Everyone was in for a surprise in 1909 when New Mexico declared open the Spanish American Normal School at El Rito.
The Territory of New Mexico, in quest of statehood, had decided that fluency of its people in English would earn it the right to become one of the Forty-ei.
The School had been founded to train teachers for the vast region of the "R o Arriba" in which there were few schools and the citizenry still did not speak English, sixty years after becoming a territory of the United States.
Everyone was in for a surprise in 1909 when New Mexico declared open the Spanish American Normal School at El Rito