Miguel Gandert does not know whether his family's 19th-century log home has been burned by a New Mexico wildfire, but he fears the blaze could destroy an Indo-Hispano mountain culture far older than the United States.
The wildfire is the largest now in the United States and threatens a string of villages high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains where Gandert can trace roots to European and Mexican settlers as well as Native Americans.
Some residents' families have been in New Mexico since the late 17th century, and more than half of Mora County, population 4,500, has stayed to defend homes, police said. They are driven by "querencia," or love of place, grounded in a religious sensibility for land they pray for at Catholic churches and chapels known as "moradas," said Melendez.
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