New Mexico, constituent state of the United States of America. It became the 47th state of the union in 1912. New Mexico ranks fifth among the 50 U.S. states in terms of total area and is bounded by Colorado to the north, Oklahoma, and Texas to the east, Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora to the south, and Arizona (which was part of the Territory of New Mexico from 1850 to 1863) to the west. At its northwestern corner, New Mexico joins Arizona, Utah, and Colorado in the only four-way meeting of states in the United States. The capital of New Mexico is Santa Fe.
The area that is New Mexico was claimed by Spain in the 16th century, became part of Mexico in 1821 and was ceded to the United States in 1848 (through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo). Tensions between New Mexico’s Spanish American (Hispano), Native American, and Anglo populations are a continuing reminder of the bitter antagonisms that characterized the state’s long history; these tensions drive such novels as N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1968), Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima (1972), Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1974), and John Nichols’s The Milagro Beanfield War (1974), all of which are part of the modern New Mexican literary canon. As part of the American Southwest, New Mexico shares the “Old West” legacy of cattle drives, cowboys, and clashes between pioneers and Native Americans. Indeed, from the vastness of its slice of the Great Plains to the rough, weather-scored peaks of its mountain ranges, New Mexico retains much of its frontier flavor.
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