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Santa Fe is founded
New Mexico was New Spain's northernmost outpost, over two thousand kilometres from Mexico City and only loosely tied to the rest of the colony. The chronology is worth holding on to, because American history is usually told from the Atlantic coast outward. Spanish North America is older, and St Augustine in Florida older still, founded in 1565. The northern frontier of New Spain was thinly manned and dependent on mission stations, a structure that left it vulnerable to precisely what happened in 1680.
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