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Hispanos of Southern Colorado and New Mexico

Families in this region go back hundreds of years.
Carmelita Blea on the left and Lucia Lopez on the right from San Jose, New Mexico.

Within the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Southern Colorado and New Mexico, you’ll find a rich Hispanic culture that can’t be defined or categorized with a simple label.

The bloodlines in this region are so complex, it’s an impossibility to sum up the identity of the people here in a simple report.

Names like Hispano, Manito, and Nuevomexicanos are often applied by historians, but much about the culture in this region can’t be fit into a name and label.

The people in this region are proud they can trace their heritage back to a time before the traditional first Thanksgiving – a time when Spanish settlers entered New Mexico and began mingling with Native American populations.

The above video essay I put together is an attempt to affirm the Hispanics in this region as topics like immigration and “the wall” dominate the news.

“I didn’t cross the border, the border crossed me,” said Shirley Romero Otero, a community activist in the town of San Luis, Colorado. “We’ve never moved. We’ve always lived here.”

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