Clearly New Mexico

Bernalillo County is in the process of developing a sector plan for the traditional Atrisco Village Center community. The effort ecompasses the area bounded by Bridge Blvd. on the South, Foothill Road on the West, Felicitas Drive on the North, and Atrisco Road on the East. This area is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America, with Spanish settlements dating back to the late 16th Century and native habitation, in both pueblo and itinerant contexts, extending to before history.

Traditionally, Atrisco has attracted settlers because of its proximity to the Rio Grande river, abundance of rich agricultural land, a very mature system of acequias and ditches for irrigation, and access to the vast West Mesa, where inhabitants have grazed livestock, hunted and foraged for medicinal and ceremonial plants and herbs. Today, Atrisco retains many of its unique features, serving as an intersection between old and new, as recent immigrants settle in the area among families who have occupied the land for centuries. The area, which served as a center of civic life for generations, has unfortunately suffered a measure of neglect, with minimal attention from municipal authorities and limited or ineffective economic and recreational initiatives. Much of the area lacks basic amenities such as sidewalks and underground storm sewers and includes pockets of blight, poverty and gang activity.

The community, however, is mobilizing to ensure that the Bernalillo County Sector Plan process results in policy recommendations that facilitate civic, community and economic revitalization in the Village Center area. In partnership with UNM's Resource Center for Raza Planning (RCRP), community members and other volunteers are conducting an economic needs survey to provide a more thorough understanding of the employment, commercial and service needs and priorities of the residents. The data derived from this process will provide planners with valuable insights to help set conditions for healthy future development that honors traditional values and customs while also accommodating the demographic shifts that are currently under way.

If you'd like to learn more about the Atrisco needs assessment survey process or would like to volunteer to help (and help is needed!), please contact Henry Rael at hrael at artsofaztlan dot com.

Dressed all in black, Levi Romero spoke to us as if to his closest family and friends, an appropriate tone considering the love and appreciation the room held for him. Saturday, November 19, the acclaimed New Mexico poet read from his new collection A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works, before a standing-room only audience in the Wells Fargo Theater at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

There was little difference between poetry and the other words Levi spoke from the stage, as he wove stories of his own coming of age as an artist with the anecdotes and dichos of the elders he's spoken to in his work in Northern New Mexico. He introduced members of the audience, including an important teacher from his youth who was among the first to see and support the spark within him that would develop into the deep, steady presence of Levi the poet. His primo, Vicente Griego, joined him on the stage to sing an alabado about using the wind to separate corn from its husks. He spoke about his village of Dixon, New Mexico with the kind of affection one reserves for those family members who have most meaningfully--through love and perhaps some selfishness--shaped one's character.

Nothing comes easily with poetry, but there is a certain effortlessness about Levi's work, a feeling that where most start with a blank page, he begins with a world already populated by a depth and mystery adamant as the landscape of Embudo. Like the stories he told from the podium, his poems populated the room like the steady breathing of an old but healthy ancestor, full of wisdom but humble and weathered and comfortable with self-deprecation. There were no Aztec warrior dreams or desire for ancient historical legacies. Instead, the image of a teenager thumping you on the back of the head when you were a kid and an elderly woman proudly describing the magnificence that was her village in her lifetime.

The names attached to Levi's book speak to the respect and admiration he and his work evoke, with a who's who of Latino literati (including Rodulfo Anaya and Sandra Cisneros) contributing essays and blurbs to the collection's Forward, Preface, Afterword and book cover. Nonetheless, the poems speak for themselves, unique in their clarity and appreciation for place, beauty and tragedy flowing together in a roiling fusion endless as seasons. The poems seem to say, "our existence here is like the river, giver of life and peril. Let's navigate it together."

Afterward, Levi invited the entire crowd to his home in Atrisco, which he called "the heart of Aztlan." It could have been the celebration of a first communion or a high school graduation, with family and friends scooping posole and chicos and red chile from paper bowls, grasping tortillas, bottles of beer balanced between knees. An impromptu poetry reading broke out with Joe Vernon Montoya, James Aranda and Andrea Serrano sharing new and published works. The children watched Finding Nemo in one of the bedrooms and painted tattoos on their hands and arms with magic marker.

"Gracias, gracias," Levi said, nodding with the slightest smile when guests complimented him on his new book, his home, his family, his life. "Gracias."

A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works is available from UNM press at unmpress.com or 800-249-7737.

Or via Amazon.com

In Atrisco spring contemplates descent from the treetops
The wind still blows cold, touching the bones in all things
Autumn's last leaves congregating wherever landscape provides purchase
Half-hearted cold lingers, wandering blind toward its own demise
The last of the long sleeping, the gradual inhale before the call to life
Atrisco, reclining lover asleep beside the restless river, wake up