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Amador Family Correspondence, 1856-1949

The Amador family correspondence is made up of approximately 15,000 pages of letters, mostly in Spanish, from a Mexican-American family of prominence in the border region of southern New Mexico and northern Chihuahua, Mexico during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The letters illuminate the struggles and triumphs of a Mexican family as they negotiate transborder life on the U.S.-Mexico boundary following the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Like many Mexicans who accepted American citizenship when the land where they lived passed from Mexico to the United States as a result of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Amadors were challenged to find a way to retain important aspects of their cultural heritage and identity while simultaneously adapting to a new social, political, and economic system. During their rise to prominence in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the family members kept up a prodigious correspondence with family, friends, business associates, clergy, and educators, among others, on both sides of the border. The bulk of the correspondence circulated between the border communities of Las Cruces, El Paso, and Ciudad Juarez, the three cities where the Amadors lived and spent most of their time. Some family members, at times, also lived in and corresponded from the cities of Chihuahua and Albuquerque. With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the NMSU Library currently is digitizing the correspondence in its entirety in order to increase access to this valuable resource. This digital collection will continue to grow until the project’s anticipated completion date in the fall of 2025.