Today's Features

New Mexico Highlands University student Juan Archuleta will be giving a presentation, Thursday, Feb. 21 at the Las Vegas Citizen's Committee for Historic Preservation, about folk music of New Mexico. The talk presents a historical and ancestral interpretation of New Mexico folk music, including rancheras, corridos, romances, and Inditas. Many of these songs originated in Spain and traveled to the New World with the Spanish.

A large part of my life has been spent at my dad’s office, next to Allsup’s and Pete’s Fitness. According to my mom, we practically lived there. I had my own little desk (which was actually just a small filing cabinet), and a blanket and pillow that I would use when I passed out on the floor.

Margarito Mondragn pressed gravel into upturned ground, spread asphalt, worked the bulldozers, scrapers, tampers that molded New Mexico’s roads until he shifted gears 13 years ago, retiring from the State Highway Department to become an artist like his grandfather and great-grandfather, both well-known santeros.

The Din emerged from three previous underworlds into this, the “Glittering World,” through a magic reed. The first beings from the other worlds were not like the people of today - they were animals, insects, the masked spirits seen in Navajo ceremonies, the mix of predator and prey, heaven and solid ground that forms reality. Melanie Yazzie captures the stories of her people through her own magic reed, the tools of an artist.