by Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
This article was produced in partnership with Source New Mexico, which was a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2023. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
In February 2023, I signed a lease on a dusty studio apartment in Las Vegas, New Mexico, two hours from my apartment in Albuquerque and just outside the burn scar of the largest wildfire in New Mexico history. Based on the railroad ties that served as “vigas,” or ceiling beams, my landlord told me my new home had likely been built in the late 1800s.
The rural communities in the mountains of northern New Mexico have long been wary of outsiders. More than a century ago, a band of white-capped marauders on horseback, known as the Gorras Blancas, rode through the countryside to fight back against the predominantly white speculators and railroad barons taking over the land. The Gorras Blancas cut through newly built fences dividing shared pastureland, known as the “ejido,” and burned piles of railroad ties. But they failed to repel the newcomers, who built Victorian homes on what became the town’s well-to-do east side.
My apartment was on the historically Hispanic, lower-income west side. I had moved there at the beginning of a yearlong collaboration between my newsroom, Source New Mexico, and ProPublica to examine the area’s recovery from the fire. The federal government had accidentally triggered the blaze; now the Federal Emergency Management Agency was in charge of distributing checks to compensate people for the government’s mistake. I knew some survivors wouldn’t appreciate being interviewed by someone they perceived as an outsider, even though I’m from New Mexico and have lived here most of my life. For the next year, my job was to gain their trust.
The fire had broadened divisions among residents: between those who had suffered and those who had been spared; between those who had money to rebuild and those who had to wait for a check from FEMA; between those angry at how long it was taking to be paid and those who had taken jobs with FEMA to help process their neighbors’ claims.
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