Every New Mexico resident has probably seen it. Our wonderful state being confused with our western neighbor, Arizona. And of course, we regularly discover people who think we’re actually a foreign nation, a rectangular geographical appendage that was somehow transmogrified from the Republic of Mexico.
I’ve written about this in several of my blogs during the last two or three years. The story usually involves me stumbling across something written or created by someone with the geographical knowledge of a fruit fly. I once purchased a kitchen magnet that had the shape of the state of Arizona and was decorated with a saguaro cactus and the words “New Mexico” on it.
And if you’re a reader of the New Mexico Magazine, there’s a regular column called “One of our 50 Is Missing” which summarizes stories of people confusing our state with Mexico or even Arizona or Colorado. (Never Texas, thankfully.) Here’s a link to that particular column, if you want to check out some really funny stories:
https://www.newmexicomagazine.org/culture/one-of-our-50-is-missing/
Usually, these faux pas are the result of things done, said or written from outside our state.
So I was mildly stunned by one such error I ran across this week in a mail order catalog that lists Gallup (New Mexico of course) as its home base. And to make it even more confusing, the catalog promotes arts, crafts and clothing with a connection to our own Navajo Nation.
A little background. The Navajo Nation was first established in New Mexico in 1868. It was created following the “Long Walk” evacuation of the Navajo people to Bosque Redondo 300 miles to the east in 1834. During the time the Navajos were held at Bosque Redondo, a treaty was signed giving them the right to a part of their original homeland. Additional areas of northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah were added over the years, with the final pieces tacked on to the reservation footprint as recently as 1934. As it currently stands at about 27,500 square miles, about one-third of the Navajo Nation’s land is located in New Mexico’s northwest quadrant. About one-third of the Navajo people on the reservation reside in our state.
The point is, you’d think that some business based in New Mexico and promoting items from the Navajo Nation would have a little better understanding of the Land of Enchantment.
So here’s what I found in this catalog, which (again) claims to be headquartered in our own state:
I honestly was tempted to order some of the REAL New Mexico caps for our grandchildren, but was concerned that I’d get headgear representing another state. And then I worried that they would probably want to charge me extra to have it shipped to a country outside the United States.
But I decided to give the company a call on its 800 number to see if they knew about the error. What I heard on the call was a bit bizarre. The phone was answered, apparently accidentally, because I could hear a raging argument going on in the background. Despite repeated pleas of “HELLO???!!!???” on my part, no one acknowledged my presence. A woman, with what sounded like an African American accent, tossed an expletive filled bomb at a co-worker or supervisor that they should apologize “for something you did behind my back, you mother f____. You don’t even give a s___…” she said as the argument roiled on. I hung up and tried the number again.
This time the phone was answered by a guy with a distinctly New York/New Jersey accent. I asked him if he was aware of the error in the catalog.
“You’ll hafta call the headquaaaataas,” he said.
I asked him, out of curiosity, where he was located.
“I’d rathaaah not ansaaah that,” he drawled.
He gave me the number and I called it. Not to my surprise, no one answered.
If you look at the ad for the caps again, you’ll see in the lower right hand corner that they feature a cap from — you guessed it — New Jersey. It’s all becoming more clear to me now.
aero-cordero.com 