New Mexico Mercury

A decade of 100% defense against anti-conservation bills at the NM Legislature

For the 10th year in a row, Conservation Voters New Mexico (CVNM) and our allies successfully defeated every anti-conservation measure introduced in the state legislature during the 2014 New Mexico Legislative session which ended yesterday at noon.

I am so proud to be a part of this conservation legacy that CVNM is continuing for the people of New Mexico. For a decade CVNM has been on the frontlines, fighting the good fight, protecting our air, land, and water for a healthy Land of Enchantment...

Humphrey’s World: Downs Racino

Downs Racino

Women’s Murders, Justice and Corruption in New Mexico

Since 2009, Frontera NorteSur has followed the story of 11 murdered women and girls found in a common burial site on the West Mesa of Albuquerque, New Mexico. February 2 marked the fifth anniversary of the discovery. Although there has been much talk and speculation about who is responsible for the killings, the crimes remain mired in impunity.

What’s more, women with profiles similar to the West Mesa victims are still missing, prompting further speculation of another clandestine graveyard somewhere out there...

Tax Credit Increase for Low-Income Working Families Would Increase Tax Fairness

New Mexico lawmakers have at their disposal an effective tool for helping the working families in our state who need it most. The Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC)—a credit based on the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)—goes to low- and moderate-income families that work, helping them meet their basic needs. Increasing the credit would do so much for these families struggling to get by on low wages, and there’s a way to pay for the increase that actually helps restore a little bit of fairness to our tax system...

Conscious Naming

In Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning: Her Lifetime in Photography by Elizabeth Partridge (San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 2013), I find the following paragraph: “Like many of the other San Francisco bohemians, Maynard [Dixon] and Dorothea found the label ‘artist’ highly suspect. In a kind of reverse snobbery, those who called themselves artists were thought to be more interested in being an artist than in making serious art ( . . . ) ‘I was a tradesman,’ Dorothea said. ‘I really and seriously tried, with every person I photographed, to reveal them as closely as I could.’” (p. 13)

This passage brought to mind the very different weights, different meanings even, that certain words hold for us, depending upon our cultural contexts and the time in which we live...

Section K: Teaching Marcus Smart and What We Learn

As Marcus Smart returns to the court this Saturday, I wonder what he’s been taught and what we have learned. After Smart’s push of a fan in Lubbock last week, Oklahoma State University and the Big 12 attempted to send a message that violence among players and spectators has no place in college basketball. While it is debatable whether or not a three-game suspension conveys this message, the situation leaves Smart and the rest of us with a clear lesson: universities and intercollegiate athletic institutions are not ready for black athletes to bear their voices...

The Deportee Chronicles: The Girl from Guajajalmiton

More than 768,000  people were deported from the United States during 2012 and  2013  alone.  While mass media coverage of the ongoing immigration debate focuses on events in Washington and other parts of the United States, little attention has been paid to the lives of people in Mexico and other counties who have already been deported.

A large group of people who were largely invisible on this side of the border are now in the same condition on the other side of the line.  In an effort to help fill the media gap,  Frontera NorteSur begins an occasional series on the faces, the lives and the dreams of deportees now residing in Mexico. Today's article is the story of one young woman who was suddenly ordered out of a country she called home...

Weekly Poem: Day One (a sestina)

Day One
the big bomb to win
the war of wars, the big
one, how many times
do you think, Doctor?
The Army wants to know!

Dr. Oppenheimer says he knows
the gadget will work and be one
big blast (in his doctoral
opinion), a dud would not win
us anything, we need more time
to develop a device that’s big

enough to blast a whole city...

The Pink Store

Crossing the border between Columbus, New Mexico and Palomas, Mexico, you see a large store painted pink called The Pink Store. It is, to me, the symbol of this small, poor town, a symbol of wellbeing or, sometimes, trouble.

Founded 25 years ago by Ivonne and Sergio Romero, a very special couple, it has a wonderful restaurant and a marvelous selection of ceramics, silver, jewelry and folk art from all over Mexico.  When it is full of customers, you know that things are going well in Palomas. When there are no customers, it’s a signal of problems in the town...

El Machete: Art Worth More Than People

The Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi