Manitos

In every meeting with our Community Archivists, we talk about what we’re scanning and documenting. Last week, we held one of the most beautiful meetings I’ve attended. Each community archivist brought samples of what they had been working on and shared them with the group. Each photo came with a story and each story was revelatory as the last. It confirmed my commitment to this work and to this project. It also reminded me of some of the things I…

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Last Friday, I went for a walk by Santa Fe Community College (SFCC) and saw the beginning of the Calf Canyon Fire. The smoke rising from the mountains provided a stark contrast to the bright blue skies. I stopped to take a picture. Today, I had planned to go for another walk but as I drove south on Saint Francis, the sky began to change from blue to brown and by the time I got to SFCC, the mountains were…

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I stepped away from my weekly update last Friday because one of our community archivists Andrew and I were traveling to Las Cruces to visit my uncle and collect stories and photographs from him. I had not been to Las Cruces since before the pandemic. And that visit had been for my dad’s funeral. It felt strange to visit Las Cruces (well, technically Vado) without seeing my dad. His trailer sat empty and unused; the inside coated with dust. I…

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As I mentioned in last week’s update, Saturday, March 26 was the opening reception of the Following the Manito Trail Exhibit in Taos. Over the past year, I had the privilege of working with Dr. Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez (Arizona State University), Dr. Trisha Martínez (University of New Mexico, Taos/University of Wyoming), Poet Laureate Levi Romero (University of New Mexico) and curandero, santero and Ph.D. candidate Jesús Villa (Arizona State University) on this project. Weekly, we met to plan out programming and…

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Growing up in the Texas Panhandle, there were two field trips that happened every Spring. One was a visit to Palo Duro Canyon. Mom would pack a brown paper bag with a ham and cheese sandwich, Doritos, and a Coke wrapped in aluminum foil. As our bus descended what I now realize as an incredibly precarious road down to the canyon floor, my energy buzzed. I prepared myself for the sharp turns of the Sad Monkey Railroad train ride and…

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It’s the third Friday of Lent today and while I was sitting at my desk finishing up the week’s emails, the sun moved lower into my living room window and filled the living room with its late winter light. Yesterday, it snowed and today I didn’t even need a jacket when I went out for my afternoon walk. In meetings this morning everyone brought up the wind. That is the story of spring and it is the story of cuaresma….

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María Teresa Huerta Márquez passed away February 21, 2022. Without question, every manito researcher has been affected by the work of Teresa. Whether or not we had the privilege of working with her in person, any work done in the field of Mexican American literature, Nuevomexicano/a literature or Southwestern literature has benefited from her tireless energy. How many of us remember walking into the dark coolness of the Center for Southwest Research at the University of New Mexico and seeing…

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