Time escapes
Drawn from this place,
Pulled from my mouth,
A yawn.
A clock ticks,
Wound by a key,
Measuring back what is given.
Perpetually late afternoon.
 
There are boxes of pictures, hundreds.
Each holding us by a string, so
Fanned out like cards, we encircle
Deciphering tensions,
Plucking the chords,
Possessing in memory
And translation.
Conjuring ghosts.
 
Hundreds.
Dirt houses, pitched tin roofs,
Hollyhock, geranium, lilac,
The unhuggable girth of a cottonwood.
An orchard.  A windmill.  The river.
Chili Ristra garlands hang side by side,
Roof to ground, cascading,
Dwarfing house and man.
An impossibly bountiful summer.
 
Stories rupture forth.
“I remember when it was like this…”
I bring it close to my face as if to enter it,
This wellspring.
I study the washed gray that red produces
When rendered in black and white,
As if it has already
Left this world, uncontested,
Triumphant in it’s brilliance.
 
Hundreds.
Here my great grandfather stands beside ‘Carl,’
The surrogate son for lack of another
Who is also my grandmother ‘Carol’
They are smiling or squinting in the sun.
The blue of their eyes does not absorb the light,
But casts it out, the brightest white of the picture.
My great grandfather’s name was James Percy,
It was also Santiago.
Out of respect.
 
Grandmother, mother, I
All daughters and mothers now.
My daughter, hand over hand passes,
Our knees her guiding posts,
Amazed by her own shuffling feet,
Sacking stacks of photos before her
With gleeful shrieks while
A calloused hand guides her gently
To unfamiliar knees.
 
Hundreds.
Here’s one of me
Walking for the first time
On a dirt path leading from the old house,
In tiny moccasined feet.
Tired, perhaps, of the goatheads that
Stick in my palm,
Which I offer up tearfully
To be plucked.
​
I am small and delicate
Wearing a dark dress
To contrast my paleness.
A faint birthmark on my forehead
Between my eyes tells me
God had to push my head down
Into my mothers womb.
I didn’t want to come quite yet.
 
Here is my mother
Walking for the first time
In the exact same place.
She is darker, moonfaced, radiant.

Here’s another in which she beats a drum
Half her size.
Pursed lipped and wide eyed, she reveals no foresight
That she will smooth the bed of my river with her laughter
That she will, for a time, be her mother’s keeper.

The clock confirms the shadow
Of the cottonwood as it stretches,
Magnificently over the courtyard.
My grandmother is drumming the arm of her chair
Softly with her fist,
Trying to recall the identity of a woman
Standing self-possessed on a boulder above
The river.

Compared to busy Abiquiú, Barranco is pleasantly sleepy and, yes, one could say dreamy. Everything proceeds at a slow pace; except for the paved road, things look much like they did 50 years ago, one could imagine. The perfect setting for an artist who has an intuitive connection to everything around her, animals, trees, birds, plants…

​I remembered Kathie Lostetter from many years ago when I participated in the Abiquiú Studio Tour and she was the board president or whatever she was called then. She kindly agreed to an interview for the Abiquiú News, which gave me the chance to learn more about her and her art.

Kathie grew up in New Jersey where she lived until she went to college in Florida, at the University of Miami. Her family lived near Newark, New Jersey, and then they moved to a lake in Sparta. Because of that, she has many happy memories of her childhood spending the summers in nature, swimming, running around through open fields, meeting wild animals.

​After she finished her university studies Kathie stayed in Florida for a number of years  and then moved to Michigan where she met Al, her husband, who was teaching art there. That was in 1975, just at the time when he was headed to New Mexico. She decided to meet him there, after she had packed up her things and closed that chapter of her life.

“He bought this place where we're right now, in 1975,” Kathie explained. “Since then we've added but the main core of it was a ruined adobe. And then we restored the ruin of the Torreon [tower] of the village, which was just a piece of wall. We rebuilt it, and that's where my husband’s studio is now. When we started with the Studio Tour we had lots of people who stopped by, and it was a really nice place to have both of our artwork at the Tour.”

She continued: “I studied art when I was in college. I studied mass media and art, and my idea was to do animation  in film but ended up doing sculptures in clay that are somewhat animated. When in college I did some work in clay and I realized I liked hand building, but I didn’t go too far with it then. After I had moved out here to Barranco, we built all of this. Al and I rebuilt the adobe buildings and then when our sons were bigger, they helped us too. So we started with our home where we’re right now, then we built a bird house for macaws, and then we rebuilt the torreon. And then there was another ruin which we eventually bought and restored. Owen, one of our sons, was living there for a while.”

“When we moved here, we knew we wanted to build passive solar. So then we slowly built this over time, and in the meanwhile I got a job teaching at Head Start, because our little boy was in the program. At first I was the assistant and then I became the teacher. I did that for about eight years.”

But what inspired her to create these beautiful, mythical creatures, I wanted to know.

​“Well, after living here for a while, I wanted to do my artwork again,” Kathie told me. “When I wasn't working, I was interested in folk tales and things like anthropology and petroglyphs and so on.”

“In the midst of that time I had a dream about an eagle. It was a skeleton covered with something like a buffalo robe. It was really scary! You can imagine, if you see a skeleton in your dream, it's pretty scary. But then it changed into a bald eagle. And so this being with the robe became my first sculpture. It was the Eagle in the Buffalo Robe.”

​Kathie went on: “It became this anthropomorphic thing. When I studied art in college I looked at modern art and I tried to connect to that world, even tried to do art like that. But I guess that I just had to find it myself with the animals. And so that’s what emerged, an anthropomorphic look at animals. The next one I think I did was a bear. So I had the eagle and the bear. And then I started doing any animal – this year, I did three belugas, not together, but three separate pieces of belugas. My granddaughter was so in love with belugas, so I made her one for her birthday. It's such an unusual animal to put in a robe that when I studied it, to sculpt the animal for her, I decided to do one for the gallery as well.”

What exactly do you mean when you say anthropomorphic, I asked Kathie. Do you mean that an animal is kind of equal to a human being?

She emphatically agreed. “Yes, they are standing like a human being. If you look at Egyptian art, you see for example the head of the Jackal on the body of a man. I just got fixated on portraying animals that way, and it may seem strange but I just proceeded with it.”

I strongly relate to that. Many humans, and especially science, treat animals as inferior, when we’re actually all connected. Of course, we humans have more advanced intellectual faculties, but babies don't have them either, and yet we don't treat them badly just because they cannot put one plus  one together.

​Again, Kathie agreed that she has a similar view. “When you look at ancient art, you realize that they had animal teachers, and that they were given priority over images of humans. Some of them were in the wild, like the painting of a horse running in the caves of Lascaux for example. But then, very early on, they mixed the attributes. I think there's one that's 30,000 years old of a lion man. The head is the lion, and the body is a man. And so that is just what came from inside me. It kind of worked for me. And then I expanded on it, and I was affected by what people liked, and that influenced me.  But my sculptures are always about the fact that it is a sacred animal.”

I had seen some of Kathie’s sculptures but I never really understood what they were about. Her explanation makes a lot of sense and I feel I'm on the same page with her artistic vision.

My next questions: how do you promote your art and display it in galleries, and also: I wanted to know more about the Studio Tour, because Kathie was one of the first artists who actually started it, if I remember correctly.

​“So maybe let's start with that,” Kathie answered. “I was with the Abiquiú Studio Tour for twenty years. I started showing at a gallery in Santa Fe 35 years ago with just a couple of pieces like a coyote and a bear and now show at The San Francisco Street Gallery. And then Lori and Richard Bock started the Studio Tour, we joined and were so amazed how many people came all the way out here to see our work. And actually, I had some pieces at the Abiquiú Inn pretty far back.”

“My smaller pieces go there, and my larger ones are going to Santa Fe to the gallery. And so, yes, we were excited about the tour, both for me and for my husband who is a painter. We set up a place where people could come and visit in the round building, the torreon. The Studio Tour was great for us. For many years I was the chairperson. In the beginning the whole idea was to keep it going, because I knew it was so good for all the local artists. For some of them it was the main avenue to sell their art.”

​“It was great for people of all levels, artists who are in a gallery and others who were just starting out. It was and is for all different types of art. The tour has been a wonderful thing, and the only reason I quit was because my work takes so long to do. Once this gallery I was in moved to a better location, I just couldn't have any more work, I couldn't keep up with what they wanted. This became too stressful,  plus, at the same time, I was a tour guide at the O'Keeffe House for seventeen years, so I also had a job.”

Kathie continued: “And so, it all added up: there were not enough hours in the day, and people would come up to visit. They love it up here, Barranco is sort of different, you know!”

At the beginning of the Studio Tour, how many artists did you have, I enquired.

“It may have been about twenty in the beginning, something like that,” Kathie told me. “Maybe even less for the very first tour. Somehow the number twenty four comes to mind, but it was quite small.”

​She continued: “The tour became rather successful, because different people would step up to help keep it going. You know, that was always the hard part, to get people to help run it. Sometimes we met at the Abiquiú Inn, and once we met outside the Parish Hall of the Church, and we had our meeting outside in the Plaza. And then the Clinic was a good meeting place for a while, we got a room there to have our meetings. So it really turned out great. I've still been with it since the Event Center became the place to have the meetings, and that was a really great place for meetings. I totally think it's wonderful. And over here, Tamara is still showing at Nest, and you see the people really showing up.”

And did you place your pieces in galleries, I wanted to know. How did that develop?

​Kathie’s answer was a bit shocking. “I was in this one gallery in Santa Fe for about eight to ten years, but then it burned down and I lost a lot of my work in the fire. They weren't even insured. Just last night I looked at the article from when it burned. It showed one of my sculptures. I had a piece that was just  laying there, with the firemen behind it, because when they hosed everything down, all the pieces broke. One white deer survived because it was in the back room. The gallery that burned down was on Canyon Road. But then I went to another gallery which  accepted me.”

Next, Kathie showed me around her home and studio, which was filled with many of her standing animal pieces:  owls, deer, a leopard, a bear. Many of them were mothers with a tiny baby safely tucked into the enveloping robe. She explained the process of creating her sculptures, using the unfinished piece below:

After it’s built by hand in clay, Kathie fires the sculpture in her kiln. Next, it will be painted with oil, which gives the piece its luminosity and vibrancy. She then uses feathers, semi-precious stones, beads, twigs, pieces of leather, and other objects to give each sculpture its stunning personality which has so much warmth but also majesty. Her creations are both playful and awe-inspiring, emanating a deep love for and understanding of the animal depicted. Each one  touches within the viewer feelings which all creatures share, and evokes an eternal wisdom which humans can only hope to attain. Thank you, Kathie, for taking the time to share your beautiful art with the Abiquiú News’ readership.

By Karima Alavi

​We’ve followed the adventures of selecting the location of the Dar al Islam Mosque and retreat center, along with the arrival of Egyptian masons who taught traditional methods of building domes, arches and vaults. Let’s move on to the days when the halls of Dar al Islam rang with the cheerful voices of school children.

Seeking education is a religious obligation on every Muslim, if they have access to schooling. The first revelation from God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel began with the word “Iqra.” This word is translated as both “Read” and “Recite.” That Qur’anic verse, translated below on Quran.com, references not only reading and teaching (reciting to others,) but also writing, and the pursuit of knowledge:

Iqra (Read. Recite) in the Name of your Lord who created--
created humans from a clinging clot. (of blood)
Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous,
Who taught by the pen--
taught humanity what they knew not. 

At the root of Islamic education is the emphasis on Qur’anic verses that tell the listener/reader to take note of signs in God’s creation, in the biological, social and spiritual world around them, and reflect upon what these signs mean. The Qur’an mentions the creation of the heavens and earth, and the alternation of the day and night as a reminder that everything that exists is a gift from a creator. There are verses about stars, mountains, trees and fruits, the ocean, even bees— all presented as something to consider before also taking stock of ourselves and our humble relationship as humans with all that surrounds and sustains us. With these verses in mind, children are taught to be aware of the pain one can find in the world as well, among both the earth (ecological exploitation and destruction) and among fellow humanity.

The importance of education for all Muslims is also supported by the Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, my favorite one being: “Seek ye knowledge from the cradle to the grave.”

Creating a space for a school
Dar al Islam had made two purchases, the first one of land only, the second consisting of both land and some properties that included structures. Supported by donations, the small elementary school first opened, not at the Dar al Islam site, but at the building on County Road 155 that most locals now refer to as the “Hunt Hacienda.”
The first section of the Dar al Islam facility to be built was the mosque. Because the madressah (school and retreat) segment of Dar al Islam took a few more years to complete, the school, called The Khalid Islamic School, had to find another site. The hacienda offered an obvious choice. Bedrooms became classrooms, the dining room became the cafeteria, and another space was used for prayers.
Of course, stories of the “Haunted Hacienda” spread quickly and still send chills up some spines, though when I asked for specific “sightings” people just chuckled. Except for one former student: Jasmine Kemp. She told me that two young brothers, Adam and Daniel, claimed they had been dragged down a stairway by a Jinn.
Like the Nicaean Creed in Christianity, Islam states a belief in both the seen and unseen, those elements of the created world that can sometimes be crossed. In the Qur’an, Jinn are presented as spirits that differ from humans and angels. Like angels, they can interact with the human realm, though they are capable of doing both good and evil acts. After Adam’s and Daniel’s experience, no students wanted to be left alone in that building. Ever.

Several women from the Muslim families of Abiquiu already had teaching certificates and experience when they arrived in New Mexico. Nadina Barnes, who moved here from Arizona, had started an Islamic school at a mosque in Tempe. She mentioned that at one point early on, Dar al Islam hosted a two-week training program for educators who teach at Islamic Schools. Most attendees and trainers came from Sister Clara Muhammad Schools.

Abiquiu’s Muslim teachers were encouraged by the school principal to travel to the College of Santa Fe to obtain teaching certificates. One of those women, Ayesha Jordan, drove to the college between teaching, and raising five children. She also served as the school cook for a time, as well as serving as a Kindergarten teacher.

​Even swimming was taught at the school when one of the mothers, Rabia van Hattum, noted that the children loved playing in the river and were in need of formal swimming lessons to assure their safety.

“We lived in a bubble here, assuming the rest of the world was just like what we had in Abiquiu. We didn’t appreciate what we had until we left, and that makes our memories more precious.”​
Former Khalid Islamic School student, Jasmine Kemp who now lives in Santa Fe. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she’s an elementary school teacher. ​

Courtesy of Alyssa Armijo, Presbyterian Healthcare Services

The Same Day Care Clinic at Presbyterian Española Hospital provides convenient care when you need it. When your provider is unavailable, our family medicine providers are available to provide same day care for minor and non-life-threatening conditions.

The clinic is open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to treat minor injuries and illnesses, such as colds, sore throats, sprains and strains, minor broken bones, and allergy flare ups.

​The clinic is located on the second floor of the Presbyterian Medical Group Clinic at 1010 Spruce Street. If you have a medical need that requires attention, please call for an appointment at 505-367-0340. For more information visit, phs.org/espanola.

Courtesy of Carolyn Calfee, Grand Hacienda

Elizabeth K. Anderson, P.E.
State Engineer
May 5, 2025
RE: OSE Approval of the 2025 Rio Chama Sharing Agreement

Greetings:

The Office of the State Engineer (OSE) has approved the 2025 Rio Chama Basin Sharing Agreement, enclosed. Implementation of the sharing agreement shall be triggered by daily average flows at USGS gaging station 08284100 (La Puente) as follows:

• For post-1907 surface water diversions located above La Puente: Sharing will begin when the daily average flow at La Puente reaches 70 cubic feet per second (CFS), consistently.

• For all other diversions: Sharing operations shall commence when the daily average flow at La Puente reaches 50 CFS, consistently.

OSE staff will engage with mayordomos or other representatives of pre-1907 acequias and ditches located above La Puente to encourage voluntary reductions in diversions when flows range between 70 and 50 CFS.

The following Rio Chama subbasins are excluded from participation in the 2025 Sharing Agreement due to the absence of sufficient subbasin data: El Rito, Ojo Caliente, Cañones y Polvadera, Canjilon, Rio Gallina, Rio Cebolla, Rio del Oso, Rio Puerco, and the Rio Nutrias.

OSE is appreciative of your participation in the development of the 2025 Sharing Agreement. Staff will reman in contact with the sharing parties and mayordomos as native Rio Chama flows decline and implementation of the agreement becomes necessary.

Respectfully,
Lorraine A. Garcia
Deputy District Manager
Water Rights Division
[email protected]

CC:
John Romero ([email protected])
Ramona Martinez ([email protected])
Cindy Stokes ([email protected])
Myron Armijo ([email protected])

2025 Shortage Sharing Agreement and Schedule

Parties

Ohkay Owingeh
Rio Chama Acéquia Association member acéquias
Acéquia de los Salazares, Acéquia de Abeyta y Trujillo, Acéquia Valentin Martinez,
Acéquia de la Puente, Acéquia de Tierra Azul, Acéquia de Jose Ferran, Acéquia de Jose Pablo Gonzales, Acéquia Mariano, Acéquia de Manzanares y Montoya, Acéquia de Quintana, Acéquia del Rio de Chama, Acéquia de Jose V. Martinez, Acéquia de los Gonzales, Acéquia de los Martinez, Acéquia de los Duranes, Acéquia de Chamita, Acéquia de Chili y la Cuchilla, Acéquia de Hernandez, Acéquia Barranco, Acéquia Suazo.

Acéquias Norteñas member acéquias
Acéquia de Los Brazos, La Puente Community Ditch, Ensenada Community Ditch, Parkview Community Ditch, El Brazito & Lateral Acéquia, Acéquia del Bordo, Acéquia del Llano, Acéquia del Brazito, Acéquia de la Otra Banda, Acéquia el Pinabetal (Canjilon), Acéquia de Pinavetal (Cebolla), Cebolla Acéquia Madre, Acéquia de Tierra Amarilla, Cañones Arriba Ditch #1, Barranco Community Ditch, M-B Community Ditch, Plaza Blanca Community Ditch, Porvenir Ditch, Village of Chama Community Ditch, Willow Creek Community Ditch and the Valley Ditch.

Basin Wide Rules

1. The Water Masters will administer the sharing schedule in accordance with the included schedules. The Water Masters may suspend curtailment in whole or in part as basin conditions allow.
2. Any diverters on the shortage sharing schedule that are non-compliant with the agreement may be suspended for a week from the schedule at the Water Master’s discretion.
3. For diverters that are not included in the sharing schedule, the Water Masters will administer according to AWRM.
4. For the 2025 season, because of anticipated very low-flow conditions, the Water Master and the Sharing Parties may hold weekly meetings once higher flows from spring runoff start to subside (perhaps as early as May). The purpose of the meetings may include sharing of information on hydrologic and irrigation conditions, and to determine and take additional measures and cooperation that are needed to provide for equitably sharing and to carry out the intent of the shortgage sharing agreement.

Lower Chama Sharing Party Rules

1. Ditches can alter the schedule by trading allocations with approval of both ditches and the Water Master. Any alterations to the RCAA base schedule must be submitted to the Water Master the Sunday before the group start day for the ditches requesting an alteration.
2. RCAA Ditches and Lower Chama diversions may turn on no earlier than 7 am on the first day of their scheduled period and must turn off by 7 am the morning after their last scheduled day.
3. Ohkay Owingeh may use any tailwater that is available on Acéquia de Chamita’s days.
4. Ditches that cannot divert their full allocation shall notify the Water Master immediately. The Water Master will notify Ohkay Owingeh of any available surplus water for its bosque use first. Ohkay Owingeh will no more than 1 hour after being notified of available surplus water notify the Water Master that it intends to use all or some of the available surplus water. Ohkay Owingeh will make every effort to respond promptly. The Water Master will make any remaining surplus water available to other diverters by priority, as available.
5. The Water Master shall shut off diversions to the Acequia de Chamita if, due to a violation by a Chamita Parciante of the water sharing schedule, flows at the State Engineer Yungeh Gage drop below the cfs rate allocated to Ohkay Owingeh under the water sharing schedule after reasonable carriage losses have been subtracted. The curtailment of the Acequia de Chamita diversions based on the flow rate at the State Engineer Yungeh Gage will remain in effect for the remainder of the week in which the schedule violation occurred. Diversions shall not be resumed until Ohkay Owingeh’s next turn on the water sharing schedule. If Ohkay Owingeh uses an alternative point of diversion, the Acequia de Chamita must reduce its diversion at the direction of the Water Master to balance total diversions serving Ohkay Owingeh for the rotation. Ohkay Owingeh, the Water Master, and RCAA may agree to alternative enforcement measures, as appropriate.
6. If there is an active carriage agreement, there will be no restrictions in the Lower Chama. The OSE shall be provided with a copy of the 2025 carriage agreement at least one week prior to commencement of curtailment. The OSE shall be notified three (3) business days prior to when the carriage agreement is no longer active.

Upper Chama Sharing Party Rules

1. Post-1907 diversions will reduce diversions to 50% of their allocated administrative flow rate at 70 cfs and to 40% of their allocated administrative flow rate at 50 cfs. Pre-1907 diversions will reduce diversions to 50% of the allocated administrative flow rate at 50 cfs. See table 2.
2. The Water Master will work with mayordomos or other representatives of pre-1907 and post-1907 diversions located above La Puente to make voluntary reductions between 70-50 cfs at La Puente in an attempt to delay curtailment for more senior diversions in the Lower Chama.
3. At the determination of the Water Master, diversions may be reduced to 50 cfs limitations any day instantaneous flows at La Puente fall under 50 cfs.
4. Irrigation ditches will be limited to livestock use only after July 31 if La Puente is less than 50 cfs.
5. The Water Master may restrict livestock diversions based on basin conditions. Livestock flows will be determined by the Water Master based on livestock need and water supply.
6. Diversions shall bypass livestock water to support downstream livestock demands within their sub-basin. The Water Master will inform diversions of downstream livestock needs and determine the minimum bypass necessary to meet those needs.
7. No diversion shall take all the available water at their point of diversion and dry their stream reach if there are downstream irrigation diversions or livestock needs within their sub-basin.
8. Diverters may voluntarily work together to allocate the supply among themselves (for example by employing ditch rotation), so long as the total diversion of participating ditches does not exceed the total maximum diversion allowable to those ditches. In addition under low-flow conditions, a single ditch or ditches may aggregate their cfs allocation over fewer days per week rather than diverting seven days per week, based on a schedule approved by the Water Master.
9. For the 2025 season, when the flow at Cañones Ditch #1 diversion falls below 4.0 CFS, daily diversions on Cañones Creek located upstream of Cañones Ditch #1 diversion will be limited to livestock use only. Irrigation by upstream diverters will be allowed every other Sunday unless further restricted at the discretion of the Cañones Ditch #1 Mayordomo to ensure all parciantes for Cañones Ditch #1 are able to adequately irrigate their properties. Diversions into ponds will not be allowed at any time when the flow at Cañones Ditch #1 diversion falls below 4.5 CFS.
10. For the 2025 season, all diversions on Tierra Amarilla Creek located upstream of the Tierra Amarilla Community Ditch diversion will be limited to livestock use only when the flow at the Tierra Amarilla Community Ditch diversion first falls below 2.00 cfs. When flow at the Tierra Amarilla Community Ditch diversion is between 2.0 and 5.22 cfs, irrigation by upstream diverters will be limited to Sundays.
11. For the 2025 season, the Sharing Parties have identified the likely need to include additional triggers for further reduction, for example when the allocated administrative flow rate drops to 35 cfs, post-1907 diversions will be further reduced; and when the allocated administrative flow rate drops to 25 cfs, pre-1907 diversions will be further reduced. These additional measures will be the subject of the weekly meetings described above.​

​
2025 Lower Chama Sharing Agreement

Pedro Pascal is, somehow, only the second-hottest item in this story. (I am not the first.)
​
By Zach Hively

​Today, I find myself remembering that time my beans nearly burned my house down.
​
And it all happened because I—ludicrous and flawed human that I am—trusted people.

This, I do remember: I, for once, was not at fault. At least I’m pretty sure I wasn’t.

Holding this half-deformed electrical outlet takes me back to the last time I pulled out my trusty slow cooker. It certainly did not have a familiar name brand that might come at me for damages.

I had cooked many beans in this electrical pot in my day, and I had cooked them slowly. Any problems I had with these many batches of beans were due to me and my microbiome, not the generic slow cooker, not the hidden workings of electricity in the wall, not the electric co-op that sends me bills.

And this, the fateful last pot o’ beans, came out as tasty as any of them. Even more so, in hindsight—the savory nostalgia of escaping death and/or an insurance investigation.

It wasn’t until I finally turned off the “keep warm” setting some hours or days later and tried to put the not-at-all-trademarked cooker away that I found I could not. The plug was stuck to the wall. Or, more like, it had merged with the wall. The two achieved oneness: the plastic of the socket, gone gooey and solidified again, claimed the prongs of the power cord as its own.

It melted.
The pot of crock melted the socket.

I did what any man would do in lieu of calling an electrician: I jiggled and yanked on that plug until I broke it free or the wall came down, whichever happened first. I still have a wall, so there’s that.

I did not want to know just how close I had come to my own not-so-slow-cooked end. So I left that socket the eff alone for a long, long time. Pretending problems don’t exist has often served me well.

The cooker? I shoved it, not unlike my sentimental attachment to it, to the back of a cabinet to deal with another time.

Eventually, I brought myself to the hardware store for a new outlet thingy.

I replaced it myself, with no electrical knowledge beyond “turn off every fuse in the box first.” I acquired a more modern, and presumably more trustworthy, brand of cooker.

Today, at long last, I threw out the melted outlet. I don’t need such tangible reminders of why I shouldn’t trust people anymore. I’m feeling weirdly optimistic about humanity; we haven’t burned down the metaphorical house yet, despite our most untrustworthy efforts. And everywhere I look, there’s Pedro Pascal.

So there’s that.

Ryan Martinez, the gunman who severely wounded a Native American man at an Española protest against the proposed installation of a controversial Juan de Oñate statute in 2023, is serving the first year of a four-year prison sentence. Now, survivors of that shooting are suing the county officials who they say turned a blind eye to the circumstances that enabled Martinez’s violent outburst.
​
Jacob Johns, a 41-year-old Hopi and Akimel O’odham man from Spokane, Washington, who was shot by Martinez during the demonstration, and Malaya Corrine Peixinho, a 23-year-old New Mexican woman who Martinez flashed his gun at, filed lawsuits on Monday against the Rio Arriba County commissioners, the sheriff’s office and the county manager. They allege that their civil rights were violated on Sept. 28, 2023, by county officials and sheriff’s deputies who knew there was a threat of violence that day, yet were seen “leaving the demonstration, disregarding the danger and failing to protect protestors.”

The shooting happened during a peaceful protest over the county’s proposal to install a statue of Oñate, which had been in storage for years, at the county complex in Española. Community backlash was so strong that the county temporarily postponed the installation. On the morning of the canceled event, protestors flocked to the complex to celebrate. They held an Indigenous prayer ceremony and repurposed the concrete slab, fashioning the base for the statue into an altar decorated with handmade artifacts like corn and squash, woven baskets and pottery.

Johns saw Martinez, who arrived in a white Tesla and was wearing a red Make America Great Again cap, shouting racial epithets at the Native demonstrators and pacing back and forth. Just before noon, Martinez charged the crowd; Johns hurried to step in front of him and block Martinez’s path to the children and elders at the demonstration. Martinez reached into his waistband, pulled out a gun and promptly shot Johns in the chest with a hollow-point bullet, the lawsuit says.

“There were no sheriff’s deputies present immediately before and when Martinez shot Johns and pointed his gun at Peixinho,” the suit alleges. He bled on the ground outside the county complex for 10 minutes before emergency personnel arrived. After receiving treatment in Española, he was airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. According to his lawsuit, he briefly died during this trip.

In the suit, Johns says he saw a council of spirits who asked him to give a full account of the times in his life when he chose to help other people rather than to look out for himself. Even though his shooter is behind bars, he said, he, Peixinho and their attorney see these lawsuits as a way to hold accountable the public officials tasked with keeping Española safe on that September morning.

“I would like to see the police do their job,” Johns told Searchlight New Mexico. “I was lying there, bleeding out in their parking lot for 10 minutes, and it wasn’t even the sheriff’s office that apprehended the shooter — it was tribal police.”

Before the shooting, a warning

Two days before the demonstration, on Sept. 26, 2023, then-Sheriff Billy Merrifield — who died in April of this year — emailed county commissioners to voice his concerns over the planned relocation and installation of the Oñate statue. It had been taken down from its site in remote Alcalde in 2020, when the nation was grappling with whether to tear down, preserve or otherwise alter statues and memorials that represented controversial figures and movements in American history. Oñate is infamous for his role in the 1599 Acoma Massacre, in which Spanish soldiers under his command killed hundreds of Native people. Men 25 and older who survived had their right foot amputated, according to historical accounts, and were sentenced to slavery. In the 1990s, the right foot of Oñate’s statue was cut off by a group that called itself the Friends of Acoma.

Commissioners planned to install the statue — which depicts the conquistador riding on horseback, sword and scabbard at his side — at a new location: the county complex in Española. Such a move, Merrifield warned, could likely end with “deadly force, which can turn into legal liability/tort claims for the county.”

“Respectfully, I am in full support of your decision to put the statue back up, but strongly do not believe it is appropriate or safe to have the statue placed or relocated in front of the County Annex as scheduled,” he wrote. “By choosing to relocate the Don Juan de Oñate statue, you must look at all the possibilities of the unsafe environment it can create.”

​Johns’ and Peixinho’s cases hinge on what the county chose to do with that warning. Their suits say that sheriff’s deputies encountered an agitated, cursing Martinez that morning, describing him as “darting back and forth” and “acting in an obviously agitated and extremely anxious manner.” “Due to Martinez’s disruptive, antagonistic and provocative behavior, Deputy (Steve) Binns informed Martinez that he needed to leave the scene,” the lawsuit says. According to the suits, an unnamed undersheriff “then overruled Deputy Binns and told Martinez that he could stay.” Finally, the lawsuit alleges, deputies left the scene.

The absence of any armed law enforcement at this gathering is made worse by two things, they argue: the fact that county officials were warned by the sheriff of the day’s potential violence, and that the Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office building is just a couple of dozen paces from where Johns was shot.

​“They were deliberately indifferent,” Mariel Nanasi, their lawyer, told Searchlight. Nanasi is a former Chicago civil rights attorney who now leads New Energy Economy, a Santa Fe–based renewable-energy advocacy group.

If either case makes it to trial, the lawsuits have the potential to test the limits of the relatively young New Mexico Civil Rights Act, which was drafted after George Floyd’s murder and signed into law in 2021. The legislation did away with qualified immunity as a defense for government officials in New Mexico.

In the years since it became law, a number of prominent cases have been filed that relied on the act. Alec Baldwin alleged civil rights violations in a January lawsuit against the First Judicial District Attorney, residents of southern New Mexico alleged violations against the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority and a University of New Mexico basketball player alleged violations after a teammate allegedly punched him. None of those cases have gone to trial. Unlike federal civil rights law, the state act has a cap of $2 million in damages.

In the aftermath of the shooting, then-county commission chair Alex Naranjo — whose uncle, former state senator and local political mainstay Emilio Naranjo, played a pivotal role in securing funding for the Oñate statue back in the 1990s — said the statue wouldn’t go up. Within weeks of the shooting, residents of the area sought to initiate a recall against Naranjo. When he challenged it, a judge found that there was probable cause that Naranjo violated the state Open Meetings Act by deciding to relocate and install the Oñate statue outside of the bounds of a public meeting. He has appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in December and has yet to issue a decision.

Alex Naranjo, the former chair of the Rio Arriba County Commission. (Courtesy of Rio Arriba County Commission)

None of the county officials named in Johns and Peixinho’s lawsuit would comment Tuesday morning.

A long road to recovery

Since the shooting, both Johns and Peixinho have faced difficult recoveries. Johns was hospitalized for more than a month and underwent numerous surgeries. Martinez’s bullet pierced his abdomen, destroyed his spleen, broke his ribs and collapsed his lungs. Johns said it also damaged his pancreas, liver and stomach. Even after he was sent home to Washington, he carried wound drainage tubes — in his pancreas and liver — for six months.

Johns created a visual diary that detailed his medical recovery. The nearly six-minute video captures the raw vulnerability of what it’s like to heal from a gunshot wound. It captures the moment Martinez shot him and graphically shows the months of hospitalization and surgeries that followed. At one point, stray bullet fragments are visibly pushing their way out of his body, through his skin. Following one surgery, Johns is stapled up — only to later learn that his body is allergic to the staples.

“Every laugh, every cough, every movement I could feel the internal tubes touching my internal organs in the most painful, horrible place I could ever imagine being,” he says in the video. After half a year of recovery, he says, he began the long, hard “internal journey toward healing.”

Peixinho knows this journey well. She was just 22 when she saw Johns knocked to the ground and then looked up to see Martinez’s pistol aimed at her head.

For months after, she said, loud noises triggered her. If she was in a drive-thru, she would recline her car seat and lie down to make sure a stray bullet couldn’t find her. If she heard a gunshot outside her house, or a firework, or a car backfiring, the fear came back.

“There were times when I was at work and I’d hear a gunshot,” she recalled. “I’d crawl into the trunk of my car and I’d be stuck there for hours, so mortified.”

Both Johns and Peixinho said there’s little solace in the knowledge that the gunman was put away. At the last minute before trial, Martinez accepted a plea deal that put him in prison for four years. Prosecutors dropped a hate crime enhancement that they had previously sought.

“Every single time I look down, I have these massive scars and these big holes in me,” Johns said. “But it’s the psychological stuff that’s really been messing with me … I had to agree that my life was only worth four years.”

To both survivors, the outcome was a painful reminder of the violence facing Indigenous people. Just three years before Martinez shot Johns and leveled his gun at Peixinho, a man protesting an Oñate statue in Albuquerque was shot in the back four times by an assailant armed with a .40-caliber handgun.

Both Johns and Peixinho know that there’s no relitigating Martinez’s case. But they see their lawsuits as a step toward accountability.

“When law enforcement fails to do their job, it really puts society in danger,” Johns said. “We really have to have faith that we’re going to be protected when we’re exercising our constitutional rights.

A condensed version of this story is available here.

Several environmental groups declared victory in an ongoing rulemaking process to expand the uses of oil and gas wastewater beyond the oilfields, after the Water Quality Control Commission during a Tuesday hearing reversed its position to allow releases into the environment.

“We’re so delighted that the commission took their responsibility so seriously and applied science and applied the law,” New Energy Economy Executive Director Mariel Nanasi told Source NM after the meeting. “There’s no evidence that produced water can be treated and reused safely; without knowing what needs to be removed from produced water, it is impossible to develop treatment standards or assure the public that discharges will be safe.”

The substantial shift comes just 10 days before the WQCC has to issue a final decision in the yearslong and controversial effort to treat and potentially reuse oil and gas wastewater.

The process began in December 2023 when the New Mexico Environment Department petitioned the commission to adopt rules to expand reuse beyond oilfields. That process included weeks of testimony in 2024 from scientists, water experts, environmental officials and industry representatives.

Scientists project that drought and warming temperatures from human-caused climate change will reduce New Mexico’s water supplies by 25% in the next three decades, and place more strain on rivers and aquifers. For the past several years, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has proposed a so-called Strategic Water Supply that would treat and use oil and gas wastewater to compensate for those losses. However, lawmakers in the most recent legislative session stripped produced water from the final bill. Opposing water and conservation groups said treatment technology for the water remains unproven and the waste poses harm to human and environmental health.

The New Mexico oil and gas industry generates billions of gallons of wastewater. The mixture is extremely salty and can contain radioactive materials, heavy metals, toxic chemicals and cancer-causing compounds from the oil and gas, such as benzene.

The reversal

In April, the commission adopted a draft version of the rule that would allow pilot projects using oil and gas wastewater to discharge up to 84,000 gallons per day into groundwater.

Environmental groups New Energy Economy, WildEarth Guardians, Amigos Bravos and the Sierra Club submitted several arguments that the decision violated existing laws; was not based on previous testimony; and potentially threatened human and ecological health. More than two dozen Democratic lawmakers also weighed in last week, urging the Water Quality Control Commission to reconsider.

On Tuesday, WQCC members acceded to those arguments.

“At this point, I believe it’s premature for us to authorize discharge permits, even for pilot projects,” said Commissioner Bill Brancard during deliberations.

Commissioners did not allow attorneys for the environmental groups, nor ones for the oil and gas industry, to make oral arguments on Tuesday, but instead deliberated for several hours. The vote was unanimous, although two commissioners abstained, saying they had not been present for testimony in 2024, did not feel informed enough to cast a vote.

About 30 people attended the Roundhouse hearing, displaying signs stating “No discharge of fracking waste” and “Water is life,” prompting warnings from two Sergeants at Arms to keep signs outside the meeting room. When commissioners voted to strike discharges from the rules, attendees applauded.

“Fracking waste is by no matter a light concern,” Ennedith López, a policy campaign manager at Youth United for Climate Crisis Action (YUCCA), told Source before the vote. “It’s radioactive wastewater that they want to use potentially for agriculture projects for construction and development, and that comes at the harm of people’s health.”

​Commissioners also determined that state law mandates that using produced water would most likely require a permit, which would be more stringent than the process in the draft rule.

At one point, commissioners floated scrapping the entire process, which would send the New Mexico Environment Department back to the drawing board, but decided instead to add language requiring pilot projects to seek permits.

Deliberations Wednesday will include more information about what information pilot projects would need to require for permitting, and if the rule needs to be revisited in the future.

Attorneys for New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, which is also party to the rulemaking, declined to comment Tuesday.

Produced water proponents said they were disappointed with the commission’s decision Tuesday.

Restrictions on discharges will push produced water treatment to Texas, said Mike Hightower, the program director at the Produced Water Consortium, a private-public research group.

‘With no discharge, all the companies that want to discharge the water for beneficial use: agriculture, surface water, putting water in Pecos for ecological flows, can’t do that here, so they’ll go to Texas” Hightower said.

He also said a permitting process would increase the time needed for approval on pilot projects.

​“Nobody’s going to do a small pilot project that takes a year and a half to get permitted when they can go to Texas and get it with no permit or a permit that takes a couple of weeks,” Hightower said.