It’s Thursday, June 15, 2035 and my grandson,
Neruda Zapata Sandoval, is driving me from my home in Albuquerque
to a special event in Truchas.
Like most other New Mexico youth of his generation, 18-year-old
Neruda speaks several languages.
He learned to read and write English and Spanish in the dual language
elementary school programs the State of New Mexico implemented
in 2015.
In high school, Neruda chose to learn Chinese and Portuguese from
more than 15 languages offered by New Mexico public high schools.
To keep up, I’ve been studying French, but my hard old head
just isn’t up to it. I can cuss up a storm and call my cat
to supper in French, but I’m otherwise hopelessly illiterate
in Moliere’s language.
Because New Mexico has implemented dual language education, test
and achievement scores for all New Mexico students have gone up
to a point where we now rank in the top ten in student achievement
in the US.
Non-polluting, non-water-using high tech companies have found
their way to our state, knowing that our workforce ranks among
the best in the country.
For example, more than 100 Latin American and Mexican companies
have their US headquarters in New Mexico.
We finally arrive in Truchas, and because Neruda drives como
unloco perdidio, we get there ahead of the scheduled
start time for the special event.
We decide to walk around the village. It has been transformed.
Locals now live clustered around five small
plazas. These multistory housing units were built by locals using
a low technology adobe-making machine that again has made adobe
homes what they once historically were—affordable and beautiful
good housing for working folk.
In each plaza in the village, there are intergenerational centers,
where the niños and the ancianos spend
their days together.
Surrounding these five compact plazas, open fields are planted
with organic vegetables and fruit orchards. More than 40 percent
of their food comes from these fields; the remainder comes from
other villages in the Rio Grande Valley.
Fifteen families live off ecotourism. With
the North and South Truchas peaks looming over the village,
Truchans have launched a successful business guiding backpackers
deep into the Pecos Wilderness. In fact, most of New Mexico’s
22 land grants are supporting significant numbers of heirs
through ecotourism activities.
Finally, darkness creeps up the long slopes of the Sangre de
Cristo mountains and penetrates the village.
It is time for the ceremony I came so far for to begin.
While we walked the village, solar-powered buses brought hundreds
of people for the ceremony.
Now, we all gather in an open field.
We stand around a single-wide mobile home. We all are given
a torch, and with it, we each add to the fire that has been started
in the mobile home itself.
We are burning the last mobile home left in New Mexico.
Our dream of real housing for all New Mexicans has finally come
true.
After the ceremony ends and as we drive down the
mountain and head south for the city, I turn to my grandson and say, “I’m
87-years-old. It’s time for us to switch roles. You need to
get out into community and start organizing. And I need to start
smoking natural herbs.”
