Fall 2025

2025 / Vol. 130 / No. 3

In New Mexico, as in many other places, labor has often been deeply entangled with questions of race, class, nationality, and colonialism, and many of the articles in this issue grapple with these themes.

In a feature that reads like a gripping TV series, David Correia about the history of the Gallup Coal Wars of 1933-1935 (complete with kidnappings, assassinations, deportations, union organizing and suppression and more).
A profile written by Chelsey Johnson of writer Daisy Atterbury and their new book, The Kármán Line, that examines the legacies of nuclear colonialism in NM, identity and belonging, and space travel.
An excerpt of Daisy Atterbury’s The Kármán Line paired with charcoal drawings by Nina Elder.
In an essay about Española, Petra Salazar celebrates her hometown’s centennial by writing about the cultural legacy of low riding and generosity there.
In a co-authored article by University of New Mexico professors José Rivera, Levi Romero, and Enrique Lamadrid write about the historical legacy of molinitos (small gristmills) in Northern New Mexico. This is accompanied by one of Romero’s poems.

Returning to the Body

While editing this issue of El Palacio, I spent a lot of time thinking about the body. Work has always been central to the American identity and in the West this work has—and continues to be—rooted in hard, physical labor. It’s the kind of labor that does not allow you to forget about your body. In New Mexico, as in many other places, this labor has often been deeply entangled with questions of race, class, nationality, and colonialism.

By Emily Withnall

Categories: Editor's Letter

A small, weathered log cabin sits on bare ground with plants growing on its roof and sides under a clear blue sky.

Los Molinitos de la Gente

After the Spanish introduced wheat to the Americas, molinitos (small gristmills) in New Mexico played a major role in the agricultural economy for centuries. Wheat, in its ground form as flour, was a staple during the Spanish colonial period of the fledgling Province of Nuevo México. Whole kernel flour could spoil, so it was baked into bizcochos (hard tack) that dried easily and kept for months.

By Enrique R. Lamadrid, José A. Rivera, and Levi Romero

Categories: Featured

A black and white aerial view of a construction site with circular structures, scattered materials, vehicles, and uneven terrain.

Roads of the Dead

I’m going to Spaceport America. To access the spaceport, I’ll have to cross the Jornada del Muerto, a desert basin cut by a hundred-mile road. I calculate and the Jornada del Muerto is longer than the distance between the edge of space and my body on land. Trace one expanse, maybe you’d carve across another. The Jornada has been mapped many times, including by Google.

By Daisy Atterbury

Categories: Uncategorized

A grayscale aerial view of a barren landscape with scattered craters of various sizes, distant mountains, and cloudy sky overhead.

The Shapes of Space

Space is a shapeshifting throughline in Daisy Atterbury’s book The Kármán Line. There’s space as in I need some—a lover pulling away. There’s space misread as emptiness, as in the vast expanses of deserts and oceans, open space where governments detonate practice bombs. The space of the page flows and breaks around prose, poetry, and numbers. Above all else (literally) lies outer space, all stars, infinity, and awe, transcending the line between humanity’s illusory borders and the infinite free space beyond.

By Chelsey Johnson

Categories: Uncategorized

A brick watermill with a large wooden wheel is surrounded by green trees and foliage, with sunlight filtering through the leaves.

A Visit to La Cueva

Northern New Mexico is full of unexpected surprises, like a stunning vista around a bend in the highway, or a crumbling adobe building at a fork in the road. With history nestled in the valleys and tradition perched atop every mountain, the ties to this land stretch back through triumph, turmoil, and time. In one of these valleys, partially hidden behind a cluster of trees along a two-lane road, is La Cueva Mill and its adjoining farm.

By Chris Romero

Categories: Framework

A large crowd of people, mostly women, sit closely together indoors, raising their fists in unison, suggesting a protest or rally.

Strike and Struggle

When violence erupted in early 1935 after the Gallup American Coal Company attempted to evict striking miners from its coal camps, Robert Minor, the famous union activist, raced to Gallup, New Mexico, from New York to help. It would be his first and only trip to Gallup, and he would barely make it out alive. Minor hoped to lend his celebrity to the cause of the Gallup miners.

By David Correia

Categories: Featured

Aztlán

The City of Española, New Mexico, officially turns one hundred years old this year. But the land and people of the valley tell a deeper story—one that slips past the barbed-wire borders of time, place, and stereotype, refusing to be hemmed in by the bias of public imagination. The centennial fiestas in September offer more than municipal commemoration—they are an opportunity to honor nuestra querencia: our belonging to the land and lifeways that have sustained valley communities for millennia.

By Petra Salazar

Categories: Featured