Contributors

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

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

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

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. Matthew J. Martinez

Dr. Matthew J. Martinez (opens in a new tab) is currently serving as executive director of the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project. He is a former First Lieutenant Governor at Ohkay Owingeh.

Petroglyphs of a war club, concentric circles, and a partial human figure on the lower right overlook the northern Rio Grande Valley on Mesa Prieta.

Sacred Geographies Of Northern New Mexico

By Matthew J. MartinezPhotography by Jim O’Donnell To us, these petroglyphs are not the remnants of some long-lost civilizationthat has been dead for many years … they are part of our living culture.What is stored in the petroglyphs is not written in any book or to be found in any library. We need to return to them to remind us of who we are and where we came from, and to teach our sons and daughters of it.— Herman Agoyo, (Kaafedeh)Former Governor, Ohkay Owingeh and All-Indian Pueblo Council Chairman These words provide breath and spirit in the continued work of the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project (MPPP), which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2024.

Acequia (irrigation ditch) possibly near Cordova or Truchas, New Mexico, ca. 1925–1945. Photograph by T. Harmon Parkhurst. Courtesy the T. Harmon Parkhurst Collection, the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/ DCA), neg. no. 069231.

¿Dónde Está Tu Querencia?

BY DR. MATTHEW J. MARTINEZ Querencia: Reflections on the New Mexico Homeland (University of New Mexico Press, 2020) provides an insightful collection of essays that serve as a testament to the beauty of our state. And indeed, Querencia could not be more timely, as New Mexico continues to struggle amidst a global pandemic, threats to sacred sites, and strained community relations played out by removal of statues and monuments.

A group of Native American men in traditional attire and feather headdresses stand in a line outdoors with a man in a suit; trees and a large building are in the background. [gen-ai]

Sovereign to Sovereign

By Matthew J. Martinez With the relative newness of statehood against a backdrop of thousands of years of thriving Indigenous communities, the 1920s was a critical moment in time for New Mexico. State politics at the turn of the twentieth century were entrenched in assimilationist practices as evidenced by boarding schools where Native children were forcibly removed from their homelands to be “civilized” into good Americans.