New Mexico's Mystery Motto Ready To Be Scrapped?

2005-07-07

It's displayed on the outside of the Capitol, etched into the giant state seals in the legislative chambers, and inlaid in brass on the floor of the rotunda.
But one lawmaker says it's time to jettison New Mexico's state motto.
"Crescit Eundo" doesn't sound half-bad in Latin, but the English translation -- "It Grows As It Goes" -- leaves New Mexicans and visitors alike scratching their heads.
State Sen. Joseph Carraro says when he has recited it to visiting school children, he's been met with blank stares.
"They couldn't figure out what it meant. I couldn't figure out what it meant," said the Albuquerque Republican. "As best I can figure, it has something to do with urban sprawl."
The phrase first showed up in 1851 — five years after the United States invaded New Mexico, which was then part of Mexico — on the seal used by a territorial governor, according to former state historian Robert J. Torrez.
"I've never been able to find out who originated it, or what they thought it meant," Torrez said. Most likely, it's a reference to progress or expansion or modernization, he speculates.
Mysterious as it may be, New Mexico's motto does have some virtues.
It's shorter than Hawaii's "Ua Mau Ke Ea O Ka Aina I Ka Pono," or "The Life Of The Land Is Perpetuated In Righteousness."
It doesn't mention God, which had Ohio in legal trouble for four years until a federal appeals court decided in 2001 that "With God, All Things Are Possible" was constitutional.
But it's not as lyrical as Oregon's "She Flies With Her Own Wings" nor as succinct as Texas's "Friendship," nor as grounded as Michigan's "If You Seek A Pleasant Peninsula, Look Around You."
Carraro says New Mexico needs to "jazz it up a little bit."
His proposal: "Antiqua Suspice, Crastina Accipe," or "Respect the Past, Embrace the Future."
He says that would evoke New Mexico's diverse history — peopled by American Indians, Spaniards, Mexicans, then Anglos — as well as the possibilities for its future.
"We're constantly trying to sell our state, and this is going to sell it," he claims.
Selling it to his colleagues, however, is a bigger problem.
With just over two weeks left in the legislative session — and plenty of more important stuff to do — lawmakers aren't much in the mood to revisit the motto except to have some fun with it.
The first committee that considered Carraro's bill amended it to change the proposed new motto to "Thank God For Mississippi."
But Carraro argues that there's good reason to make a new motto a priority: the New Mexico state quarter will be issued in 2008.
"If that quarter says \'b9It grows as it goes,' I gotta tell you I don't think it's going to be worth 25 cents," he said.
excerpts from The Albuquerque Journal, Article by Deborah Baker