‘We’re not renaming New Mexico’: State historian pushes back on Trump’s ‘New America’ pitch

Good point.

Mr. Martinez, I wanted to go back a little bit to the origins of New Mexico's name, and I know that you spoke about this, but the Mexico portion is, some folks trace that to an Aztec language.

Is that correct? Nahuatl, Nahuatl,

yes.

Tenochtitlan was the great city of the Mexica, the Aztecs.

Cortes conquered it in 1519.

And the Spaniards changed it to La Ciudad de Mexico, La Ciudad de Mexico, La Ciudad de Mexico, the city of the Aztecs, La Ciudad de Mexico.

They conquered this great city, had wealth, gold and silver, and thousands of native people to convert to Catholicism and turn into workers and tax them.

So there was this idea, the Spanish, they had their own manifest destiny, never mind the American version in the 1800s.

The Spanish had theirs in the 1500s that God gave them the world to conquer and remake in Spain's image.

So they looked to the north and said they'd heard from Cabeza de Vaca, that there were more people in the North.

They had exploration under Marcos, Fray Marcos de Niza and Francisco Vazquez de Coronado and other groups.

So there's this idea that there's another Mexico, a new Mexico to the North.

Well, people so by the 1560s exploring priests and soldiers in new mexico started calling it la nueva mexico la nueva because of the feminine la ciudad de mexico later it becomes nuevo mexico but that's where we get our name we're we're tied to the city of mexico a lot of people and it's true they say we were named mexico new mexico before the nation of mexico yes but we were named after the city of mexico So we're connected.

We're connected

to

places south of here.