New Mexico Author Q & A: Denise Chávez

Photo: Daniel Zolinsky

Loving Pedro Infante, by Denise Chávez. Washington Square Press, 2001. Available in bookstores and online.

A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture, by Denise Chávez. Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2020 and 2006. Available in bookstores and online.

“I believe in the power of writing to heal lives and heal the many borders between people, real and imagined,” states Denise Chávez in her author bio in Poets & Writers. “I am a performance writer, novelist and teacher who lives and works on the U.S./México border corridor in southern New Mexico. I am the Director/Bookseller at Casa Camino Real, a bookstore and gallery on the historic Camino Real in Las Cruces, New Mexico. We sell books on Abebooks, www.abebooks.com.”

Chávez is the author of many books, among them The Last of the Menu Girls, The King and Queen of Comezón, and Face of an Angel, for which she won the American Book Award. Her plays have been staged internationally. The winner of numerous other writing awards, she was a founder of the Border Book Festival in Las Cruces.

In this interview she talks about two of her books—a novel and a memoir—as well as her activism on behalf of migrants at the southern border.

About her novel The King and Queen of Comezón, Publisher’s Weekly wrote: “Chávez’s voice is at once zany and knowing. She is la gran mitotera—a big troublemaker, stirring up rollicking mischief with wacky humor delivered in the lyrical tempo of Chicano slang.”

That zany voice comes through clearly also in Loving Pedro Infante, the story of Teresina or Tere, a young Mexican-American woman who lives in a border town and idealizes the Mexican film star Pedro Infante, while suffering through miserable relationships with men in her real life.

Ramona: Loving Pedro Infante is a brilliant novel that I keep finding more and more richness in. Feminism, the Chicana version; Mexican American relationships and cultures; Northern New Mexico versus borderland New Mexico—wow! Not to mention a primer on Pedro Infante’s films! What inspired you to write this book? Were you a fan of Pedro?

Denise: Growing up on the U.S./México border has been a great blessing for me. I am Mexican American, and like all proud Mexicanos and Mexicanas, we love our culture, our food, our music, our way of life. My sister and I would often go to El Paso, our near-by “Big City,” to shop and see movies. I remember going to double and triple features all in one day. My mother, a Spanish teacher, loved movies, and this meant she loved Pedro Infante, the great Mexican film star and singer. My mother, Delfina Rede Faver Chávez, studied at UNAM, the Universidad Autónoma, in Mexico City, and she was enamored of all things Mexicano. As I am. We would go to the Plaza Theatre to see movies in English and then walk down El Paso street to see movies in Spanish. It was a rich and colorful life. I thank my mother for giving me the gift of being Bi-Cultural and Bilingual.

Ramona: The dialog in Loving Pedro Infante is colorful and dynamic, a fusion of Spanish and English unique to the southern border that conveys so much through humor and inuendo. For example, the protagonist, Tere, says she’s desde. What does that mean?

Denise: The way I use the word “desde” is not to be found in dictionaries. One of my father’s caretakers often used the word “desde” to refer to something that was understood by those who were in a conversation without having to get to the nitty gritty of description. A word/mood/ understood. For example, she was so “desde.” Take it and make it what you will. And the speakers understand that she is how she is, without having to navigate the known language. It’s a complex and yet simple way of speaking. Something cultural you grow up with. In English you might say, “hand me that deal.” But what does a “deal” mean? The understood unstated.

Ramona: Did writing A Taco Testimony help you come to terms with your parents? Your culture?

Denise: I am not sure what you mean “coming to terms” with my parents and culture. I wouldn’t put things that way. My mother was my mother and my father was my father. Acceptance. They were not to be changed. I am a proud Mexicana/Chicana/Latina and always have been. They were children who grew up in poverty and struggle and I appreciate all they did for my sisters and me. Their lives were hard but full of joy and love.

Many wrestle with their parents and it’s part of growing up and becoming wiser, but to wish them to be what they weren’t seems illogical. I have accepted them completely and fully. Now that doesn’t mean that I may not have agreed with them or with their ways of being, but I loved them, love them still. I feel very blessed to be my parents’ child.

Ramona: In A Taco Testimony, tacos are the theme that ties together familia, celebrations, comfort, sustenance, and more. You say your family’s tacos were always rolled, not folded. And they were baked in a pan in the oven. In Northern N.M., I think that describes enchiladas, and of course you have to eat them with a fork. Were the rolled tacos of your youth also eaten with a fork? And are “enchiladas” a thing in Las Cruces?

Denise: There are rolled tacos and folded tacos. Ours were rolled. Although we do have folded and eat folded tacos. Not knowing Southern New Mexico is something you need to correct. Southern New Mexico is totally different from Northern New Mexico, where people tout their descendancy from only the Spanish, excluding the Mexican blood of the ancestors. This is a major struggle in New Mexico: the Spanish culture vs. the Mexican.

As far as tacos go, we rolled ours and we baked them in the oven (if you are doing a larger quantity) or sometimes we put them in a cast iron pan and cooked them on the stove top and added cheese at the last minute. They are very good that way. A little soft, a little hard. You can eat rolled tacos with a fork, but they are better hand-held.

You are confusing enchiladas and tacos! Enchiladas are everybody’s “thing.” Green, red, or Christmas as we say, a mixture of both green and red. As I mentioned earlier, Southern New Mexico is NOT Northern New Mexico.

Ramona: I was especially moved by your account of how difficult your college experience was, and how reconnecting with the foods of your family, tacos in particular, literally saved you. Did you have a hard time because you weren’t supported by the school or by your family? Or because you were determined to forge your own path, in a way that no one else in your family had ever done? Or something else?

Denise: I came from a small town and to move to a big town was hard. Graduate school was very hard, especially as a theatre artist. I was very poor and lived on a small scholarship. I was also working as a waitress the last year of graduate school. The school was intense, fierce, and top-notch. To be a theatre artist is no small thing. To be a Chicana in Texas was also no small thing. Sometimes overtly racist, sometimes not, it was hard to find my role in the world. 

Ramona: Tell me about your plan for the anthology We Are Here to Represent. What kind of stories and whose stories are you seeking?

Denise: Since the summer of 2018 I have been distributing books to Refugee, Migrant, and Asylum-seeking families in my hometown of Las Cruces, New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; and Juárez, México. I received a grant last year from New Mexico Writers for a project called We Are Here to Represent, which will be an anthology of stories, poetry, photographs, and artwork depicting the voices of people we worked with whose stories have not been told. We are now in a submission period, collecting stories of people who come from different parts of the U.S. in Border Immersion groups to see what is happening on the border, as well as those who have worked locally and regionally with our families and children on both sides of the border. I know it will be a powerful testimony to the resiliency, beauty, and power of the human spirit.

Ramona: Please update me on your project Libros Para El Viaje. Have border closures and the pandemic affected your efforts to get books into the hands of migrants? What would you like readers of this blog to know about Libros Para El Viaje?

Denise: I have not been to Juarez personally to deliver books since the U.S. border has been closed, although members of other sister organizations travel back and forth on a regular basis. I look forward to visiting our distribution sites soon and working with our children and families. At present, my bookstore, Casa Camino Real, donates books, notebooks, and school supplies on a regular week basis to various shelters in Juarez. There are many, and we rotate our donation schedule. The books have been donated by hundreds of bookstores, organizations, readers as well as the American Booksellers organization, The Children’s Reading Foundation, etc. etc. We have distributed thousands and thousands of books since the summer of 2018. It’s been a labor of love for our Book Stewards and all concerned. And we continue to collect Spanish language books, bibles, Spanish/English dictionaries, and all types of books for babies, children, youth, and adults.

If anyone is interested in our program, please visit this page: https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/libros-para-el-viaje/

Please contact me for more information at:  comezon09@comcast.net.

Ramona, thank you for this invaluable opportunity to share my thoughts and world with fellow writers. ¡Adelante!

New Mexico Author Q & A-Ginger Gaffney

As a horse trainer, Ginger Gaffney spent her days “teaching horses how to feel comfortable in the world of humans.” Then she was offered a task that truly changed her life: work with a small group of recovering addicts on a prison ranch in northern New Mexico. The situation on the ranch was dire: the horses that lived there were out of control, ganging up and attacking residents, trampling them seemingly without provocation. The residents were terrified.

Half Broke is the story of how Gaffney brought these groups—horses and humans, both coming from situations of abuse and trauma—together again. Gaffney’s the master of her material, using finely honed language to show readers all the subtleties of equine and human behavior, subtleties that determine whether one will be trusted, whether one will be a friend or an enemy. This is one of the most astonishing memoirs I’ve ever read, in that it exposes a way of perceiving the world that I hadn’t imagined.

Ramona: How long have you been writing, and why did you decide to get your MFA?

Ginger : I’ve been writing since college, and soon after college I did a 2-year apprenticeship with a small poetry press that published first chapbooks of unpublished poets. After that apprenticeship I considered going back to school but a voice inside me kept saying, “You need to live in order to write.” So, I did that living and built a great life around horses. Then I was asked to help at the re-sentencing ranch I write about in Half Broke. That worked changed my life.

I went on to get my MFA about three years after I started working at the ranch. I was seeking out some way to keep growing. My horse work was wonderful, but there was something missing. My partner, Glenda, always had belief in my writing. She kept encouraging me to write. She is the one who supported me in making that decision.

Ramona: You wrote in Half Broke: “I learned to listen with my eyes.” Would you call this a skill or an instinct? Can anyone learn it?

Ginger: There are many people like me, I believe. We are watchers, not talkers. We “listen” to gestures, to small body movements, wrinkles in the corner of mouths. I don’t think of it as an instinct or a skill, really. It is just what comes naturally to me. And yes, I think it can in part be learned. But mostly, I think it is something people are born into. I don’t think we know everything about how we inherit traits from our DNA, from ancestors we never knew. But I think this approach to listening/communication, I think it comes from something far back inside us. As far back as when we were a bit more like an animal than human.

Ramona: After your experience at the ranch, do you think it is easier for a horse to learn to trust than it is for a human?

Ginger : I think trauma does a number on both horse and human. So, if you are a young colt, in the hands of a gentle and knowledgeable horse owner, trust will come easy for you. And the same thing can be said about a child. But if the situation is not like this, not supportive, not honest, traumatic—many things will remain difficult for a long time for both human and horse.

Ramona: One of the things that struck me about Half Broke is how honest horses are, and how in handling horses you found your place to stand in the world. Do you still find it challenging to deal with the deceptive nature of human relations, in contrast to that of horses? It must be difficult also for the recovering addicts who learn to work with horses but still have to succeed in the world of human relations.

Ginger : Working at the re-sentencing ranch with the residents for over seven years has given me a lot of hope in our human condition. I find I can open up and be myself around people much more easily. I have more confidence in the good inside people. There are still people who can be difficult for me, but I get less and less affected by them. In general, being among a group of people trying their best to be accountable for their actions, who treat each other respectfully, who no longer live out the patterns of their old addictions, I feel like this experience has given me one of the biggest gifts of my life.

When the residents finish their term on the ranch, they go back into the world looking for work and for a safe place to live. What I’ve heard them say frequently is how so many of us here on the outside (those of us who have never been to prison) have no respect for one another. Have no work ethic. Have no gratitude for the lives we have been given. They are shocked at how undisciplined we are. How we don’t hold ourselves accountable to our family, work, and relationships. This kind of fresh witness to of our “normal” world should be listened to.

Ramona: Do you know what the long-term effects of interacting with the horses have been for the residents? Recovery rate? Employment? Having stable relationships?

Ginger : I do know quite a few people who are now finished with their time at the ranch and are living wonderful lives. Some have married, others have stable friendships and relationships. This ranch in particular has a great rate of recovery. Much, much better than the standard 30- to 90-day programs.

You have hit on some key areas with this question. A person who is truly in recovery can have relationships again. People can learn they are trustworthy. They can reunite with family. They are able to hold down a good steady job, and often become a key employee for the company they work for. People who are truly in recovery are some of the most beautiful people to spend time with.

Ramona: How do you stay centered in your writing despite the wrenching problems of the people and horses you work with?

Ginger : That is easy for me. I try to write from the center of my emotional memory. And if I stay there long enough, hope is never very far away. Because even when some devastating things occur—say, we get word someone who has left the ranch overdosed or committed suicide—the thing is we look to each other and we pick each other up. One person, one day at a time. I try to keep my writing that close, too. One person, one horse, our simple daily failures, our simple daily triumphs. For me, that’s the only place I know to write from.

Ramona: After reading Half Broke, I tend to think there’s no such thing as “recovered,” that every day is a recovery day for an addict. Would you agree?

Ginger : I’m not an addict so I can’t fully say. But I know quite a few beautifully recovering people who do talk about how difficult it is day to day. But also how grateful they are now to be sober and clean. I would say, yes, recovery is a verb. It is ongoing, yet as time goes by, it is a blessing to be truly sober, to be alcohol and drug free. There are not too many people who live this way. When you meet one, they just shine.

Ramona: Are you still working with people in recovery?

Ginger: Right now, I am not. I worked at the ranch for seven years. After that I spent two years developing a long-term recovery farm nearby my home for a different organization. I’m back to working horses every day and absolutely loving it. I think I need the break from working in recovery right now. I’m busy working on my next book. It has similar themes. And it is also a book about what recovery can really look like. So it’s good to not be working and at the same time writing about recovery.

 Ginger Gaffney’s book Half Broke, is available from independent book stores(on line as well as brick and mortar) also on amazon.

New Mexico Author Q & A - Carmen Baca

Try to imagine a world with no internet or computers, no telephones or paved roads or electricity. A remote valley in northern New Mexico where only one person owned an automobile. This was the world where Carmen Baca’s father was a teenager-almost-a-man in the 1920s. Her debut novel El Hermano fictionalizes her father’s initiation into the Cofridía, the brotherhood of los Hermanos Penitentes. The book has been selling well in local bookstores and on Amazon since it was published in 2017 by Western Edge Press. Part of that appeal is no doubt curiosity about the secret rituals of the Penitentes, which have been sensationalized over the decades.

What is often overlooked, though—perhaps because the mainstream culture no longer has the vocabulary for thinking about it—is the holism of the brotherhood. In that remote place and time, los Hermanos were all about community—initiating young men into their role as brothers supporting each other and ministering to the welfare of everyone in the village. Life was harsh there, and much was expected of them, but they were supported by the underlying values of mutual respect, piety, and honor.

El Hermano is narrated first-person by José, Baca’s father, at age 15. It opens on Ash Wednesday, when José’s older brother, Miguel, is being initiated as a novicio. Baca herself didn’t witness the secret rituals in the morada, but she grew up surrounded by the culture. Her scenes set in the morada, where young José is alternately spying through a window and participating in community services, are the most intense and evocative descriptions of religious experience I’ve ever encountered. The adolescent José is nearly consumed by his fervent desire to become a novicio himself, but is told he’s still too young.

Carmen Baca taught English and history in high school and college before retiring in 2014. El Hermano was a finalist in the NM-AZ Book Awards. After that, she took a new direction with the novel Las Mujeres Misteriosas (2018, Lulu Press), and Cuentos Del Cañón (2019, Clarendon House Publications), a story anthology.

“After writing El Hermano, my writing turned to more of a magical realism bent because I’m endeavoring to keep our dying traditions alive through literature,” Baca says. “A big part of that is our folk tales, legends, the supernatural, and the paranormal.” Baca also has published 21 short pieces in online literary magazines, women’s blogs, and anthologies. She and her husband live in the country near where she grew up.

Ramona: You wrote that El Hermano comes from your memories of growing up in Cañoncito after WWII, when your parents returned to their ancestral home after serving in other states in the war effort. Did they resume the activities of the Cofridía at that time? 

Carmen: The memories I used come from my life during the 1960s through the mid-’80s, when the cofradía was active. I used records my parents left and details I remember they told me about to make it as authentic and true as I could. In addition to memories, I used photos, family documents, and research, of course, to portray 1928. The brotherhood’s records document the years the cofradía was active. It ran from 1850 through 1986 but without my parents when they were away working for the war effort.

Ramona: How do you think life in the community after WWII differed from 1928, the time El Hermano is set in?

Carmen: By the mid-’40s, most of los Hermanos left the rural community of Cañoncito de las Manuelitas in northern New Mexico to reside in Las Vegas, exactly how I depicted in the book. The men held down jobs like school custodians, maintenance workers, auto mechanics—their lives of labor and military service gave them the skills of the trades to support their families. The women found employment, too, like my mother who worked at the local parachute factory and at the state hospital before I was born.

Many of my aunts worked as cooks for one of the school districts in the town. They enjoyed middle- to lower-class status in the poor neighborhoods or those closest to the poor ones. They learned what prejudice was, in some instances. (I’ve written about that, too.) But they also enjoyed the comforts they could afford. They had electricity, and most had indoor plumbing; and they had at least one car or truck per family. The women exchanged ice boxes for refrigerators, wood stoves for gas. They had grocery stores, a public library, parks, and clothing shops within walking distance. It was a different life, but it was a welcome one.

The men still returned to check on their adobe homes in Cañoncito to feed the livestock after work. I remember doing that with my dad. The entire family spent the months of the growing season there every weekend and summers. My mother used to fashion these matching duck-billed bonnets for us as protection from the hot sun on the days we bent over our hoes, weeding the extensive jardín.

The crops from that garden and the meats from the home butchering filled the freezers for the winters. Those spring weekends spent at Cañoncito also included the most busy season for los Hermanos and las Verónicas: Lent. Living through that always took me back into the past, to a time before my life began. Those are the memories I used when I depicted my father at age 15.

So the location where we spent much of our lives changed, but the traditions of the past were continued. Until los Hermanos died out, and my generation and those after mine allowed them to be forgotten.  

Ramona: Was there a priest for the community in 1928? How about after WWII?

Carmen: There was no priest here, which is why los Hermanos took care of the spiritual needs of the residents who lived in the valley. They also acted as leaders who performed many services for the community. (There are still communities here in northern New Mexico whose Hermanos do the same, even though some have monthly visiting priests.) There has never been a priest in Cañoncito de las Manuelitas. In the ’60s through the ’80s when I was around, I can recall the times priests were called upon to perform mass here in the little capilla down the road from my house. We had a few funeral and wedding masses here, one for the celebration of Santo Niño, for which the church is named, and an outdoor one at the repres to bless the newly constructed dam for the acequia. (Represa is the actual Spanish word for dam; repres is our regional dialect.)

Ramona: I want to make sure I get this correct: it was the village of Cañoncito?

Carmen: Cañoncito is a rural community with houses along a ten-mile dirt road running through the little canyon for which it’s named. It’s not a village or a town on a map. It’s a beautiful scattering of homes (some of the adobe homes from El Hermano still stand and a few are occupied) with acres of meadows in between and forests on either side. Livestock graze here and there, and wildlife visit as they pass in search of water or food, since we lie in the middle of the mountains they call home.

The school where my father received his education from grades one through eight still stands down the road between my house and the church. I live where the José of the book lived while growing up and after marrying my mother. The book details the two places of worship in Cañoncito at the time: the capilla, the church where we prayed the stations of the cross, and the morada, the prayer house used by los Hermanos. Both structures still stand.

Ramona: José’s experiences during those weeks of Lent seem to me like a formal initiation, in which a boy is schooled in the responsibilities of being an adult, a responsible member of the community. And there’s the spiritual aspect, too, with José undergoing a profound experience of what it means to be a follower of Christ. It’s meant to be challenging, testing him in every way. Do you think our modern society has lost something valuable by not giving young people real initiations?

Carmen: The initiation of brothers still exists today because some of the brotherhoods do. So it’s not completely lost, either here in the Southwest or in many Spanish-speaking countries. However, because so many communities here have no cofradías in their areas, I do think the younger members, male and female, have lost something valuable from their culture. Those who are Catholic have their own versions of this in the church—confirmation. But the communities which no longer have cofradías have allowed a piece of our past to die out, and that’s never a good thing.

Ramona: On p. 63, during the most dramatic moments of the Penitente ritual, the names of their ancestors are called out and prayers are said for their souls. With people moving around so much more nowadays, is this custom still practiced in your part of the world. 

Carmen: I have experienced this only a few times at Catholic funeral masses when the priest calls out the names people have told him to remember and then allows people to call out the names of those deserving of a prayer and a moment of remembrance. That tradition seems to have passed on as well.

However, in many of our homes, we still put up our own altars like our parents and grandparents in a corner of the living room or bedroom. Our saints, both retablos and statues, rest between pictures of our loved ones. Because we see them every day, they remain in our minds and hearts. We still light our candles and recite our prayers daily for our loved ones wherever they are.

This is one tradition, at least, that many households still cling to. I can think of another that I don’t think is done anymore: priests coming to the house to pray masses with their parishioners. I can remember up until the ’80s my mother called upon her priest to give a mass in our living room for one occasion or another. Neighbors and relatives came from the same block as well as from the other side of the town to pray in my mom’s living room.

Ramona: Are the Penitente traditions still continuing in northern New Mexico?

Carmen: They are few and far between, not in every rural community and hamlet like in the past. I know of four which exist just twenty miles from where I live, so there are some still active. In fact, after writing El Hermano, I went to pray with the brothers of one of those cofradías on Good Friday of 2017. The initiates still undergo some sort of formal induction, I am told. Since I am female, I can only answer for the one I experienced as a Verónica.

Ramona: El Hermano is obviously a labor of love in the memory of your parents. Why did you feel so strongly moved to write this book? 

Carmen: It was after the brotherhood, and by necessity the sisterhood, disbanded in the mid-1980s that the religious artifacts of the morada and the church were distributed among those of us still living.

We met and collected the saints and candleholders, the retablos and the manteles, everything in the church and the prayer house. We had heard that those which were no longer active and which had been abandoned were getting looted, and the religious artifacts were being sold by thieves.

I remember clearly one prima taking a santo, another taking a retablo—each surviving Hermano and Verónica taking a relic to care for in their homes. There were only two Hermanos left of the twelve of my youth which I depicted in El Hermano, five Verónicas and me, the youngest. There were many artifacts still unclaimed, so I was asked to offer them refuge. A wooden box which had been locked for all those years came home with my husband and me.

Discovering what was in that box led me to write El Hermano. There are many books about los Hermanos out there, though none written as a narrative in the first-person perspective of an Hermano, much less the highest ranking one, el Hermano Mayor. I set out to be the one to write it because I could convey the longing to join the brotherhood like no one else. I had experienced it firsthand. I begged my father for decades to allow me to be the first female to join, but he kept to the rules governing the brotherhood, and I was always denied.

The longing the main character feels, the devout desire to become one of the brothers, came from the depths of my emotions. So did the profound and poignant effect of praying with that group of men on my life. I wanted to convey what it was like to those who have never experienced praying with los Hermanos.

When the entire group of twelve knelt in unison on the hardwood floor of the capilla, and my father or his brother recited the Stations of the Cross, the chills rose on my back and stayed there the entire hour of the service. Something about the doleful tones of twelve devout men and the words of both the prayers and the hymns was hauntingly beautiful and touched the soul. I tried my best to convey how special and how awful it was. Deep, heartfelt agony arose in those men’s voices when they recounted such vivid details as the number of lashes on Christ’s back, or the punches to the face the solders gave him, the pricks of the crown of thorns, or the open wound in His side. Every detail of every atrocity Christ underwent comes to life in those prayers with los Hermanos. No religious ceremony does that as effectively to remind us just what He did on our behalf.

At two different book reading events, a couple of present-day brothers asked what right I had to write about them since I had never belonged. When I explained that I wanted to convey them in a different light, out of my utmost and deep respect for them, because of how I felt about their society due to my growing up as the daughter of el Hermano Mayor, they accepted my reasons. I’m pretty sure the tremor in my voice affected their opinions. I’m always close to tears when I speak of los Hermanos’ effect on me spiritually. There are far more Hermanos who read my book and who went out of their way to communicate to me their appreciation of my depiction of the brotherhood. That today’s Hermanos approve means the world to me.

As the last surviving member of my community’s Verónicas, I wanted to convey how important the female society was to the brotherhood. We were the ones who assured their places of worship were clean and ready for Lenten services. We were the ones who made and delivered their food. We accompanied them in every Friday night recitation of the Stations of the Cross, and we participated in their processions and the few rituals they allowed. I still take pride in the small part I played as one of them. 

Ramona: In your novel Las Mujeres Misteriosas, I love your concept of having three supernatural beings scheming and manipulating the life of a sensitive young woman, Rosita. Two of the beings are major figures in Hispanic folklore, Santa Muerte and La Llorona, and the third is the ghost of a relative. Not all of them have Rosita’s best interests at heart! How did you come up with this plot idea?

Carmen: I have to chuckle at the question of how I came up with any plot idea after El Hermano. After that book published in 2017, I honestly thought it was going to be my one and only book. After I finished writing El Hermano, I experienced a profound sadness, as though I were saying goodbye to those people in the book, my parents especially. A few months later, I came up with ideas for short stories based off some of the secondary characters.When I discovered I could bring them back in subsequent stories, the inspiration turned into my third book, a short story collection called Cuentos del Cañón. I brought back el Serpiente, but most significantly, la Muerte, and la Lunática, Claudia Cardenas.

Before that book was finished, however, I found a novella contest, and I decided to bring in la Llorona, who I barely mentioned in El Hermano. I wanted to write a story that showed her as the character I had read about. But I took the liberty of giving her limited powers while depicting the “true story” behind her reasons for haunting the waterways of the Southwest. Then, of course, she needed a nemesis, and who better than the two powerful women from my first book. Rosita came into play because I needed la Llorona to have a human plaything. When the novella turned into a novel, it became my second book.

I had always enjoyed mysteries, the supernatural, the paranormal, and even horror, but never did I think I could write one. Truthfully, no one saw that book before it published. No proofreader, no editor, just me—for fun. I had joined so many writing groups where almost every author was self-published, and I wanted to see if I could do that. While I panicked it would be a failure, I was instead thrilled when a few readers said they couldn’t read it because of the nightmares. That’s when I knew I could write a mystery, and I’ve been experimenting ever since.

New Mexico Author Q & A

After nearly thirty years living in a remote New Mexico village, Charlotte Plantz (aka Claudia Clavel) had a prodigious collection of stories to tell. During that time I was a frequent visitor to Mike and Charlotte’s adobe home and heard the stories as they happened.

The initial question of course is how do a couple of Anglo artists from California fit into a traditional Spanish village? Many small social signals are given when people are getting to know each other.

Charlotte laughs when she says her neighbors must have figured she and Mike were okay when they had huge shouting matches in their yard. (This was during their early years there, when money was tight and many survival decisions had to be made as they worked nonstop to make their small adobe house livable.) “They heard us fighting and must have decided we were normal people!” she says.

In the early colonial days, life in these N.M. villages was really hard. Today, some of the problems have changed, but life remains hard. In the modern era, Spanish settlers and Native Americans were no longer waging gun battles over territory, but many small land holders lost their land to unscrupulous Anglos who knew how to work the new U.S. legal system. Poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, and other ills followed.

Charlotte and Mike got to know the village’s families as babies were born, grew up, and had children of their own. While hosting their own grandsons during the summers, Mike and Charlotte offered village kids acceptance and new experiences, such as tasting Romaine lettuce for the first time and swimming in the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa. They hired locals for construction projects at their home, realizing these men had artistic and craft skills that the wider world had overlooked.

For many months, Charlotte agonized over whether to publish Accidental Anthropologists, even though she’d changed all the names. Finally she sat down with some neighbors and read the book aloud to them.

“Have I gone too far?” she asked.

The response from “Perfecto”: “I tell the same kind of stories when our family gathers. I want my children and grandchildren to know this is the way life is here. It’s part of our culture.”

And “Pilar” said: “I could listen to your stories all day. This was better than watching a telenovela.”

(Disclaimer: I edited early versions of both books.)

Accidental Anthropologists was published in 2014 and continues to sell steadily, especially in N.M. bookstores. Why do you think it's so resilient?

Charlotte: The feedback I continue to receive comes from the fact that it is the only book written about a specific time frame that includes Vietnam vets and their relationship with their neighbors in a Spanish Northern New Mexico village.

Ramona: I know you've gotten some unexpected responses from readers far and wide. Do you want to share any? 

Charlotte: A number of readers have found their way to my door, in spite of my changing the names of people and places, including my pseudonym as author. A San Diego couple emailed via my publisher to ask about place names. They were connecting mileage to cities and villages, to no avail. We began a correspondence. The couple flew out to meet me and we became friends. The Pfaffs visit twice a year, timed around Las Vegas cultural events.

A recent couple found me via my acupuncturist, who has bought around 30 books to give to clients. By now, I’ve agreed to meet folks who enjoy Accidental Anthropologists because I’m curious to know what they have to say about it. 

One of my favorite stories is Chapter 10, “It took a village,” in which you describe how people go up to the cemetery on the hill when they need a break from their problems. Do you think they might be connecting with their ancestors there?

I also loved reading about how you drove in circles around the church as various people approached to find out why you were distraught. Do you want to say anything more about that experience?

Charlotte: The people here stay very connected to those who have passed on. I’m pretty sure parking at the cemetery has that connection. Over the years, Mike and I have experienced the same feeling. We lost all the “drinkers,” and they rest in peace in the little campo santo, so we continue to feel their presence whenever we are near there.

Times have changed in the village. We have lost so many neighbors it’s hard to imagine I would have that same experience (driving around the church). Though those of us who remain still care for one another.

You and Mike faced some pretty scary situations over the years. Do you think fearlessness is necessary in order to be accepted in a different culture? 

Charlotte: The biggest change for us came early on, when I stormed the village over an ugly rumor that I was on the “take” from a movie company. I knocked on every door in the village and gave a frantic speech about honesty. From that day forward my neighbors nearly bowed when they met me; I had everyone’s respect for standing up to gossip. The people here have great respect for fearlessness. I continue to wear that like a shawl!

Accidental Anthropologists opened my eyes to how our society judges disadvantaged people so harshly. For example, I saw how easy it is to get on the wrong side of the law enforcement and legal structure if you’re poor. Do you want to say anything about this?

Charlotte: Landing in the middle of a group of Vietnam vets with drug and alcohol problems touched the core of my being. I have always been sympathetic to down-trodden folks so it was natural for me to interact. The “drinkers” made it easy for us, as they respected our privacy and space. They knew we couldn’t enter their world of self-medication, and were grateful for our respect as human beings. They were hard workers and helped us in a number of ways throughout the years. We feel privileged to have been a part of their lives.

Has life in San Ignacio changed for you since Accidental Anthropologists was published? Are you happy you used a pseudonym?

Charlotte: I am happy I used a pseudonym for a couple of reasons: I was so insecure as an “author” I had a hard time writing my name over and over. The minute I changed my name to Claudia, my brain opened up and words flew out of me. My new name gave me distance and allowed me to feel free to write whatever came out of my head.

The other reason the pseudonym worked for me had to do with the village and our neighbors. I did not want to bring attention to San Ignacio or myself. I was pretty sure readers would be checking us out, and that proved to be true. I can’t tell you how many readers have told me they drove around villages trying to figure out where the story took place.

Someone in the real San Ignacio, north of Las Vegas, told a friend that people knocked on doors there asking about the book.

Me and My Magical Life begins with your life before you arrived in San Ignacio. A lot of people throw off the conventional life, but many of them crash and burn. You, on the other hand, discovered your true calling as an artist and have thrived. What was the hardest thing you ever had to do?

Charlotte: The hardest thing was to walk out the door of my old life. If it hadn’t been for my daughters, and Mike and Murray (a close friend), and the Abeyta family, I’m not sure I would have succeeded. Although, survival is a powerful force, so who knows how it might have played out.

Did you wrestle a lot with what to tell and what to leave out of Me and My Magical Life?

Charlotte:  I probably have enough untold stories to fill another book. I often wake up with that thought. It was easy to leave out negativity, and sometimes too much information. With both books I automatically wrote a chapter of equal length every time I sat down to write. It was like automatic writing, and self-editing. Very strange!

Writing Me and My Magical Life was a wonderful experience. I felt free to use my own name, and those of my friends and family. I felt like I had things to say of importance: mental health, women’s rights, belief in oneself. I hoped my book would be inspiring and educational. Most of all, I now trust the subconscious part of my brain completely. From that place, all the connections came together.

I’m about to start another book: My Two Felons and a Misdemeanor. This book will tell the stories of our three grandsons and how they got into trouble, and how they found their way out. The three of them are doing well and finding success in their lives. It’s a story worth telling. 

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Accidental Anthropologists and Me and My Magical Life  are available at Tome on the Range in Las Vegas, N.M., and on Amazon.