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Never mind blue stated and red states. For Colin Woodard, author and reporter at the Portland Press Herald, it's all about the US' 11 separate nation-states.
What are these 11 states, you ask? Simple. Woodard describes each in the Fall 2013 issue of Tufts Magazine.
In the article titled Up in Arms: The battle lines of today's debates over gun control, stand-your-ground laws, and other violence-related issues were drawn centuries ago by America’s early settlers, Woodard divides the country into distinct areas based on the notion that “There’s never been an America, but rather several Americas—each a distinct nation. There are eleven nations today. Each looks at violence, as well as everything else, in its own way.”
So how does New Mexico fare?
It's equal parts "Far West," "El Norte" and a dash of "Greater Appalachia."
Woodard explains the distinct regions:
THE FAR WEST
The
other "second-generation" nation, the Far West occupies the one part of the
continent shaped more by environmental factors than ethnographic ones. High,
dry, and remote, the Far West stopped migrating easterners in their tracks, and
most of it could be made habitable only with the deployment of vast industrial
resources: railroads, heavy mining equipment, ore smelters, dams, and
irrigation systems. As a result, settlement was largely directed by
corporations headquartered in distant New York, Boston, Chicago, or San
Francisco, or by the federal government, which controlled much of the land. The
Far West's people are often resentful of their dependent status, feeling that
they have been exploited as an internal colony for the benefit of the seaboard
nations. Their senators led the fight against trusts in the mid-twentieth
century. Of late, Far Westerners have focused their anger on the federal
government, rather than their corporate masters.
EL NORTE
The
oldest of the American nations, El Norte consists of the borderlands of the
Spanish American empire, which were so far from the seats of power in Mexico
City and Madrid that they evolved their own characteristics. Most Americans are
aware of El Norte as a place apart, where Hispanic language, culture, and
societal norms dominate. But few realize that among Mexicans, norteños have a reputation for being exceptionally
independent, self-sufficient, adaptable, and focused on work. Long a hotbed of
democratic reform and revolutionary settlement, the region encompasses parts of
Mexico that have tried to secede in order to form independent buffer states between
their mother country and the United States.
GREATER APPALACHIA
Founded in the early eighteenth century by wave upon wave of settlers from the
war-ravaged borderlands of Northern Ireland, northern England, and the Scottish
lowlands, Appalachia has been lampooned by writers and screenwriters as the home
of hillbillies and rednecks. It transplanted a culture formed in a state of
near constant danger and upheaval, characterized by a warrior ethic and a
commitment to personal sovereignty and individual liberty. Intensely suspicious
of lowland aristocrats and Yankee social engineers alike, Greater Appalachia
has shifted alliances depending on who appeared to be the greatest threat to
their freedom. It was with the Union in the Civil War. Since Reconstruction,
and especially since the upheavals of the 1960s, it has joined with Deep South
to counter federal overrides of local preference.
Look on the bright side. At least we're not a part of New France.
Santa Fe Reporter