El Norte
By 
Simon Romero has another wonderful story about northern New Mexico in today’s New York Times. (I think that’s a gift link, let me know if it’s not!). Romero himself is a Norteño, having grown up in “an old adobe home in Ribera, a village near the Pecos River, speaking some New Mexican Spanish.”
The article details that New Mexican Spanish, how and why it’s different from other versions of Spanish. I saw a bit of the world he describes when I came to New Mexico, and I’ve seen it smothered by immigrants, of whom I have to admit I am one.
Downtown Santa Fe was once a real downtown, but now art galleries occupy the place where Sears once was, and most of what one hears is California- and Texas-accented English.
The photos in the story are lovely.