Summer 2022 – El Palacio

A full moon shines in a starry night sky above silhouetted mountains with a faint orange glow on the horizon. [gen-ai]

Summer Poetry

Ana Castillo What Is Your Writing Process? With mop in one hand,cocktail in the other,at 9:00 a.m. or night,flies swatted,roach corpses swept.Lola Beltrán belts “Mi ranchito”through the house speakersfrom room to room.I hum off key.Mares fed, dogs let out,sun beating on the flat roof,moon rising behind a cloud—verses take form. If I Pray One morning I heard on the radio a boy named Trayvon was shot dead.Bent over, slipping on shoes, vertigo took hold.

By Ana Castillo and Petra Salazar

Categories: Essays and memoir, Poetry

First-Person, Plural

By Charlotte Jusinski Perhaps one of the most damaging “rules” of writing taught to us as children is that using first-person is unprofessional. Despite being told to think outside the box, we were forbidden to say who did all that thinking we were writing from. I remember conducting all varieties of grammatical acrobatics to avoid saying “I think” in my school papers.

Categories: Editor's Letter

A building with a conical roof stands near an arena at sunset, surrounded by trees and open fields under a partly cloudy sky. [gen-ai]

Challenging History

By Charlotte Jusinski The town of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, is quiet and pastoral. The streets of the farming and ranching community are gravelly and pocked, and rusty signs for Billy the Kid’s grave or Fort Sumner Lake dot the shoulders like tired but richly patinaed sentinels. Sometimes the whole town smells vaguely of petrichor, thanks to the Pecos River lurching lazily through the plains nearby, and irrigation ditches lining the streets fill the fields thick with green crops each spring and summer.

By Charlotte Jusinski, Molly Boyle, and Tira Howard

Categories: Featured, New Mexican history

A man in suspenders stands beside a motorcycle in a workshop, surrounded by tools and equipment, with a neutral expression. [gen-ai]

Tin Man

By Charlotte Jusinksi I first started researching my article about the Bosque Redondo Memorial (see page 24) in September 2019. I worked steadily for a few months, and was about halfway done when, on March 9, 2020, I learned I had to put it on ice for at least one issue’s worth of time. Of course, that initial “two-week” shutdown stretched for nearly two years.

By Charlotte Jusinski

Categories: Framework

A woman in a long coat walks under a covered walkway with brightly painted pillars and adobe-style architecture. [gen-ai]

Possibility and Ferocity

By Laureli IvanoffPhotographs by Kevin Lange Joy Harjo helps one to understand the concept that God, the Creator, should be feared. Having the chance to talk with the three-term United States poet laureate was like a wannabe boxer meeting Muhammad Ali. A C-team basketball player meeting Dr. J. A tennis player stealing a moment with Serena. To momentarily have access to the internationally renowned writer and poet was one part wonderful and three parts terrifying.

By Kevin Lange and Laureli Ivanoff

Categories: Essays and memoir, Indigenous arts and cultures

Two Indigenous women stand side by side against a cracked wall, one holding a bowl and the other with a woven basket balanced on her head. [gen-ai]

To Market, To Market

A century of harking back and looking forward at Santa Fe’s beloved summer institution Each August, an estimated 100,000 people attend the largest juried Native American art show in the world: the Southwestern Association of American Indian Arts’ annual Indian Market. Audrey Brokeshoulder (Navajo/Hopi/Absentee Shawnee), the 2011 winner of Best in Traditional Junior Girls at the Native American Clothing Contest at Indian Market.

By Cathy Notarnicola and Kitty Leaken

Categories: Featured, Indigenous arts and cultures, New Mexican history

A group of children and adults stand among trees in a cacao plantation, some looking at the camera, surrounded by leaves and cacao pods. [gen-ai]

All Roads Lead To… Chocolate

By Jason S. Shapiro The main benefit of this cacao is a beverage which they make called Chocolate, which is a strange thing valued in that country. It disgusts those who are not used to it, for it has foam on top or a scum-like bubbling.José de Acosta, 1590 Chocolate and I have a long history. One of my earliest childhood memories involves the aroma of fresh chocolate.

By Dr. Jason "Jay" S. Shapiro

Categories: Archaeology, Featured, Landscape and environment, Natural history

A man stands beside a horse-drawn wagon loaded with crops in a plowed field under a clear sky. [gen-ai]

I Change into My Levi’s That I Bought With Last Year’s Potato Harvest Money

By Jim O’Donnell Rosie left for Colorado when she was 6 months old. Her family travelled by covered wagon, crossing the mountains and making their way north. The year was 1921. José Delores Cordova, Rosie’s father and a recently returned veteran of the First World War, simply couldn’t make ends meet farming and ranching the high desert plateau north of Taos, New Mexico.

By Jim O’Donnell

Categories: Featured, Southwestern history