Summer 2026

2026 / Vol. 131 / No. 2

Each of the articles in the Summer 2026 issue offer a reckoning and reconstruction of New Mexico history. How can we piece together our history from an incomplete archive, and what do we make of the archive that remains? Are the documents we have access to written by reliable narrators? What do we know about the contexts, biases, and motivations?

Within the context of the U.S.’s 250th anniversary, former New Mexico State Historian Dr. Estevan Rael-Gálvez discusses New Mexico’s circumstances in 1776 as revealed in documentation from Francisco Atanasio Domínguez. How are national and regional origin stories created, and how can we reckon with our complex past?
In 2022, the largest catastrophic wildfire in New Mexico to date, burned five hundred square miles. Oliver Horn writes about the ways the loss of communal land in land grant communities helped contribute to fires like Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon.
For many travelers along Route 66, New Mexico promised freedom. Lazarus Letcher’s essay reveals the history of Black and LBGTQ+ travelers arriving in New Mexico and their own journey in finding community and acceptance in the Land of Enchantment.
In an exhibition on view at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, artists grapple with New Mexico’s nuclear past and present. Myrriah Gómez’s article unpacks the generational legacy of the Trinity Test on New Mexicans living downwind of the explosion as depicted in art that asks viewers not to look away.
Sandra Hale Schulman’s article recounts the story of three Diné women elders who organized their community to stop a proposed power plant. The article is accompanied by Carlan Tapp’s powerful documentary photographs.
Shayla Blatchford writes about her family’s history of displacement and the ways she came to discover the legacy of uranium mining in her homelands.

See all articles from this issue below. And to locate articles from previous issues, visit El Palacio‘s online library.

A layered abstract image features silhouettes of tree branches against a vibrant orange and red sunset with reflected light spots and overlapping textures.

Troubling the Archive

When Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez traveled from Mexico City to the far frontier of New Mexico in 1776 on behalf of the Church and the Spanish Crown, he was on a record-keeping mission. As Estevan Rael-Gálvez writes in his article about reckoning with the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, Domínguez also documented the state of the written archive in this place far removed from the small, new U.S.

By Emily Withnall

Categories: Editor's Letter

Six vintage covers of Bob Damron’s address books from 1969, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1975, and 1976 shown in a grid arrangement.

Cruising the Mother Road

I found my first taste of freedom crisscrossing cornfields shadowed by windmills in rural Indiana in a hand-me-down Oldsmobile. Burnt CDs from friends and lovers made my small-town life feel cinematic. On the worn leather seats, I came out, I made out, I ran away, I came home, I made homes. Like many queer and trans people before me, I found freedom in the thrum of my tires on asphalt and gravel: safety in flight.

By Lazarus Letcher

Categories: Essays and memoir, Featured, New Mexican cultures, New Mexican history, Southwestern history, Staff favorites

A Question of Power

The power of protest suffused the smoky air in Window Rock, Arizona. It was January 2007. Diné men wearing respirators held signs that read “Defend your right to clean air.” Diné women held American flags and faced off against police with hands on their pistols. A large painted sign of a smoke-belching power plant loomed ominously in the background, while a Diné woman looked pleadingly to the skies with a nuclear power logo superimposed over her gas mask.

By Sandra Hale Schulman

Categories: Indigenous arts and cultures

A woman carrying a bucket stands outside a house, watching a large nuclear explosion with a mushroom cloud in the distance under a blue sky.

When Atomic Testimony Becomes Art

“Dear Journalist,” the letter starts. “You have been tasked with investigating recent deaths linked to alleged creature sightings in the Tularosa Basin area. It is speculated that these deaths have been occurring in Southern New Mexico ever since ‘the sun rose twice’ last year.” These are the initial instructions for a 3D point-and-click video game called El Sol. I am instructed to embark on a journey to photograph “creatures” to help explain these mysterious deaths.

By Myrriah Gómez

Categories: Featured, Landscape and environment, New Mexican cultures, New Mexican history, Southwestern history

A hillside forest of scorched, leafless trees stands beneath a layer of mist, showing signs of recent wildfire damage.

The Loss of the Commons: A Historic Context for the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire

In April 2022, the largest and most destructive wildfire in New Mexico history, known as the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, erupted in the Santa Fe National Forest.The wildfire originated from two U.S. Forest Service prescribed burns that escaped control in the Pecos/Las Vegas Ranger District. The combined fire spread down the east side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains into nearby communities in Mora and San Miguel Counties.

By Dr. Oliver Horn

Categories: Farming and ranching, Featured, Landscape and environment, New Mexican history, Southwestern history, Staff favorites

A rustic wooden and metal gate stands open in a wire fence, with rocky hills and sparse vegetation in the background under a blue sky.

Remembering as Resistance

My mother was adopted through the Indian Adoption Project, a federal program that ran from 1958 to 1967 and was designed to assimilate Native children by placing them with white families. Unexpectedly, she was adopted by my Navajo and Choctaw grandparents. Both had their separate experiences of assimilation as children through the Indian Boarding School policy. In 1964, their work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs moved our family from the Navajo Nation to Los Angeles under the Indian Relocation Act.

By Shayla Blatchford

Categories: Essays and memoir, Framework, Indigenous arts and cultures, Landscape and environment, New Mexican history, Southwestern history

18th-century map of North America showing territories, geographical features, and colonial claims, with a decorative cartouche in the upper right corner.

Reckoning with 1776

It is known today as New Mexico, a place where time is recognized as “immemorial.” Here, the footprints of people in motion, likely left 23,000 years ago, remain impressed upon the land. We honor breath and recognize the living presence of people whose complex identities have formed across generations. We speak and listen to a multitude of languages, stories, and prayers.

By Dr. Estevan Rael-Gálvez

Categories: Featured, New Mexican history, Southwestern history, Staff favorites