This new revision of New Mexico Government includes a brief history of the state and other chapters on government organization, local and tribal governments, elections, and education.

Combines more than two hundred photographs and a concise history to create an engaging, panoramic view of New Mexico's fascinating past.

Basic background for every reader seeking a better understanding of the stateAAA1/2s political system.

Juan Bautista de Anza arrived in Santa Fe at a time when New Mexico, like Spain’s other North American colonies, faced heightened threats from Indians and international rivals. As governor of New Mexico from 1778 to 1788, Anza enacted a series of changes in the colony’s governance that helped preserve it as a Spanish territory and strengthen the larger empire to which it belonged. Although Anza is best known for his travels to California as a young man, this book, the first comprehensive biography of Anza, shows his greater historical importance as a soldier and administrator in the history of North America. Historian Carlos R. Herrera argues that Anza’s formative years in Sonora, Mexico, contributed to his success as a colonial administrator. Having grown up in New Spain’s northern territory, Anza knew the daily challenges that the various ethnic groups encountered in this region of limited resources, and he saw both the advantages and the pitfalls of the region’s strong Franciscan presence. Anza's knowledge of frontier terrains and peoples helped make him a more effective military and political leader. When raiding tribes threatened the colony during his tenure as governor, Anza rode into battle, killing the great Comanche war chief Cuerno Verde in 1779 and later engineering a peace treaty formally concluded in 1786. As the colonial overseer of the imperial policies known as the Bourbon Reforms, he also implemented a series of changes in the colony’s bureaucratic, judicial, and religious institutions. Charged with militarizing New Mexico so that it could contribute to the maintenance of the empire, Anza curtailed the social, political, and economic power the Franciscans had long enjoyed and increased Spain’s authority in the region. By combining administrative history with narrative biography, Herrera shows that Juan Bautista de Anza was more than an explorer. Devoted equally to the Spanish empire and to the North American region he knew intimately, Governor Anza shaped the history of New Mexico at a critical juncture.

“Completely honest and highly informative. To look at a legislative body is to observe democracy in the raw—with all its diverse characters and influences and its many conflicts, compromises, and achievements. Dede Feldman, a first-rate observer and chronicler, shows us the insides of the New Mexico State Senate.”—Fred Harris, former U.S. Senator and professor emeritus of political science, University of New Mexico Elected to New Mexico’s state senate in 1996, Dede Feldman faced the challenges that confront state legislators around the country along with some that are uniquely New Mexican. In this forthright account of the workings of New Mexico’s legislature, she reveals how the work of governing is actually accomplished. In New Mexico’s part-time citizen legislature, Spanish may be spoken in the halls of the capitol as often as English, and Native American issues are often pivotal. But each year the Land of Enchantment’s legislators, like those in other states, must balance revenues and expenditures, tangle with lobbyists, and struggle with redistricting and campaign finance reform. State legislatures’ approaches to air pollution, drunk driving, and chronic disease, Feldman’s book reveals, find their way into national law after they’ve been road tested on the highways of various states.