work Black Lives Matter has been doing since 2016 nationally, as well as other organizations here in New Mexico, has come to righteous and fiery fruition these past weeks in nationwide and local protests against outrageous injustice.

These are dark times, but ones full of hope and promise. I bring this shaky hope to the making of this new work, one which will be on the UNM campus to preside over positive growth in our learning community, our city, and state for many years to come. I dedicate it to the future we must somehow create together to cohabit peacefully on this continent.

Digital renderings of the mural (thanks to alexroessner.com), Can You Hear IT?, oil on marouflaged canvas, 126” x 475”, 2020, UNM IT Building, UNM Campus, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Can You Hear I.T.?

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Can You Hear IT? (2.0)

The title of the mural Can You Hear IT? (IT Building 153, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 2020) is a play on words on several levels. Information Technology (I.T.) is both the computational and electronic hardware by which we work and communicate, and an abstract plain, encompassing various forms of connectivity, communication routes, and security shields and gateways. If asked what I.T. means to them, most people would most likely hold up a device, look at a screen, or point to the router overhead. They either see I.T.’s results or listen to them. Variously abled others may receive information via translators such as vibration, Braille type, or language software. But the emphasis is all the same: I.T. facilitates communication and reception of information between individuals. If it is working properly, I.T. should be a seamless interface between us and the rest of the world. So the question, Can You Hear IT? on one level simply asks, are you aware of how integral I.T. is to your life? The truth is, we don’t see or hear I.T. as much as live, breathe, and swim in it. I.T. is our context in the 21st century.  

I.T. could also stand for Indigenous technology. New Mexico is rich in Indigenous technological traditions, of the Ancestral Puebloans, the Diné and the Apache, as well as many others. Indigenous cultures adapted to and prospered in this region thousands of years before Europeans came in the 16th century. They are still prospering and adapting. Long-standing traditions of Indigenous thinking are the baseline for my mural about information technology at UNM. These two forms of I.T translate as the specific technologies and ways of doing things Lobos and New Mexicans have developed, but also will develop, reflecting their unique cultural and locational perspectives in this region and to meet their future needs.

When I discussed the meaning, hope, and promise of I.T. with UNM’s I.T. employees, they used terms like embedded, enmeshed, and connected. They spoke of the promise of I.T. to liberate people from drudgery, to facilitate learning and enlightenment, and also to protect and nurture UNM’s students. These thoughtful employees were inspired by and full of hope for their work. I realized that any answer to the question Can You Hear IT?, needed to reflect their passionate commitment to the promise of information technology.

Yet, the historian in me could not help but temper their enthusiasm with a pessimism born of over ten years studying human beings’ various schemes of progress and advancement, all of which were born of similar aspiration, inspiration, and hopeful idealism, and many of which not only resulted in more drudgery, but explicitly excluded many different groups from their benefits. I would be remiss if I did not temper such optimism with the historical knowledge I possess about the complicated and even violent results of various information regimes in the highly contested history of the New Mexican region.

When I asked UNM’s I.T. employees what lay in the future of I.T., their answers quickly became the stuff of science fiction. And who can blame them? Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum says our era is characterized by a “blurring [of] the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.”[1] This Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing our world so quickly we may have difficulty in knowing where we end and Artificial Intelligence begins. Responding to rapid-fire innovations seemingly on a daily basis, we may struggle to gain the perspective necessary to see where we are heading, or perhaps more disturbingly, where I.T. is taking us.

When we imagine I.T. at the University of New Mexico, we envision one, unified network serving all users in our campus community. We are all Lobos! But when we think of the rings of information technology outside of the campus, in the city, region, nation, and world, we begin to see that one aspect of I.T. is to create barriers between “us” and “them.” This is true today, and it has been true historically in this region, where we see a veritable war between different systems of communication with radically different agendas, not all of which have been hopeful nor inspiring.

This more sobering aspect if information technology informs the deeper, tenser question at the heart of this mural’s title: who gets to create, access, and use I.T., and for what ends? Can You Hear IT? asks: Can you hear the potential future of information technology as it races towards us? Can you here the Indigenous technologies already well-established here in New Mexico? Are you thinking where all this is going, and are you taking the necessary actions today to ensure that the I.T. of the future produces a net benefit for all our children and grandchildren? The questions at the heart of this mural are thus moral and political questions. 

History’s great benefit to the human race is that it provides a greater sense of objectivity and perspective. I am not so foolhardy that I am willing to attempt to depict a future I can barely imagine. Great art should be enduring and speak to aspects of the human condition which many, many future generations of viewers will be able to draw on and find meaning in. I can best accomplish that by grounding the image in past experiences of New Mexicans: in the longer, deeper, and site-specific history of UNM in the New Mexican land, in the homelands of multiple indigenous peoples, and within the layers of immigration and culture of New Mexico. Part of the purpose of this mural is to ask questions tinged with excitement and trepidation, but to also offer answers with a series of historical case studies from New Mexican history, each of which illustrates the powerful and inspiring potential of I.T. Thus, I can only create an image which offers multiple answers to the question, Can You Hear IT? Somewhere in the seven figures depicted in the New Mexican landscape in this mural, an answer to this question may be found.

Painting with I.T.

Before I briefly talk about the seven figures in this mural, I would like to explain the distinctive painting technique, which I developed for this mural. It is painting with I.T. I would like to thank my buddy Karl Benedict at UNM for helping me brainstorm this idea. He and a few beers are an amazing combination.

Networks and connectivity are what I.T. is all about. Early networks included large mainframe computers and ancillary hardware like printers, telephones, and fax machines. Today, the variety of elements making up a network are numerous and ever growing. Computer power is in fact based in networks. Paralleling hardware networks are social networks: the connections and relationships people form in the analog and the digital. A social network begins with the primary relationships of one person, and branches out to include secondary relationships contacts have with each other, and even tertiary relationships: friends of friends of friends. Social networks mirror I.T. networks to a degree, but the internet enables bridging to occur between unrelated members of a social network, and between networks, which is impossible for analog networks. Internet connectivity is unlimited. I.T. is thus a way to describe a framework encompassing the wired, the wireless, and the relationships crisscrossing around and between the two.


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Various software platforms (OpManager, Ipswitch, Lucidchart, etc.) map I.T. networks into three-dimensional images called network diagrams or network maps (see examples). Network diagrams use a series of standard symbols (largely created by the company Cisco) to represent hardware and wireless capabilities, such as handheld devices, computers, cloud storage and firewalls. In the social arena, network symbols can be names, faces, internet handles, or GPS coordinates, etc. Both computer and social media network diagrams represent computer hardware, wireless, and/or social networks in three dimensions, so that I.T. builders, managers, and security teams can conceptualize, monitor, and secure networks. Using the electric connectivity of the I.T. network, these software can “discover” elements in a network in real time and manifest them on a screen, indicating if there are breaks in the network, as well as how and where individuals are connecting. Social network diagramming reveals when, how, and with whom people are connecting, and can be very useful for revealing the connections between contacts (or lack thereof), information which politicians and other network capital forms use for relationship building. Network diagrams can be simple, with just a few elements. Or they can be complex, with millions of hardware nodes. Network diagrams give I.T. managers a “macro” view of network connectivity in order to protect individual “micro” experiences with their devices or the internet. It is the I.T. manager’s job to see and understand the larger system, and to protect and shepherd hundreds and even millions of individual users as they roam the network. I.T. managers see and understand an important truth about the human condition: we are all connected.

I have produced a series of rubber stamps of I.T. network symbols, and with these stamps I have painted the water media studies for the mural. I will also paint the mural in the same way, with a larger set of stamps. Painting images with network symbol stamps, and then drawing the contours of images with lines between various aspects of I.T., replicates I.T. network diagrams. This technique makes the claim that today we are in fact made up of I.T. These images embody I.T. They also remind viewers that we are the sum of our connections. Each of us is a “we.” By means of I.T., we are all kin.

Image Description (refer to cartoon):



Cartoon #2 Can you Hear IT_Page_01_Image_0001.jpg

Can you hear IT? utilizes both sampled (i.e. appropriated) images from the historical record as well as original images, enabling viewers to engage with historical and visual content simultaneously. I.T. and I.t. have been the basis of community formation and cohesion in New Mexico, enabling its people to adapt to changing conditions over hundreds of years. The University of New Mexico is an institution that has emerged out of this long history of adaptation, resistance, and creativity, to help New Mexicans to be resilient and live better lives. At its heart Indigenous, Hispano, and mixed-race adaptations have entailed code switching, the process by which a person from one culture learns how to translate their ideas, feelings, and beliefs into the language of another culture, in order to survive and prosper. Another way to understand code switching is as a form of cultural information technology.

The knotted maguey rope stretching across the center of the mural is a symbolic example of I.t. It refers to a seminal event in New Mexico’s history, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan) religious leader Po’Pay organized the revolt. [2] He sent runners out to each pueblo with knotted maguey ropes. Insurgent leaders were to untie one knot to demonstrate their adherence to the planned revolt, and then another one each day until they were all untied. When there were no more knots, the uprising was to begin. This ingenious form information technology enabled the rebellion to be successful. It completely expelled the Spanish from the region of modern day New Mexico for nearly 13 years, and remains the only successful Indigenous revolt against European colonizers in North American history.[3] John Gahate at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center credited Indigenous social networks for the success of the Pueblo Revolt. The knotted rope represents both Indigenous Information Technology and Indigenous Social Networking.[4]

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The heart of this mural is the Lady in Blue, New Mexico’s own distinctive Guadalupe. She emerges out of the blue and white of a New Mexican sky; she is sky, and she is also the soil of Spain. UNM historian Anna M. Nogar writes that “the Lady in Blue is unquestionably a persistent manifestation of miracle discourse born out of the region, written into the historical landscape.”[5] She was Sor Maria de Jesus de Agreda, a Spanish nun who lived and died in the Soria region of Northern Spain (1602-1665), and who claimed that six angels enabled her to travel to colonial Nuevo Mexico, to deliver a message about the Catholic Christ to Indigenous groups. First appearing in the region in 1628, the Lady in Blue was at once a code switcher, a translator, and a messenger. [6]

The Six Angels of Information Technology each offer a story about the centrality and importance of I.T. to the growth, evolution, and prosperity of New Mexicans.

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From right to left, the figures begin with Malinche, La Malatzin, the original American code switcher. La Malinche, whose Indigenous name was Malintzin, was a complex character, about whom the Mexican people have never ceased arguing. Malinche had been born into a group dominated by the Aztecs – a powerful Indigenous confederacy that controlled all of central Mexico in the fifteenth-century. Her native tongue was Nahuatl, but she had been sold as a slave into a Mayan city, so she also spoke Quiche or Mayan. Cortez, who was nothing if not bold, had arrived on the coast of Mexico near Vara Cruz and had burned his ships, communicating to his men his utter dedication to his mission. He began to build alliances with local tribes who were chaffing under the yoke of the Aztec. One of these groups, the Tlaxcalans, gifted Malinche to Cortez, and the Spaniard rapidly ascertained that he now had in his possession a powerful secret weapon: a translator who spoke multiple languages. She quickly picked up Spanish as she became Cortez’s mistress. Bernardo Diaz—a soldier in Cortez's army who wrote the best Spanish account of the conquest of Mexico—Malinche was “the great beginning of our conquests.” Malinche is the Angel of Code Switching.

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An anonymous UNM student writing an essay is the next figure. Taken from the UNM archives, this young woman symbolizes the importance of I.T. and I.t. to learning. She is the Angel of Education.

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Henry Bake Jr., was one of the famed Navajo Code Talkers from World War II. He was one of many Navajo (Diné) troops who learned a secret, unbreakable code language, which the American military used to send information about tactics, troop movements and orders over the radio and telephone. The code was indecipherable to the enemy and a key factor in the American military victories at Iwo Jima, Saipan, and several other major battles in the Pacific theater. Bake is the Angel of Cultural Distinctiveness.

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Soaring up to touch the sun is UNM Lobo and point guard Keith McGee, a junior from Rochester New York. His amazing physical feats represent the aspiration and courage of the future of I.T. He is the Angel of Hope.

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Larry Casuse was a Diné activist and UNM student who challenged the Regents in the 1970s to be more accountable for their actions outside of the UNM campus, particularly as they pertained to the Diné. By all accounts, Larry was a persuasive and courageous orator. He occupied Regents’ meetings with his physical presence and his voice, shedding light on the immoral actions of some Regents. Larry is the Angel of the Just Voice, the Prophet who had the courage to speak truth to power.

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The last angel is farm worker activist and New Mexican native Dolores Huerta, here using a megaphone to bath the people with inspiring and unifying words. Huerta represents the New Mexican tradition of translating the region’s wisdom and community power to improve the lives of other people in different locations. She, Cesar Chavez, and many others built a grassroots farm workers movement that has saved the lives of countless people. She is the Angel of the Healing Word.

 

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[1] Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/, 14 January 2016.

[2] Joe S. Sando and Herman Agoyo, Po’Pay: Leader of the First American Revolution (Santa Fe, N.M: Clear Light Publishers, 2005), 89–90.

[3] Andrew L. Knaut, The Pueblo Revolt: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995).

[4] I am indebted to John Gahate for this important insight.

[5] Anna Nogar, Quill and Cross in the Borderlands: Sor María de Ágreda and the Lady in Blue 1628 to the Present. Notre Dame University Press, 2018, 3.

[6] Ibid., 43.