Juan Bautista de Anza and the Social-Militarization of Bourbon El Paso: 1778-1788‪.‬

The rumor started to spread throughout settlements of El Paso in the dry, cold months of 1777. Pasenos had heard that Governor Pedro Fermin de Mendinueta had requested release from his command and would soon be replaced. Don Pedro had served in New Mexico for almost eleven years. (1) Constant war with the Apaches and Comanches, however, had taxed Mendinueta's spirit and exhausted his body. He longed for the relative calm of retirement and received official permission to take his leave in February 1778. (2) Among nuevomexicanos all eyes and ears now turned toward the villa of El Paso, where they knew that news of don Pedro's successor would be forwarded first to Lieutenant Governor Jose Antonio de Arrieta. Gossip had it that the new governor intended to impose a major military reform designed to enhance New Mexico's defensive posture. If true, citizens of El Paso worried that they would be the first to feel the heavy hand of Mendinueta's administrative and military heir. They were correct on both counts. The long-awaited decree finally reached Arrieta's office in June 1778. Don Jose shocked his fellow New Mexicans when he informed them that their new chief would not be an imported gachupin, but the desert-grown creole from Sonora, Don Juan Bautista de Anza. (3) That June, Anza gathered his family around him at the settlement of Horcasitas, and together they bid farewell to friends and neighbors from their native Sonora. Don Juan had actually received his appointment from King Carlos III one year earlier. Matters of defense in the province, however, delayed Anza's departure for Santa Fe for eleven months. (4) But finally, in the heat of June, this celebrated creole servant of Spain sat high on his mount and set a course over weathered trails that took him to his new command among the nuevomexicanos. (5)