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Author: Shane Flores

A Reunion in the Mountains

A Reunion in the Mountains

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On a stormy summer Saturday in July, I was privileged to bear witness the first ever Costilla/Amalia Community Reunion. This event, years in the making, brought together the extended community of Costilla, NM and Amalia, NM, neighboring villages in the northernmost reaches of the New Mexico mountains, for a celebration of their shared history. The reunion was to my eyes a resounding success. Attendance was in the thousands and it was remarkable to see the strength of family and friendship…

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Group of men, women and a young girl moving a fallen log out of an acequia ditch.
Crowdsourcing Togetherness

Crowdsourcing Togetherness

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In the Facebook groups where manitas and manitos meet, digital communities centered around identification with the manitas and manitos homeland of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, group members have become quite adept at using the power of online crowdsourcing to create meaningful accretions of collective knowledge and memory.

Photo album open to display images, resting on a tile floor near eyeglasses and a chair. A man's hand holds open a page. On the page are black and white photos of scenes of people, buildings and waterfalls.
Ancestor Photos: Caring For and Sharing. Part 1

Ancestor Photos: Caring For and Sharing. Part 1

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Whether tucked away in a shoe box, lovingly placed into a photo album or nestled comfortably into the same frames for a century or more, the photos that link to us to the stories of our heritage are fragile artifacts that require careful attention, even as we steward them into the digital age.

Black and white photograph of boy wearing a light colored jacket and worn out blue jeans, is seated for a photograph in front of a dark photo backdrop. The photographer, a man in a suit is seen from the back, operating a wood box camera on a tripod. To theright is a window with an old fashioned black metal lunchbox resting on the window sill.
Yearbooks- Reflections of a Community’s Youth

Yearbooks- Reflections of a Community’s Youth

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There is something deeply intimate about yearbooks. Filled with professions of eternal love and friendship, inside jokes and the youthful signatures of our classmates, each copy is an intense snapshot of a very particular time and and a very particular place. But, what each year’s edition has in common, beneath the personalized messages from ones friends and classmates, is a record of community.

Food Heritage: Diving Deep into Milk and Toast

Food Heritage: Diving Deep into Milk and Toast

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Food writing and foodie culture, at its best, enthusiastically celebrates traditional food cultures, like ours here in Northern New Mexico. However, the quest for recipes often results in a concentration on a few iconic dishes that are repeated and often modified to suit popular tastes, as they travel far from their origins. While this aspect of foodie culture is an admirable thing in its own right, after all, who doesn’t like finding a delicious new variation on an old favorite? What can often be lost, is the thread of intimate heritage knowledge that ties us all to our culture.