New Mexico Mercury

Cesar is not a Museum Piece

As the life of Cesar Chavez hit the big screen in recent days, the media rediscovered the man who has become a symbol for the Chicano movement, non-violence and labor rights.  And while the complexities of Chavez’s celebrated life were revisited by the pundits, the annual Cesar Chavez day events began unfolding across the land.

At a well-attended March 29 gathering in Albuquerque, New Mexico, another legendary farm labor leader and former colleague of Chavez had a message:

“Don’t put that cause in the museum. It doesn’t belong there. It belongs on the streets"...

Is Albuquerque Dying?

Cities, like people, are works in progress. They have life cycles. As Jane Jacobs elucidated in her path-breaking book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, they may fail or succeed. They are born and grow and thrive. And they shrink and wither and die. Once the process of disintegration gains momentum, a city may reach a turning point and its fate may become irreversible.

Has Albuquerque reached that turning point? Has it arrived at an irreversible point of disintegration? Is it dying? It is almost impossible to be certain of a turning point until it is in the rearview mirror. There are ample signs, however, that Albuquerque may be there...

Section K: Another Coaching Change?

After a devastating end to the basketball season, the last thing we need is another emotional roller coaster, but here we are.

On Thursday, CBS Sports columnist Gary Parrish reported that Craig Neal had emerged as a “legitimate target of South Florida’s ongoing coaching search.” While only citing “multiple sources” as evidence, Parrish connected the dots: USF’s new athletic director, Mark Harlan, was hired this March from UCLA where he was the associate athletic director; Harlan’s interest in hiring Neal comes from Steve Alford’s recommendation...

Uniting Frontiers: The Cabalgata Binaciónal Villista

It’s early morning on March 8 and some thirty or forty Mexican riders and horses are working their way through US Customs at Palomas, Mexico. This is the fifteenth annual Cabalgata Binaciónal Villista or Binational Villa Cavalcade, an effort to unify a border that has often been in conflict, no more so than on March 9, 1916 when General José Doroteo Arango Arámbula – better known as Pancho Villa – ordered about 100 of his soldiers to cross the border and raid Columbus, New Mexico...

Another Way of Seeing: elin o’Hare slavick

The North Carolina artist explores "spaces of otherness" in her photographic and collage work. 

Weekly Poem: Word Problems

One man, who is an artist, has two dreams and four children. The first dream of the artist is the multiplication of their dreams by an exponential factor of infinity. If each of these children are a brush and the artist has only one canvas, how much paint will he need to pigment a sky big enough...

Driving on Alternating Current

I have been reading about the new Tesla Model S electric car, and its $62,400 price tag and I was drawn back to 1931 when Nikola Tesla, the man whose name adorns their car, took the gasoline engine out of a Pierce-Arrow and replaced it with an 80-horsepower alternating current (A.C.) air-cooled motor with no obvious external source of power.

At a local radio shop he bought twelve vacuum tubes, some wires and assorted resistors, and assembled them in a circuit box 24-inches long, 12-inches wide and 6-inches high, with a pair of 3-inch rods sticking out. Getting into the car with the circuit box in the front seat beside him, he pushed the rods in, and announced, “We now have power,” and proceeded to test drive the car for a week, often at speeds of up to 90 mph...

Spring Awakening

Spring in the mountains reminds me of a woman awakening after a good night’s sleep. She yawns and stretches lasciviously. She comes slowly to awareness of the new day, the new season. She turns over and is tempted to sleep again as momentary snow storms speckle the evergreens, gentle reminders of the past winter, of sleep. She periodically dozes and awakens, as chill and warmth alternate, as clouds drift in and away, as winds torment us and then bring blessed serenity...

Enfranchisement: Right or Duty?

In June, 2013, the US Supreme Court struck down the most important aspect of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), thus paving the way for the flood of states that have since, either legislatively or judicially, opened to marriage equality. It was a pivotal moment for LGBTQ citizens and our allies. At the same time, in Shelby County vs. Holder, the Court gutted Section 4b of the Voting Rights Act, achieved through struggle and sacrifice at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in 1965. That decision was as disappointing as the other was joyous...

Only the Sane Love Susana

One of the most solid and fubsy accomplishments of our dear Republican governor Susana Martinez—the systematic destruction of social services, especially mental health services, is a sterling monument to the wider fulfillment of human potential and ethical greatness of heart, the fulfillment of holy prophecy to shrink government, and the fulfillment of  divine law that each and every human should be identity chipped and examined as a potential profit center. Faulty chip sets must be eliminated. Anyone who hints “abnormal” must be destroyed...