This is New Mexico,
Where dusk
lights the Sandias ablaze,
each evening
a lesson in how to burn
without apology.
Where the wind
braids many tongues,
Tiwa,
Español,
English,
Dine,
Zuni.
Keres,
each one
heavy with history,
each one a river of memory
carrying both wound and wisdom,
each one
singing.
We were here before borders
had names,
before the state wore a seal.
And
The land remembers.
The land remembers every tear
dried into dust,
every name buried too quickly,
every prayer whispered into the wind.
We are a people of art and language,
Agriculture and spirit.
We are survival
shaped into story,
stitched with
scar and ceremony,
History
Delivered in drumbeat
and defiance, with every beauty
this bruised and blessed State still holds.
Here, the land remembers.
It holds our stories in sandstone,
carves our names into cottonwood bark,
remembers the weight of brown hands
bending to plant beans,
pull weeds,
raise children.
The land remembers not just who we are
but what we give back.
It is in the dirt beneath our fingernails.
That's prayer too.
This is for the ranchers
who wait out winter storms,
The farmers
who rise before sun,
the abuelos
who taught us when to plant by the phase of the moon,
The land remembers
how we show up
with seed and sweat,
how we
ask permission before we dig,
how we
bury our dead,
Our seeds
and our dreams
with equal ceremony.
The land remembers
the hoe striking caliche,
the blistered hands
of field workers
turning soil
into sustenance.
It remembers
irrigators
walking acequia banks
in dawnlight,
carrying shovels
as sacred
as rosaries.
It remembers
the ranchers
reading clouds
like scripture,
and the grandmothers
planting chile
that starts
with seeds of songs in their throats.
The land remembers
children chasing chickens,
families gathered
at matanzas,
and the quiet strength
of fathers
fixing fence posts
by moonlight.
We are not just from the land,
we are of it.
our backs shaped by harvest,
our calendars tied to planting,
to rain,
to corn,
beans,
and calabacitas blooming.
Our elders
held the line
with rosaries
and wisdom,
blue corn prayers
and red chile hunger,
Backs
bent
beneath
both
blessing
and
burden,
But
still showing up to pray,
to plant,
to plow.
because our spirit is stubborn.
Here,
our prayers
learn the language of dirt
through danza.
Duende
And
Corazon.
We summon ancestors
with
copal smoke
and
santuario sand
and chile ristras
thick as memory..
we confess our sins
on the mesas beneath the skies that reach forever.
We pray with piñon
and eagle feathers.
We survived,
cracked breath
Open hearted song
sung With Sangre.
New Mexico’s artists
harvest their art
from the land.
Muralists learn color
from sunsets.
Poets learn rhythm
from the river.
New Mexico is
mural and molcajete,
altar and asphalt,
it’s Tias folding chisme into tamales.
We are the
breath
borrowed from ancestors
and returned
as
vow.
New Mexico,
this sacred convergence of
Pueblo and Chicano,
Diné and Black,
Indo-Hispano,
Anglo,
Queer and Catholic,
ceremonial
and unsanctioned,
we breathe the same burning breath.
We sing the same songs
With hearts pumping
the same red blood
But
We do not seek sameness.
We seek harmony,
where difference can sing
Because each of us brings something
unique,
A different note
to make the melody authentic.
Together, we are New Mexico.
So
Here,
Today,
In this place of
laws
and government.
Every decision made here
lands in a body
touches a field,
a family,
a future.
Budgets
become
breath.
Bills
become
blessings or
Burdens.
Language becomes either shelter
or scar.
We are New Mexico,
forged in sweat lodge
and barrio street,
in vigils lit with copal smoke
and candles to la virgen,
in verses stitched from
saxophone grief
And a brown boy’s prayer.
So as you open this session,
please understand
You are not
opening a meeting.
You are
entering a ceremony.
You are
stepping into story.
And story
as weight.
Story has
Consequence.
Story outlives us all.
So speak
like someone
whose words
will be remembered.
Write law
like it’s a lifeline.
Let your language
be shelter.
Let your budgets
remember
they are connected to bodies.
Let your policies ponder that
they touch
breath,
they touch
blood,
they touch
the tender places
where
a whole state
keeps its hurt hidden.
Because
the land remembers.
New Mexico
remembers,
with rancheras
and ristras
still ringing in its bones,
with dust
still holy on its tongue,
we are still here.
Still breathing.
Still singing.
Still sacred.
Copyright 2026 Manuel González. Reprinted with the permission of the author.