By SHERRY SPITSNAUGLE Motorcycles gunned their engines on a busy street of Todos Santos, in Mexico’s coastal state of Baja California Sur, as I bit into a juicy pork taco smothered in tomatillo, followed by a healthy swig of icy Pacifico beer. A friend and I sat at a cardboard table on the small patio of Tacos Isaac, just yards
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By RICH GRANT The word “Tejano” has slipped into the American language, meaning someone of Mexican descent living in Texas. There’s Tejano food, music and culture. But the phrase, “Neomexicanos,” not so much. For one thing, there were simply not that many of these people – the Spanish and Mexican colonists who ventured into Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado
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By RICH GRANT There are many “Twilight Zone” episodes in which a road trip goes strange. A cute couple might be driving along and somehow, somewhere, they take a wrong turn and find themselves (as Rod Serling would put it so magically) “traveling through another dimension — a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A
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By RICH GRANT It would be difficult to overestimate the strange appeal that the American Civil War holds on some people. Historian Ken Burns notes that more than 50,000 books have been written on the conflict. There are obscure books on the buttons of the Civil War, the horses, even the weather. There are eight Civil War magazines and hundreds
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XINHUA Health officials in the U.S. state of New Mexico said Saturday, Jan. 9, that they would not verify the residence or citizenship of people when distributing covid-19 vaccines, local media reported Saturday. Las Cruces, New Mexico, television station KFOX14 quoted state officials as saying that they also would not share registrants’ information on immigration status with the federal government.
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By RICH GRANT There is no sound quite like a steam whistle echoing off a mountain, as plumes of black smoke rise in the air, the steel wheels screech around a bend, and ahead is the chug, chug, chug of a massive steam locomotive straining up a four percent grade. Riding outdoors in a gondola car with the big skies
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By RICH GRANT It’s hard to pinpoint the attraction of Billy the Kid. Viewed in one light, he was probably a psychopath who gunned down a sheriff and two (maybe three) deputies in cold blood, as well as some other assorted enemies. He was an outlaw, a rustler, a hired gun and a murderer, who was himself shot dead at
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Twice in the past week, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has mentioned the historically obscure existence of a civilian paramilitary group known as Los Polkos. “Probably many don’t even know who they are,” AMLO said during one of his early morning press conferences, “but it surely seems they’re back.” The mention of Los Polkos
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By RICH GRANT and SID WILSON One of the great ironies of recent history is the talk about the need for a “wall” between the United States and Mexico. In 1829, there was a legitimate need for this wall. Not to keep people out of the United States, but to keep them in! That was because, in 1829, Mexico offered
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS While the United States may have serious and justified concerns about a porous border with Mexico allowing illicit drugs and undocumented immigrants entering its territory unlawfully, Mexico is equally concerned about the illicit flow of firearms into its territory. According to Renato Sales Heredia, head of Mexico’s National Security Commission (CNS), at least 2,000 illegal firearms enter the
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