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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).
Henrietta Martinez Christmas is a family historian, lecturer, and researcher. She served as president of the New Mexico Genealogical Society from 2015 to 2016, and is a member of Los Compadres, a support group of the New Mexico History Museum’s Palace of the Governors–her favorite museum.
![Two horses pull a covered wooden wagon carrying two people on a dirt road in front of old-fashioned buildings. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/223-Years-of-Colonial_3-400x225.jpg)
BY HENRIETTA MARTINEZ CHRISTMAS If not for the colonial postal system, communications with Mexico and Spain would not have been sustained in the vast frontier we know as New Mexico. The governmental system of transporting mail, loyalty to the Spanish Crown, and the yearning for news beyond what was happening at a local level helped to sustain the colonial towns and villages of New Mexico.
