What I’d heard and read about Santa Fe in recent years had given me a clear sense that it was a town I could do without.
It sounded like a place where well-heeled tourists and the nouveaux riches went to spend their money on bad art, overpriced silver-and-turquoise jewelry and mesquite-grilled vegetables.
Then, early last fall I momentarily was jolted from such Neanderthal thoughts by readers of the country’s best travel magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, who voted Santa Fe the top destination in the world.
That’s right: In the world! Greater than London, Paris or Rome. Greater than Hong Kong, Rio or Sydney. Greater by far than my own favorite North American cities, Toronto and San Francisco. Clearly, these folks traveled in circles quite different from mine.
That vote, plus my own preconceived notions, was enough to send me immediately in the opposite direction when I flew into Albuquerque a month later. I had come wanting to see the real New Mexico, not the Madison Avenue version skillfully crafted by Santa Fe’s marketers that some people seemed to be falling for.
But on my very last day in the Land of Enchantment, I decided it was time to take a look at New Mexico’s capital city.
No surprise: I can do without Santa Fe.
And I bet you can too.
You have money? Good
Santa Fe struck me as just another mass-travel destination but one where everything, culture and history included, had a price tag. What makes it even harder to take is that it’s all couched behind a pseudo-sophisticated, artsy-craftsy veneer of oh-so-cute-and-stylish clothing boutiques, snooty galleries and restaurants and hotels more noteworthy for price than excellent cuisine or true comfort and hospitality.
And most outrageous of all is the simple fact that the Plaza, the very heart and soul of Santa Fe, radiates not so much the history of its Hispanic origins as it does the crass commercialism one associates with any place where “sophisticated” American tourists congregate in great numbers.
Santa Fe’s fans and marketing strategists are quick to say that the “look” is still there: The early Spanish colonial and territorial architecture is strictly protected by zoning laws, right down to the legislated use of adobe. The conclusion, obviously, is that slapping adobe on everything makes it historical and at the same time justifies hanging out a sign that says “Contemporary art” or “Contemporary jewelry” or “Contemporary everything.”
Too bad. In Santa Fe, the “contemporary”-a word that seems synonymous with “phony”-smothers the historical. Ah, come with a guidebook and a little preparation, and you can find the historical easily enough. But don’t forget the money. That’s really what Santa Fe is all about.
In fact, in listening to the economic justifications and rationalizations for what has happened to Santa Fe, I was reminded of what a U.S. military officer had to say during the 1968 Tet offensive about Ben Tre, a village in South Vietnam’s Mekong Delta: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
Need I say that there is an ongoing debate in Santa Fe on just this issue: whether economic necessity justifies all the commercialism, or whether the city has destroyed the very character that many tourists once came to see.
Too much tourism
“Being a lifer here, what I see is that in the last 10 or 15 years tourism has pretty much gotten out of control,” said Debbie Jaramillo, a city councilwoman, in a telephone interview some time after my visit to Santa Fe.
“We have allowed our elected officials-at least some of them-to promote and promote more and more tourism, and it has been promoted in a way that is false, and not in tune with our history.
“All the promotion has created a trendy, hot-spot atmosphere-`This is the right place to be’ and so forth-and it’s really been focused on the high end. So what we’ve done is attracted a lot of wealthy or trendy people seeking a new playground-only until they get tired of it, of course-or coming in here and buying second homes for a half-million or a million dollars, so they can breathe clean air two or three weeks out of the year.”
It’s most noticeable in Santa Fe’s Plaza, Jaramillo agreed.
“For at least 100 years, tourists came and went and enjoyed the Plaza atmosphere,” Jaramillo said. “It was part of the history of Santa Fe-the multicultural history-mingling in the Plaza and socializing. There were mom-and-pop businesses; there were Hispanics and native Americans. Then came the trendiness, and we ended up with high-priced boutiques and galleries and things only monied people could afford.
“So what we have on the Plaza today is no more history, no more native people, because they say, `What’s there for me?’ and the answer is `Nothing; they took the Plaza from me.’ What you have now is a lot of full-length sables walking around down there; more and more, it’s looking like Aspen. We lost a lot of what the Plaza really stood for; everybody’s just going after the almighty dollar now.”
A different opinion
Sam Pick, longtime Santa Fe mayor and himself a native, couldn’t disagree more.
“Tourism is by all definitions the cleanest industry you can have, and it’s been our salvation,” Pick said.
“It’s enabled us continually to improve the quality of life and create bicycle trails and new parks and a lot of other things that city governments are having a very difficult time doing right now.”
The city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau is on Pick’s side, although its director, Frank McGuire, acknowledges that Santa Fe no longer is promoted for its style but rather as a destination “where legends live on.”
Pick said that, in the light of two suburban malls, it was exactly tourism that had kept Santa Fe’s downtown, including the Plaza, very much alive and well and vibrant, while many city centers elsewhere were comatose, if not just plain dead.
“We’ve got a situation not unlike so many other cities where the core shopping has moved out with the people and the changes in shopping habits,” Pick said. “But we’ve been able to save the downtown area specifically because of the tourist industry.”
Pick’s right, of course, even if the result is more Disneyesque than New Mexican. And so are those who point to Santa Fe’s wealth of attractions: That historic adobe fortress called the Palace of Governors, built by the Spanish in the years 1609 and 1610 and now an excellent small museum. The nearby Museum of Fine Arts. Several other noteworthy museums. And, yes, a few fine hotels and many more excellent restaurants, as well as a truly vibrant art community and a superb natural setting.
Still, in all my travels, I’ve never seen a nice goose that has dumped more on its own golden egg-and managed to lie so well about it at the same time.
