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A Spanish rather
than purely Mexican culture permeates this informal high desert town of 673,100,
with Route 66
running through it, Santa Fe just up the road, the glorious purple Sandia Mountains
on the east and the Rio Grande on the west. Founded in 1706, Albuquerque has managed
to remain affordable—houses average $131,600—and true to its roots.
“It’s
a lot like San Antonio in that sense,” says native Albuquerquean writer Ricardo
Gándara. “Only here we have Indian pueblos in almost every direction.
So the influence in the arts is the integration of American Indian, Spanish and
some Mexican. That mix makes it wonderful.”
With Latinos—er,
Spaniards?—making up 40.45 percent of said mix, there are ubiquitous luminarias
twinkling on Christmas eve. There are traditional arts of all kinds at the Pueblo
Cultural Center and the National Hispanic Cultural Center. And of course there’s
that famous Virgen María likeness overseeing the M & J Sanitary Restaurant,
a Spanish-Tex-Mex-Indian café-tortilla factory in Southwest Albuquerque,
whose walls are covered with Catholic crosses, retablos and drawings of—who
else?—La Virgen. And hey, if M&J’s posole, stuffed sopapillas and
blue corn tacos are good enough for Bill Clinton and Barbra Streisand, and for
The New Yorker to write and rave about, the rest of us can cope.
“In the
summertime the sun bores a hole through your skull and singes your brain synapses,”
says Tom Miller of his adopted city. “But in a good way.”
Miller has
lived in Tucson for 33 years and is the author of Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink:
Offbeat Travels Through America’s Southwest (National Geographic Adventure
Press, 2001.) He observes that Tucson’s most Hispanic parts are on the west
and south sides, “just like in every other city.”
But whichever
side you’re on, you’re in a desert valley that’s an hour away from
Mexico and the Sonora desert, and mountains. Lots of mountains. Santa Catalina
(north), Rincon (east), Tucson (west) Santa Rita and Sierrita (south.) With a
population of some 800,000, 31 percent of whom are Hispanic, Tucson is heavily
bilingual and Mexican. It’s the place with the greatest reputation for a
high quality of life in which you’ll find all the bookstores in strip shopping
malls. But it’s laid-back and cheap (houses average $118,700) and the nature
is pretty. Culturally, there’s always the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Mission
San Xavier del Bac, La Fiesta de los Vaqueros, Cinco de Mayo and the time-honored
Fiesta de los Chiles.
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