Cafe con Leche: Dr. Jon Hunner on the Declaration of Independence and New Mexico History

Greg Smith talks with Dr. Jon Hunner, retired NMSU history professor and longtime Las Cruces historian, about the Declaration of Independence at 250 years. Hunner draws a careful distinction between the Declaration as an inspiring ideal and the Constitution as the working machinery of government, and traces how the document's core ideas spread from the American Revolution through France, Latin America, and beyond. The conversation takes a distinctly New Mexican turn as Hunner connects the Declaration's right to resist unjust government to the region's own history of resistance — from the Pueblo Revolt through Nuevomexicano pushback against the U.S. arrival — and explains the long, stumbling road to New Mexico statehood in 1912, including the little-known episode he calls the "fatal handshake." Hunner closes with a simple recommendation: read the Declaration, all of it, then do the same with the Constitution.