Chimayo

Then we get the chimayo red.

Is that correct?

Chimayo.

Yeah, I mean, you do.

And that chili's smaller, thicker, you know, is what I've seen.

How powerful that voice must be to get there.

Once in a small chapel in Chamayo, New Mexico, I knelt in the dirt because I thought that's what you were supposed to do.

That was before I learned to harness that upward motion inside me, before I nested my head in the blood of my body.

There was a sign and it said, this earth is blessed, do not play in it.

Thank you so much.

Um, it was such a pleasure having you and Kevin in Chimayo.

So speaking of home, you grew up in Truchas, and so much of your work treats land not only as landscape, but as history, as livelihood, as inheritance, as contested territory.

And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about this place that's so important to you.

So yeah, tell me about where you are right now.

S- sure.

So I am in Chimayo, New Mexico.

Mm-hmm.

A-and, um, you know, we, we make as many connections as we possibly can.

We actually recently did some really successful connecting of our, one of our rural routes in Peñasco to, um, to Chimayo.

Um, and I got a-- I rode that bus recently, and there was a lot of, uh, praise for being able to make that connection because now instead of having to go b-basically three-quarters of a way around a clock, you know, where it would take them maybe three hours one way to get to Española, they can do it on a connection, you know, instead do it in, uh, do it in an hour and a half, you know, in about half the amount of time.

You know? So, you know, it, it means a lot to be able to make those connections, you know, for folks out there in the community.

And people go on pilgrimage for 80 miles.

They go, I believe, somewhere from Albuquerque to Chimayo.

Chimayo, a little history of Chimayo.

Before Europeans came onto the North American continent, the Native Americans of the area used the area of Chimayo for healing.

They would go and they would just sit in the dirt.

And they would get healings.

And when the Spaniards came, they saw that too.

And so they'd go sit in the healing soils and the healing earth there in Chimayo.

... imprecations that people have kind of, I don't know, that have been stirring in that pot for thousands of years.

There's a place here like that, um, out in Santa Fe called Chimayo.

It's this old, old, old church that is- Very famous and very sacred.

And, you know, they have like a little tiny well there where you can pray and then put a picture up of your prayer and y- that you can take a little of the sand that's been blessed.

You just deserve transparency.

So that means if the state police is investigating a murder outside of Chimayo, it won't take us three days to get a report at the Santa Fe New Mexican.

I don't know what the delays are.

I don't know what the delays