​And that was the beginning of the Abiquiu Volunteer Fire Department. Espanola was just too far away for an emergency like that.  With donations from local residents including the late Georgia O'Keeffe, the first Abiquiu fire fighters under Chief Juan Lopez bought a Mac fire truck and built the old station in the village on land loaned from the Abiquiu Land Grant. One year later, the substation in Medanales was constructed.

​Lynn continued: “My parents were elderly, so Dutsie, Mabel, Madgie, and I took care of them until they died in 1999. My Dad died on March 20th of 1999 and my Mom on July 21st of 1999. My Mom died at home, and I was devastated, because there was nothing I could do; I didn't know what to do because I had no medical knowledge at the time. So in 2000 I joined the Fire Department, first as a firefighter, and then a year later, I became an EMT. I felt that that was a way of making up for not being able to help my Mom”.
 
Lynn was a fabulous EMT. I often saw her in action at one of the frequent motor vehicle accidents or some other medical emergency. She quickly took charge and eased people’s pain until the ambulance arrived. It was no surprise that she decided to go to nursing school. She enrolled in 2009 and quit the fire department in 2011 because she was working full time, going to school full time, and had her children and family to take care of. When she graduated from nursing school she became an RN and has worked many jobs since then, as a home health registered nurse, and as the Director of Nursing at a nursing home. She’s currently working as a hospice nurse.
 
Lynn specified:  “As hospice nurses, we care for patients in the comfort of their homes. Hospice care focuses on quality of life, dignity, pain and symptom management for those who no longer are receiving curative treatment. As a hospice nurse my responsibility is to provide symptom management, emotional support, provide education, coordinate care and advocate for my patients”.
 
“The frequency of nursing visits depends on the acuity of the patient, and visits range from one day or two days per week to daily visits. It's a very rewarding job, because you're not only providing comfort and supportive care to the patient, but their families as well. I currently work for Del Corazon Hospice in Santa Fe. The staff at Del Corazon are a caring and supportive team of nurses, physicians, nurse practitioners, social workers, chaplains, hospice aides and volunteers. We support each other and we support our patients”.

​I asked Lynn about her childhood in Abiquiú – what was it like to grow up in the village?
“Oh, it was great back then”, I learned.  “You didn't have to lock your doors. You didn't have to worry about anybody. We would go out trick-or-treating, we would walk everywhere we wanted to. These days, you gotta drive your kids trick-or-treating and  everywhere else. It was a very tight-knit, family oriented community back then; everyone knew you and you knew everyone, and everyone helped each other out. It was beautiful”.
 
When I moved to Abiquiú in 2000, from Berkeley, California, I remember that my neighbor, the potter Dick Lumaghi, left the car keys in his car. I had never heard of anything like that, coming from a big city. I must have experienced the last remnants of that carefree time, and I asked Lynn about it.
 
 “Yes, you used to be able to leave your car keys in the car”, she confirmed. “You left your car unlocked and your door unlocked.  My parents always left the doors open and unlocked. People came to your house, they knocked and walked in, there was no fear back then”.

​I wanted to learn more about Lynn’s upbringing. “You said you were raised by your grandparents, and that it was a bit different from other kids. Were they more strict, or were they more old fashioned, and in what sense?” I asked.
 
“Well, you worked. You got up early in the morning, you made your bed, you went to school, when you came back from school there was always something to do”, Lynn told me. “My parents always had a garden, so in the spring and summer time that's what we were out there doing. My Dad (Grandpa) never had boys. He had three daughters, who were out there helping him with the cattle, ranch, and garden. As they had children, it was up to us, the grandchildren, to help as well.”
 
“Were there any stores up here in the village?” I wanted to know.
 
 “When I was growing up, there was Bode’s Mercantile and the bar. My parents owned the bar that was next to the church. I remember sitting behind the bar all the time. I remember being small enough that I could sit on top of the bar, on the counter. There were many memorable moments but the one that is unforgettable was a gentleman, his nickname was Sarge, he was one of the regulars. He had false teeth, and as soon as he'd walk in the door and see me he'd push his teeth out with his tongue. I thought it was the neatest thing at that age, I might have been four or five years old, I'd sit there for hours trying to pull my teeth out, because I thought it was the greatest thing ever, and I wanted to do the same”.
 
I had a good laugh, imagining little Lynn trying to wiggle her front teeth.

“Up in Vallecito – back here in our Vallecito – we also picked oregano. And we would  pick yerba del manso in Barranca, that's an herb for stomach issues, cough and colds, and mucous production. These are the things that my Mom grew up doing, and she passed it on to us. I still pick herbs, I still pick cota, or Indian tea, it grows all along Hwy 84 and 96. It's good for the bladder”.
 
Lynn explained that the children would learn this from their elders. They learned that all these herbs and plants are useful, they learned what to do with them and what they were for. What a wonderful tradition.
 
“We also picked poleo and yerba buena, peppermint and spearmint. We got the poleo in Youngsville at my aunt and uncle's house, and also yerba buena. When you were not feeling well or when you had a cold, you drank all these herb teas to get better”, Lynn went on. “Some other herbs we collected were manzanilla (chamomile)  and alucema (lavender). My Mom used to give that to the babies when they had colic, and that's what I do with my kids and with the grandkids. We make teas for fevers. Arnold taught me to use coffee and salt for fever. You rub the warm coffee with lots of salt on the person, it helps to break the fever quickly”. ​

Lots of things have changed since Lynn was a kid.  People don’t leave the keys in their cars any more; newer cars don’t even HAVE keys. But it’s good to know that the tradition of gathering herbs for teas and wild greens for salads is still alive. Young people don’t learn things like that at school, but I want to believe that knowing about plants and their benefits form an important counterpoint to our increasingly technology-driven culture.
 
Thank you, Lynn, for taking the time to talk to me! It was a lovely afternoon.

A poem for all times, not just today.
​By Zach Hively

Nov 7
I’d be lying if I said I was happy with the state of the world right now. I might truck in hyperbole, but never (I hope) in untruths.

It’s not as if my team just lost the Super Bowl. It’s that I don’t trust that we’re all playing by the same rules. And that gets dangerous when the rules are such things as Are people people?

Today is a day for a poem. All days are, really. But this is a day for this poem. The anger churning me as I write should actually be part of my every day; maybe it will be, now. Maybe this anger will grant me the clarity I need to work for what I think matters in this world.

By Carol Bondy

If you are off grid or have buried lines, I invite you to fill out this survey. 
Data will be provided to Kit Carson.
Current results
52 responses
43 have buried service
7 are off grid
2 didn't indicate

Please include your physical location.

Previous article

Last week I attended the official kick off for Kit Carson’s project to bring broad band to Abiquiu and surrounding communities, along 84, 96 and 554.  This is in with collaboration with Jemez Electric, USDA and NRTC (National Rural Telecommunication Cooperative).  The plan is to bring fiber optic service to 4000 households.   Work is expected to start in early 2025.

The fiber will be utilizing Jemez poles and should reach many.   But what about the folks that have buried electric or are off grid?   I asked Luis Reyes, Chief Executive Officer and General Manager at Kit Carson what their plans were to service those folks.  Their ultimate hope is to service all the households but it would help to get a sense where the needs are. Abiquiu News volunteered to help compile that information.
​
If you are off grid or have buried lines, I invite you to fill out this survey.  Data will be provided to Kit Carson.

Reporting supported with a grant from The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

DENVER—When Judge D. Brooks Smith traveled from Pennsylvania to Colorado, he passed over the 98th Meridian, the longitude line separating the water-rich East from the arid West. 

The former chief judge of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals left a land of rushing rivers and ample rainfall in western Pennsylvania to gather facts in a case called Texas v. New Mexico Supreme Court over water rights from the Rio Grande. 

Now a senior judge in the Third Circuit, Smith is serving as a special master to advise the U.S. Supreme Court on what is one of the longest-running disputes over dwindling water in the West, which also involves the federal government.

Smith traveled for a five-hour status conference last week at Denver’s federal courthouse involving attorneys representing the states, the federal government and several intervenors known as friends of the court. 

At issue is the water Texas and New Mexico are entitled to under the Rio Grande Compact, signed in 1938 to allocate the waters of the Rio Grande between the states. Texas brought the current lawsuit against New Mexico in 2013, alleging that farmers pumping from groundwater wells in southern New Mexico were diverting water that the compact allocates to Texas. 
​
The states reached a proposed settlement agreement in 2022 out of court. But the federal government opposed the deal. The Supreme Court then ruled in June that the case could not be settled without the federal government’s consent. Now the states and the federal government must resolve their disagreements to avoid going to trial in federal court, and Smith has ordered the parties to return to mediation no later than Dec. 16 in Washington, D.C. 

The outcome of Texas v. New Mexico could fundamentally change how groundwater is managed in the Rio Grande basin in New Mexico and far west Texas, both for the agricultural industry and cities like Albuquerque and Las Cruces, in New Mexico, that pump water from aquifers. It will also be a bellwether for how deeply the federal government can intervene in inter-state water conflicts, which are likely to increase as drought and aridification grip the western United States.

“[The United States] is going to have to take some sort of action to get a handle on groundwater over-pumping,” said Burke Griggs, a professor of water law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. “They really do want to keep the case alive.”

Groundwater Pumping Complicates Water Sharing Agreements

The Rio Grande forms in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado before flowing south through New Mexico to the Texas border. By the turn of the 20th century, disputes over Rio Grande water were brewing between farmers in southern New Mexico’s Mesilla Valley and those in El Paso, Texas, and neighboring Ciudad Juárez in Mexico. 

To address these concerns, Congress extended the Reclamation Act of 1902 to the Rio Grande in 1905 through the Mesilla Valley and El Paso. This allowed the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency responsible for water management and dam building in 17 Western states, to undertake the Rio Grande Project, which included construction of the Elephant Butte Dam and irrigation infrastructure downstream. 

Once completed, the Bureau of Reclamation began delivering water stored at Elephant Butte to two new irrigation districts: New Mexico’s Elephant Butte Irrigation District, and the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1 in Texas. 
​
Further complicating matters, the U.S. and Mexico signed a treaty in 1906 committing the U.S. to providing 60,000 acre feet of Rio Grande water to Mexico at Ciudad Juárez annually.

Meanwhile, over the ensuing three decades, farmers in Colorado’s San Luis Valley and along the Rio Grande near Albuquerque were using more and more water for irrigation. Texas farmers worried this could jeopardize their irrigation water; an agreement was needed to ensure the water wouldn’t be all diverted upstream. 

Thus, in 1938, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado signed the Rio Grande Compact, designating how much water Colorado must ensure would reach New Mexico, which in turn had to ensure a fair share of water would reach Texas.

A deep drought gripped the region in the 1950s. With less river water available for irrigation, farmers began to drill wells and pump groundwater. 

Hydrologists now understand that wells drilled into the aquifer can reduce the flow of water into connected streams and rivers, and New Mexico state law evolved to manage groundwater and surface water together. The state was a pioneer in understanding this connection, according to Fred Phillips, emeritus professor of hydrology and environmental science at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, New Mexico. 

“However, the Rio Grande Compact was put together long before that all happened,” he said in an interview. “It was entirely based on surface flow measurements, and nowhere in the compact is the effect of pumping even considered.”

When the Bureau of Reclamation releases water from Elephant Butte and Caballo Lake in New Mexico, it must travel roughly 100 river miles to the Texas-New Mexico state line. Texas brought the suit in 2013, arguing that groundwater pumping in this stretch of New Mexico siphoned off water destined for Texas under the Rio Grande Compact. The United States and Colorado later both became parties to the lawsuit. 

In 2022, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado proposed a consent decree to settle the case. 
The states wanted to install a new water gage at the Texas-New Mexico border on the Rio Grande, which would measure Texas’ share of water. 

Under the agreement, southern New Mexico would receive 57 percent of the water released from the upstream reservoirs and Texas 43 percent, accounting for drought and groundwater pumping. The states proposed calculating water deliveries based on what’s known as the “D2 period” between 1951 and 1978, when significant groundwater pumping had already begun.
But the federal government opposed the agreement. Its attorneys argued the deal did not reflect the United States’ treaty obligation to deliver water to Mexico, the Bureau of Reclamation’s role in water deliveries and its contracts with the irrigation districts. The federal government advocates for a return to a 1938 baseline for water deliveries, before the advent of widespread groundwater pumping.
​
This June, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to reject the consent decree, ruling that the states cannot reach a settlement without the federal government.

“That Texas’s litigation strategy has since changed, such that it is now willing to accept a greater degree of groundwater pumping, does not erase the United States’ independent stake in pursuing claims against New Mexico,” Justice Ketanji Jackson wrote for the majority. 

“We cannot now allow Texas and New Mexico to leave the United States up the river without a paddle,” she wrote.

Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the dissenting opinion.

“Where does that leave the States? After 10 years and tens of millions of dollars in lawyers’ fees, their agreement disappears with only the promise of more litigation to follow,” he wrote.

Gorsuch added that the decision could also hinder future cooperation between states and the federal government in water disputes.

“I fear the majority’s shortsighted decision will only make it harder to secure the kind of cooperation between federal and state authorities reclamation law envisions and many river systems require,” he wrote.

How to Manage a Declining RiverWashburn University’s Griggs, the author of a forthcoming paper in the Idaho Law Review on the case, said many water law experts were surprised when the Supreme Court rejected the consent decree.
“States that settle water disputes are now going to think twice,” he said. “It’s a real wrinkle we haven’t seen before, where a non-party to a compact can intervene and then block a settlement.”
Griggs said that settlements are preferable in these inter-state water disputes because expert attorneys can craft the agreements.
“Do we want to leave the water future of millions of Westerners in the hands of nine Eastern justices?” he said. “You want negotiated settlements that are done by the level and talent of the lawyers involved in this case.”
But he acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s ruling is “legally understandable” because the Bureau of Reclamation has a clear role in executing the Rio Grande Compact.
Thomas Snodgrass, a Justice Department attorney representing the Bureau of Reclamation, articulated this role in his presentation to Judge Smith. He said that the bureau must release more water because of New Mexico’s failure to regulate groundwater pumping. 
“Simply put, groundwater pumping is not sustainable,” Snodgrass said.
The New Mexico Pecan Growers, the City of Las Cruces and the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, among those filing amicus briefs, have sided with the states but technically are not parties to the case. 
The Albuquerque water authority’s attorney warned against the “federalization of groundwater” and said the federal government’s position could be “disastrous” for existing groundwater permitting in New Mexico.

By Jessica Rath

From NYP

To Our Dear Supporters,

While it is true that we have been displaced from the land that we’ve stewarded for the past 15 years, and that we are experiencing grief over having to close this chapter, we are also feeling very optimistic about the future of our organization and the new direction in which we are headed.

Northern Youth Project (NYP), was founded in 2009 by teens, for teens, empowering them to turn their ideas into action and engage in projects driven by their curiosity and passions. This has been achieved through practicing “art as activism”, tending the land through traditional agriculture, and leadership skill development. Our main priority has always been to fill a gap in our community by improving access to healthy experiences for youth in rural Northern New Mexico. NYP has served as a platform for young people to develop skills that promote personal well-being and foster investment in their communities and the environment. We have offered paid internships, often as a first employment opportunity and during the early pandemic, we provided a learning space for teens and children, who otherwise did not have a safe place to go, all at no cost to families.

This foundation that we have built will continue to live on beyond our garden here in Abiquiu. We are excited to share that we have already begun to partner with regional farmers and artists to create host sites that will provide valuable opportunities for our interns in 2025. These collaborations will continue our legacy of hands-on education and job skill development, helping to equip young people in our community with the skills they need to thrive. We believe that these connections will not only enrich the lives of our local youth, but will also strengthen our community ties in ways that extend out into our community, far beyond our beloved garden.

It has been a privilege to watch multiple generations of young people grow, in Abiquiu as well as in the many surrounding communities, by connecting with the land, the surrounding community, and each other. We are deeply grateful for the partnerships we've formed along the way, and of course, for all of you. Whether it has been through mentoring the youth, volunteering at events, or contributing your skills and energy into the garden, your support and enthusiasm have made more impact than we can possibly express. Together, we will continue to uplift and provide opportunities for youth in the region.

Thank you for welcoming us into your lives, for believing in our mission, and for being an integral part of our story. We sincerely hope you will come along with us for this new chapter and the ongoing work that lies beyond. As Lupita Salazar so beautifully wrote in her op-ed last week, “Quisieron enterrarnos, pero se les olvido que somos semillas. They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.”
​
With gratitude,
The Staff of Northern Youth Project

Recurring donations make all the difference for the health and sustainability of our programs!
We encourage you to consider becoming a donor to NYP today:
https://secure.qgiv.com/for/northernyouthproject/
​

To prevent hackers, foreign enemies, and other bad guys from meddling with democracy, the New Mexico Secretary of State works with the Air National Guard in a complicated operation that keeps the process running smoothly on Election Day

by Michael Benanav
Searchlight New Mexico

On an afternoon in early October, inside a bland, beige office on Albuquerque’s Kirtland Air Force Base, two uniformed servicemen are sitting at desks, their eyes scanning computer monitors. Both are members of a team coordinated by the Cyber Unit of New Mexico’s Air National Guard that helps ensure New Mexico’s election security. At the moment, they’re engaged in what’s called “active threat hunting” — searching for signs that someone, somewhere, might be trying to break into any of the state’s systems related to voting.

“We look for any malicious activity,” says Master Sergeant Ray Torres, a guardsman who works with the New Mexico Secretary of State’s office and the Department of Homeland Security to safeguard elections.

While it’s impossible to hack into voting machines, which are “air-gapped” — meaning they’re never connected to the internet — voter registration rolls and other components of election infrastructure exist online.

“We’ve had nation-states poking around in our websites and our online systems,” says Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico’s Secretary of State, whose office is responsible for running elections. The first time this occurred, as far as she’s aware, was in 2016. The country poking around? Russia. 

“No actual election outcomes were affected, but that raised huge concerns,” she says. “Our cybersecurity posture has improved dramatically since then.”

Knowing this, foreign adversaries have attempted to meddle in American elections in recent years. And frequent and false claims by Donald Trump and others in the GOP that the 2020 presidential election was stolen have become a rallying cry for his supporters. Election officials know there’s an imperative to safeguard the integrity of the vote — and to counter widespread disinformation that amplifies lies about rigged voting results.

“The military is nonpartisan,” Torres says. “We can’t show favoritism. We just make sure the election is fair.”

Describing the threats his team looks out for, Torres explains that some hackers “just want to cause havoc. But some state actors might want to get a foothold in the network to see what they can find, and then use that information to possibly throw the result of an election.” Many bots, he says, are automatically blocked by software. “What we’re really looking for is a ‘zero-day exploit’ — something never before seen in the wild, a new vulnerability or strategy to get into the system.”

New Mexico’s online systems haven’t always been this secure. “We’ve had nation-states poking around in our websites and our online systems,” says Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico’s secretary of state, whose office is responsible for running elections. The first time this occurred, as far as she’s aware, was in 2016. The country poking around? Russia. 

“No actual election outcomes were affected, but that raised huge concerns,” she says during an interview at her office in Santa Fe. “Our cybersecurity posture has improved dramatically since then.”

The secretary’s office has its own election security program, which Toulouse Oliver describes as “the first line of defense.” Among its many activities: conducting post-election audits to verify that the vote count is 100 percent accurate; mandating the use of paper ballots; and certifying voting machines. Her office also works closely with an array of partners, including New Mexico’s Department of Information Technology, as well as federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Department of Justice.

According to Toulouse Oliver, most genuine risks to election integrity involve politically motivated efforts to disenfranchise voters or spread disinformation that influences how people vote. “It’s almost impossible to tamper with a voting machine that’s actively deployed in an election,” she says.

On Election Day, paper ballots are scanned into air-gapped voting machines. When the polls close, the memory cards from those machines are uploaded to another air-gapped system before the results are entered into a system that’s connected to the internet — “So that we’re preserving the record,” Toulouse Oliver says. In addition to tallying the votes, the machines save a digitally scanned image of every ballot, just in case something were to happen to the paper originals.

While statewide rules match the best practices recommended by the U.S. Election Election Assistance Commission, Santa Fe County takes it a step further. According to County Clerk Katharine E. Clark, officials use vote tabulators with GPS trackers so that they know if the tabulators have been moved to any place they’re not supposed to be.

“We have redundancy built into the system,” Toulouse Oliver says. “A lot of people, if they were to say, this is what I think needs to happen in order to make elections more secure — all that stuff is actually already happening. It’s like, no, we already thought of this!”

Contact: UCB PAO, [email protected]

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Bureau of Reclamation is set to evaluate the performance of El Vado Dam through a ‘first fill test’ over the coming months. This test will involve incrementally raising the water level in El Vado Reservoir to assess the dam’s stability and performance at various elevations.

The results of the first fill test will help Reclamation better understand the reservoir and the potential water storage opportunity that may exist there while undergoing Reclamation’s Safety of Dams process to develop and implement a long-term solution.

Reclamation, Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Users Association, and the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District are finalizing an agreement to allow the option of storing water that originates in the Rio Grande basin in the Abiquiu Reservoir for up to 10 years. It also allows the continued operation of the Middle Rio Grande project while Reclamation moves forward with any necessary Safety of Dams improvements at El Vado Dam.

“We are grateful to our partners at the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, and the city of Santa Fe for their collaboration in using their water resources for this important evaluation,” said Reclamation Albuquerque Area Office Manager Jennifer Faler. “We are optimistic that the first fill test this winter will pave the way for water storage in El Vado Reservoir as we explore revised construction solutions to address the dam’s issues.”

In 2022, Reclamation lowered the water level in El Vado Reservoir to facilitate necessary repairs. An assessment during this period revealed that the dam’s steel faceplate and supporting structures were in significantly worse condition than previously understood. Consequently, in March 2024, construction was halted, and a suspension of work was issued to the project contractor due to unforeseen field conditions that presented numerous challenges.

Reclamation remains committed to rehabilitating El Vado Dam in partnership with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. Under the Safety of Dams program, we are developing strategies to reduce seepage through the dam while ensuring mission-critical water deliveries and storage objectives are met.

Reclamation is actively engaging with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and other stakeholders to ensure the safe operation of El Vado Dam.
For more information, please visit our webpage 

In which I relate to the staging of "Cebollas" in Santa Fe.
By Zach Hively
​
A trip to the theater offers us a moment to pause in our own overwhelming lives. Sometimes, we just need that break from driving places and interacting with other people who might, a little too often, be just a little too much like ourselves for comfort.
Yes, granted, the theater has people in it. However—it’s superior to the cinema, with its fake people on screen, because the people in theatrical seats actually mostly shut up during the show lest they get called on stage for some Surprise Improv! as punishment for disturbing the play.
So it was with this need for escapism that I entered the Santa Fe Playhouse last Friday night to watch Cebollas, a new play by New Mexico wright Leonard Madrid.

​​My week leading up to this had been full. I had driven from Colorado Springs to Albuquerque (after driving, a few days prior, from Albuquerque to Colorado Springs, as round trips tend to go). Then I had spent some time with family in the 505 (including none of my four sisters, though yes I have four sisters. This will matter in a moment).

All this to say: I yearned for ninety minutes free of relatives and the open road, with a bit of good ol’ comedy.

What is this new play about? Well, it opens on a dead man (Mitchell, played stonily by Mitchell) in Albuquerque, which landed a little close to home. Three sisters must load his inanimate body into their car and return it to his home—before morning—in Denver. Nearly the entire play takes place on I-25, including, obviously, a stop at IKEA, because every New Mexican is obligated to stop at IKEA when we have a car with some free space left over.

Highway signs denote all the locations along the way. All the locations, that is, that I had just driven through—twice.

So much for escapism. I had only regret, because I had missed the IKEA. At least I didn’t have my sisters with me for the drive. Nor a Mitchell.

However, it became promptly apparent that these three sisters are funnier than mine, likely because (unlike my own sisters) their lines had been workshopped.

Yolie, the distant youngest (played by Cristina Vigil), sports a sunny dress, a nine-month bump, and a dead Mitchell in her living room armchair. Celia (Vanessa Rios y Valles) rocks the nurse scrubs and a recent conversion to lesbianism. And the elder sister—and thus the one with my greatest sympathies—is Tere (Christina Martos), already tired at the start from holding everyone’s crap together and the only one with a purse I trusted held granola bars, tissues, bandaids, and a paperback book thick enough to smack sisters (hers or anyone else’s) upside the head.

I’m used to the theater whisking me to some far-off place and time: Shakespearean England, for instance, or Shakespearean Italy. But these three sisters? They sounded all familiar. Like the people I grew up with, dropping Spanish words in ways I understand but am too gringo to do myself, adding plurals to words like no one else does—you don’t even know. The accent I have pieces of, sometimes, without even realizing it, so people abroad think I must be all Canadian or something because they can’t place it.

Look, I’m a straight white dude in the US of A. I see myself more or less represented everywhere I look, except for like Taylor Swift concerts. I’m not used to feeling quite so at home when I see myself represented, though, as I was at Cebollas. Not a hundred percent, of course; I am not a hermana from Burque, after all. But I might feel more comfortable than Mitch does, that Colorado womanizer, buckled in the backseat with sunglasses on and Burqueña sisters having it out with each other.

No spoilers here, ’kay? I just want to say that this production crew staged Cebollas magnificently for staging it so minimally. Even the scene breaks incorporate bridge plot as the sisters help rearrange the bare-boned car and hoist Mitchell from one compromising spot to another, unclear if they’re actually committing any kind of crime, but knowing it gets worse when they cross into colorful (and repetitively so) Colorado.

And those sisters? They attain more tenderness, more connection, more self-awareness than my sisters ever gain in a single hour-and-a-half timeframe. These three characters pull off real sisterhood—I bought it, and I know sisters.

If any one thing felt untrue—in a play very good at plucking out what feels true—it’s this: No one can make it from Albuquerque to Denver that fast. Not with so many stops; especially not with one at a casino gas station. And not with all the construction happening around Pueblo at the moment. Trust me; you don’t even know.

Cebollas will perform on the main stage of the Santa Fe Playhouse (142 East De Vargas Street, Santa Fe, NM) through November 10, 2024. Performances are on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm.
Read here for more information about the production.