"Michael Trujillo's Land of Disenchantment is astonishing, both for its scholarly depth and, more importantly, for its honesty. As an ethnographic study of the Espanola Valley it offers a searing account of the negative realities that trouble Nuevomexicanos: poverty, drugs, violence. And, yet, Trujillo probes into these social and material difficulties with a spirit that suggests how creativity, identity, and will to survive emerge from tragedy to produce a positive aesthetics of joking, storytelling, weaving, and cultural ritual that keeps people alive to their long history and to their dreams." --GENARO PADILLA, Associate Professor of English, University of California at Berkeley NEW MEXICO'S ESPANOLA VALLEY IS SITUATED IN THE NORTHERN PART OF THE state between the fabled Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains. Many of the Valley's communities have roots in the Spanish and Mexican periods of colonization, while the Native American Pueblos of Ohkay Owingeh and Santa Clara are far older. In this experimental ethnography, Michael Trujillo presents a vision of Espanola that addresses its denigration by neighbors--and some of its residents--because it represents the antithesis of the supposedly "positive" narrative of New Mexico. Contradicting the popular notion of New Mexico as the "Land of Enchantment," a fusion of race, landscape, architecture, and food into a romanticized commodity, Trujillo probes beneath the surface to reveal the struggle and pain brought about by colonization and the transition from a pastoral to an urban economy, as well as the limits of common ethnographic representations. Land of Disenchantment contains both Trujillo's original ethnography and his explorations of creative works by Valley residents Policarpio Valencia, Jim Sagel, Teresa Archuleta, and G. Benito Cordova.

Land of Disenchantment: Latina/o Identities and Transformations in Northern New Mexico

Politics & Social Sciences

Trujillo, Michael L.

Social Sciences

University of New Mexico Press

This never before published last novel by Jim Sagel (1947–1998), whose unique style of writing about New Mexico Hispano culture and mastery of New Mexican Spanish was dubbed “Chicanesque,” re-enacts the traditional Christmas play, Los Pastores, as the backdrop for a parallel story set in the fictional New Mexican village of San Buenaventura where a young woman has just given birth to a baby boy. The infant is Jesús (Jesus in Los Pastores) and his biological mother is Marta (Mary). Sagel informs the reader in the first paragraph that the mother has only twenty-three days to live. Sagel explicitly invokes a guiding star that shines over Bethlehem and foreshadows the tragedy of this holy mother’s death. But the story is not really about that. Instead, it is about the residents of the town who form the cast of Los Pastores. Each chapter opens with a scene from the single December performance. In particular, we follow the romance of Marta Elena Mascareñas (born Chacón) and Francisco Mascareñas, as well as the travails of the Chacón and Mascareñas extended families and friends. This is a story written with the dark and biting humor termed carrilla, a style of verbal play that evokes tears of laughter and stings of recognition. Ultimately, Sagel spins a tale intended to make us laugh even as we cry―much as life does. San Buenaventura’s people suffer brutal blows that sometimes (or often) knock them senseless, struggling to regain their footing, and seeing stars. They do so even as they live under a guiding star.

Some Are Born under a Star/Unos nacen con estrella: A Northern New Mexico Novel

Biographies & Memoirs

Sagel, Jim

Michael L., Trujillo

Community & Culture

Museum of New Mexico Press

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Books by Trujillo, Michael L.