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When a mass grave of 30 Texans was discovered more than a century after the Battle of Glorieta Pass, the remains were reinterred at the Santa Fe National Cemetery.<\/p>\n
Susan Holley \/ Susan Holley<\/p>\n
House Speaker Dustin Burrows wants to\u00a0take a bite<\/a> out of his neighbor. (That would be the state of New Mexico.) Not a big bite \u2014 not like Texans of old, who lusted after the whole enchilada (with green chile) \u2014 but just a nibble.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Lubbock Republican has instructed the next session of the Texas Legislature to study the possibility of raking into the Lone Star State \u201cone or more contiguous counties of New Mexico.\u201d Those counties make up a strip of eastern New Mexico called \u201cLittle Texas<\/a>,\u201d a desolate region that most definitely lacks the natural beauty for which the Land of Enchantment is known.\u00a0<\/p>\n FILE – Texas Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, oversees a debate during a special session, Aug. 20, 2025, in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n Eric Gay\/AP A marker dedicated in 1939 commemorates the bravery of Texas Confederates who fought and died at the Battle of Glorieta Pass.<\/p>\n Joe Holley \/ Contributor A recently dedicated marker on the site of the Battle of Glorieta Pass commemorates New Mexico volunteers and Colorado miners who defeated Texas Confederates.<\/p>\n Joe Holley \/ Contributor<\/p>\n Since beauty is only skin-deep, Burrows\u2019 interest goes deeper, much deeper. Little Texas produces the oil<\/a> and gas bounty that has made New Mexico the nation\u2019s second-largest<\/a> oil producer, trailing only Texas. The region also shares the politically conservative proclivities of the Permian Basin just across the state line.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Annexation or secession is about as likely as the blue cities of Texas \u2014 the state\u2019s economic dynamos \u2014 seceding in the face of relentless disdain and disenfranchisement from our GOP state behemoth. Nevertheless, residents of Hobbs, Lovington, Eunice and other oil-boom towns are open to the idea. Like conservative residents of eastern Oregon who want to split off and join deeply conservative Idaho, they feel neglected by a domineering Democratic Party.<\/p>\n \u201cAnything to get away from Albuquerque and Santa Fe,\u201d Hobbs News-Sun editor Andy Brosig told me, explaining his neighbors\u2019 frustration. Lea County (Hobbs) and Eddy County (Carlsbad) account for more than half the state\u2019s budget every year, he said, but while state government relies on their oil money, they only get the shaft.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n FILE – Pump jacks operate in the Permian Basin east of Carlsbad, N.M., on Tuesday, May 20, 2025.<\/p>\n Susan Montoya Bryan\/AP<\/p>\n Beyond Little Texas, most state officials in our blue-and-getting bluer neighbor reacted with disdain to the Burrows proposal. New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martinez, an Albuquerque Democrat, challenged his Texas counterpart to \u201ccome and try to take it<\/a>.\u201d (He apparently knows his Texas history.)<\/p>\n \u201cNew Mexico isn\u2019t afraid of a fight,\u201d Martinez\u00a0said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cI suggest that he get offline, touch some grass, and get his own House in order. I am certain Texans would much rather see their elected leaders come up with real solutions to the soaring health care, grocery and energy prices brought on by the reckless actions of President Donald J. Trump and his Republican friends in Washington, D.C. We\u2019re good.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Martinez may or may not be aware that Texans have indeed tried to \u201ccome and take it.\u201d I hate to say it, but we Texans have been something of an invasive species off and on for nearly 200 years. Metaphorically speaking, we\u2019ve been the airline passenger who hogs the armrest, the guy at the pre-event reception who grabs the last bacon-wrapped shrimp off the canap\u00e9 tray, the driver who refuses to let you in at the Shepherd entrance to I-10.<\/p>\n Erna Ferguson, a member of a distinguished New Mexico writing family in the middle decades of the 20th century, put it this way: \u201cTexas has always looked toward New Mexico covetously, yearning to own it as a nation, a state, or individually. For more than a century Texans have kept coming in various guises and with various projects to occupy New Mexico.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n A portrait of Lamar, Mirabeau Buonaparte (1798\u20131859)<\/p>\n Texas State Historical Association<\/p>\n Our first \u201cproject\u201d was the ill-fated Texan Santa Fe Expedition<\/a>, conceived in 1841 by Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, president of the Republic of Texas. The infant nation was broke, and Lamar\u2019s idea was to send to Santa Fe a contingent of merchants, government officials and a company of soldiers in an effort to persuade the New Mexicans to open up a trail through Texas to the Gulf Coast. The soldiers were, in Lamar\u2019s words, \u201cfor the occupation of New Mexico in case the people desired to become members of the Texas republic.\u201d<\/p>\n They didn\u2019t. Instead, the Mexican Army arrested the Texans as criminal intruders and marched them under guard to prisons in Mexico City.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Ferguson, the 20th-century writer, relying on an account written by a New Orleans newspaper editor who went along for the adventure, wrote that the Texans were pretty much defeated before they ever reached New Mexico. \u201cWhile still in country teeming with fish and game,\u201d she wrote, \u201cthe Texans butchered their animals and so faced starvation when the going got tougher. They forced needless fights with Indians, lost goods, equipment and even lives in stampedes; and because they could not take care of themselves were often ill.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years later, a detachment of Texans invaded again<\/a>. Twice. Both times they were thwarted.\u00a0<\/p>\n For nearly two decades, we minded our own business, but early in the first summer of the Civil War word reached Texas that the Confederacy needed soldiers to march from San Antonio to El Paso and then northward along the Rio Grande into New Mexico Territory. The Texan volunteers would help the breakaway nation carve a path across the West to the California gold fields and its Pacific ports. (New Mexico Territory included Arizona.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley, commander of a Confederate cavalry brigade, was attempting to connect the Confederacy to California when he was forced to retreat after losing the Battle of Glorieta Pass.<\/p>\n New Mexico Military Museum \/ New Mexico Military Museum<\/p>\n Under the command of a former U.S. Army officer named Henry Hopkins Sibley<\/a>, the Confederate Texans took Albuquerque and Santa Fe without a fight and then at Glorieta Pass met a force of New Mexican volunteers, their strength fortified by volunteers from the Colorado gold fields who called themselves the Pike\u2019s Peakers.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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