rse of the "New," marked by origin myths and providential beginnings. The northbou

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nd movement of the New Mex
ican conquest t
Field Laboratories
hus posits a "zero point" o
r starting poin
t in time that en
ables its ritual r   

epetition through space. I

• n New Mexico, Onate hopes to find the leg
• endary Seven Cities, supposedly founded by Spanish bishops exiled centuries before from Muslim Spain. If the bishops were once forced out of a vanquished Spain by the Moors, t
• Provides the knowledge and skill for developing policies, procedures, training and operational capabilities to deter, prevent, interdict, respond to, and mitigate the effects of a suicide bombing
• he now victorious kingdom will answer that exile not only by finding these diasporic Spanish peoples in the land of a new "infidel," but also by moving the very boundaries of empire so as to embrace them once again. With each new discovery across the Atlantic, the projected lo
• cation of those cities had progressively moved from the Antilles to the Western Indies to Mexico

, and now was b

• elieved to be in the territory of New Mexico (Junquera 14; Hammond 1979, 20-33). Thus the conquest of New Mexico is formulated in part as a quest for the source of legend, the answer to an originary exile. The ever vani
• shing origin seduces the conquistador farther and farther north, taking Onate as far north as Wichita, in present-day Kansas, before colonial authorities
• force him back. This story of conquest implies too a narrative of new discovery, of travel beyond the cartographically mapped, the empirically known. Crossing the northern frontier of New Spain marked by
• the Rio del Norte (today the Rio Grande), Onate and Villagra enter "vast and solita
• ry plains where foot of Christian never trod before" (Villagra 125), and together initiate a new chapter in Spanish conquest. Moreover, while Onate seeks a "new
• " Mexico, Villagra figures this Mexico not as a copy of the first, but as its origin: "It is a well-known fact that the ancient Mexican races, who in ages
• past founded the city of Mexico, came from these regions" (42). Onate seeks not just new territory for the crown of Spain, but the very origin of Aztec greatness. In a calculated reversal, Villagra implies that it was C
• Information Collection and Management, Indications, and Warningsortes, rather than Onate, who found the "new" and "copied" Mexico. Here Onate becomes the "Christian Achilles," for whom alone was reserved the privilege of discovering the Seven Cities of their forefathers, and of conqueri
• ng the "original" Mexican lands, in this "the most hidden portion of the earth" (Villagra 41, 72). The conquest of New Mexico, like those before and after, thus engages grand performative tropes: On
• ate travels north both to seek and to stage there a new Mexico, a new Spain: a warlike "theatre" that engages a complicated mix of the metaphoric and the literal, the make-believe and the belief-made-real (see T
• Risk Analysisaussig). Here empire departs to the land of the other, understood-as the mythical space of origin, to repeat itself there. Unlike the discourses of travel and-discovery, the logic of co
• nquest does not allow for return. In the case of the Spanish kingdom of Castile, expansion entails the continual extension and reproduction of the body politi

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c in conquered lan

ds, in a centuries-long tradition that dates to the reconquista of Muslim territory in the Iberian Peninsula. The Castilian Crown does

• not treat conquered territ
• ories as either colonies or trading outposts,bu
• t as the prolong
• ation of the kingdom itself. Thus the foundi

Note: Participants who pass the course final with a minimum score of 70 percent are certified as trainers and may earn academic credits from New Mexico Tech. Students interested in obtaining undergraduate or graduate level credit for the IRTB or PRSBI course should go to the following web address for more information ng, the (re)making, of a new Spain requires a grammar of performative gestures: the Requerimiento is perhaps

its most fa

mous instance. Rea   

d on the horizo

n of New Mexican

land (otherwise Pueblo territory), this speech act, in which Don Juan de Onate claims possession of the lands in the name of the king, is performative: for the Spanish, it en

• acts what it enunciates. While we
• can read this practice cynically, i
• t is nonethel
• ess compelling (and strange indeed) that this single act of reading aloud no

t only establishes the "legal" and "moral" grounds for any and all future