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For over a century, El Palacio has been a forum for voices exploring New Mexico’s art, archaeology, history, and landscape. Explore the writers, photographers, historians, and scientists whose perspectives have defined the magazine’s pages—past and present.
Arthur Sze is the current U.S. Poet Laureate. Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of twelve books, including Into the Hush, Sight Lines, and others. Sze’s poems have been translated into fifteen languages, and he is the recipient of the National Book Award among many other honors. He lives in Santa Fe.
Deborah Jackson Taffa is a citizen of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo. Her memoir Whiskey Tender was a 2024 National Book Award Finalist and was longlisted for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Taffa serves as the director of the MFA in creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Cara Romero is an award-winning contemporary fine art photographer. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero’s expansive oeuvre has been informed by formal training in film, digital, fine art, and commercial photography. She maintains a studio in Santa Fe, regularly participates in Native American art fairs, and was featured in PBS’ Craft in America (2019).
Dr. Rick Hendricks (opens in a new tab) is the New Mexico state records administrator and a former New Mexico State Historian (2010-2019). He received his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his PhD from the University of New Mexico. He also studied history of Spain in the Americas at the Universidad de Sevilla. Rick is a former editor of the Vargas Project at the University of New Mexico. He later worked at New Mexico State University (NMSU), most notably on the Durango Microfilming Project, helping to produce and edit a 1,400-page guide to the collection. Rick has written written, cowritten, and coedited more than twenty books about the history of the American Southwest and Mexico. Among his recent books are Pueblo Indian Sovereignty: Land and Water in New Mexico and Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019) and Pablo Abeita: The Life of Times of a Native Statesman of Isleta Pueblo, 1871-1940 (2023).
By Rick Hendricks Historians and buffs of the Plains and the Southwest likely know the tragic story of the denouement of the Villasur expedition, which departed Santa Fe on June 16, 1720, in search of French soldiers on the eastern plains. Taking the field was a small force consisting of approximately forty-two mounted soldiers, sixty Pueblo allies, an unknown number of Apache guides, and a Franciscan friar.
![A man on horseback leads pack animals carrying goods up a hill, with a wagon and people near a round stone tower in the background under a clear sky. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Reflection-on-the-three-trails_1-400x225.jpg)
BY RICK HENDRICKS Hosting the Three Trails Conference in Santa Fe provides an occasion to reflect on how this rather remote, small city came to be the hub of such historically significant transportation arteries. It also makes for an appropriate time to contemplate the trails themselves and how we have chosen to commemorate them. (more…)
