NEW MEXICO (Economist) September 29, 2008 — There are no direct flights from London to Albuquerque. New Mexicans tend to travel heavy, and my connecting flight from Houston stays grounded for 30 minutes while passengers bargain for overhead space. I silently regret venturing across the Atlantic and half of America with a baby on my lap until two hours into the flight, when the plane curves around and I lift my window shade.

Suddenly there it is: the dusty red earth of the high desert stretching into oblivion with only a few dirt tracks, like spider-veins, etched into it. The Rio Grande, fat from what New Mexicans optimistically call the “monsoon” rains of late summer snakes steel-blue across the earth in smooth wide curves, edged on either side by the tangle of trees that is the Bosque del Apache. The grid-lines of Albuquerque are dwarfed by Sandia Peak and appear tiny and lost in the vastness of the surrounding plateau. The plane descends and I watch truck headlights blink to life on Interstate 25, one of the state’s only three freeways. Red-gold evening sunshine floods into the cabin. I am home.

At around 120,000 square miles, New Mexico is the fifth-largest state in the union (by way of comparison, Britain is about 94,500 square miles). Yet with just under 2 million residents, New Mexicans have to spend a lot of time on the road if they want to get anywhere.

New Mexico is 43% Hispanic, the highest proportion of any state, and is home to 19 Native American pueblos and four major reservations. The Navajo Nation, America’s biggest tribe by population and land ownership, straddles north-western New Mexico, north-eastern Arizona and south-eastern Utah. New Mexico parted from Spain in 1821 and then Mexico following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, finally becoming the 47th American state in 1912. Nevertheless, responses to my place of origin include “I’ve been to Cancun” and “But your English is so good”.

I admit with embarrassment that my Spanish is less good. Both languages feature prominently here, often mixing in conversation for convenience and succinctness. Damian Wilson, a linguist at the University of New Mexico, tells me that he was surprised to hear “Spanglish” labeled a derogatory term upon reaching university, as he and his peers considered it a competitive exercise to blend the two as cleverly as possible during his youth in Northern New Mexico.

Mr. Wilson believes that “code switching” and “morphological blending”, are useful tools for the fluent and less fluent — often the older and younger generations respectively — to communicate. For example, you might say ay te watcho, or see you later, before going to get the brekas on your trucka checked out, que no? Que no, the quintessential New Mexican phrase, is roughly equivalent to the British “innit.” The use of trucka, a word originally used to describe freight train cars, is also employed in northern Mexico, due to cross-border migration. Mr. Wilson urges caution however, as a local once corrected his use of trucka — “Aqui se dice pickup”, she said (“Here we say pickup”).

Recently New Mexico has been under the spotlight as a battleground state in the upcoming presidential election. Bill Richardson, the state’s governor and a former energy secretary and ambassador to the United Nations, made a brief run for the Democratic nomination earlier in the year, releasing campaign advertisements in both Spanish and English. Barack Obama has 24 offices here and John McCain recently held a rally in Albuquerque with his running mate Sarah Palin. New Mexico will likely return to its customary quiet after the excitement of the November election has died down.

In London, my adopted home, I propagated New Mexico-variety chili seeds on my window sill in the early spring, and lovingly grew them to full size in my tiny greenhouse. I hoped, in vain, for that essential commodity in which New Mexico abounds, but which London rarely sees: sun. Fortunately, I have returned to the land of enchantment (or the land of entrapment as it is less fondly known) just in time for the annual chili harvest.

Every September New Mexico is blanketed in pungent green-chili smoke, wafting from roadside stands and grocery store parking lots across the state. Sweaty men in baseball caps crank mesh-barrel chili roasters round and round, blistering the skins so they can be easily peeled off. At temperatures reaching 400 degrees Fahrenheit, a batch of chili (perhaps nothing testifies to the respect New Mexicans have for chili — spelled “chile” locally — than their speaking of it in the singular: chili isn’t a vegetable like tomatoes or cucumbers, but an essential element of the table, like sugar, salt or pepper) only needs roasting for several minutes. For a few bucks you can pick up a bushel or two and freeze it to last all year.

Hatch, a little town about 200 miles south of Albuquerque on Interstate 25, is the Mecca of green chili. Chili requires intense dry heat to develop its famous bite; Hatch has both, and it celebrates the crop each year with a chili festival. Here addicts can buy bushels of famous varieties like Big Jim and Sandia.

According to New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute, the annual state crop is worth about $50m and supports around 5,000 jobs. New Mexico grows more chili than any other state in the union. In addition to the famous New Mexico green and red, it also produces paprika, cayenne and jalapeño.

Much of the chili at the Hatch festival is sold directly by local family-run farms. Leticia Carrasco of Delgado Farms, which has been producing chili near Hatch for thirty-four years, says her strategy is to move as many bushels as possible at the Hatch festival and then ship the rest north, mostly to Albuquerque. She tells me that too much sun, wind or rain can damage the crop. Another farmer, Erika Bañuelos, tells me her family lost around seven acres this year to rain damage.

Green chili is a crucial ingredient for blue or yellow corn enchiladas, and can be sauced and poured over burritos or huevos rancheros. It can be — and in New Mexico often is — draped over cheeseburgers and pizza, and rare is the soup or stew that doesn’t benefit from a heavy hand with the green stuff.

Red chili, though less revered locally, is also delicious. The difference between the two colours is the harvest time: green chili is harvested before the fruit is ripe. After picking, green stays fresh only a few days if not roasted. Red is typically harvested later in September, once the pods are ripe.

Red chili is dried in the sun and can simply be left to hang from the rafters all year until needed. It is commonly used in menudo (tripe stew) or posole (hominy and pork stew). Ristras, long strings of red chile, decorate kitchens and porches all over the state, and just off I-25 in Hatch, early red chili pods lay scattered across rooftops to dry in the sun. (Deciding between green and red is not easy: The indecisive can opt for “Christmas”).

Jeff Anderson, an agriculture specialist at New Mexico State University, tells me that chili came to New Mexico from Brazil through trade between the Pueblo Indians of the south-western United States and the Toltec Indians of Mexico. New Mexico chili first gained notice when a farmer called Emilio Ortega brought it to southern California in 1896, earning it the name “Anaheim”, under which it is sold throughout the United States. An innovative chili cultivator called Fabian Garcia is credited with producing the state’s first commercially viable variety around 1922.

Chili gets its heat from capsaicin, and heat is measured in Scoville heat units (SHU), named for Wilbur Scoville, a scientist who tried to quantify a chili’s bite. A New Mexico chili measures in around 10,000 SHU, which seems fairly modest when compared to a habanero, at 300,000 SHU. Jessica Milner, a researcher at New Mexico State University, tells me that the hottest chili in the world is the Bhut Jolakia, weighing in at 1,040,000 SHU. She says, wincing at the memory, that she once saw someone taste a Bhut Jolakia, but that she wouldn’t advise it.

The delicious smoky aroma drifting from Hatch’s throng of roasters makes me think of my small crop back in England. Though I have not harvested them yet, I fear my chilies will have about as much bite as bell peppers.

But most New Mexicans more concerned with its chili’s flavor than its Scoville punch. For those lucky enough to get their hands on some of the real stuff, here is the most delicious treatment possible:

Francis and Sam’s Chilli Rellenos

Grease a medium pan and line with a layer of peeled, whole green chilies.

Cover with a layer of shredded cheddar or jack cheese. Add another layer of chilies. Beat seven egg whites and yolks separately. Fold together and add 3 tablespoons of flour and ¾ teaspoon salt. Spread egg mixture over chillis and bake at 375 Fahrenheit until medium brown.

Every autumn, residents of Santa Fe, New Mexico’s capital, taunt and burn a giant white paper puppet, called Zozobra (pictured above), who is thought to embody all bad spirits of the past year. The festivity, which traditionally kicks off the annual fiestas, is now run by the local Kiwanis club. Zozobra groans gutturally over the loudspeakers as he is prodded by red-costumed fire-dancers at his feet. At dusk, when an unruly and drunken crowd has reached a frenzied pitch chanting “Burn him!” (and other, much ruder things), Zozobra is finally torched and the whole thing is over in a matter of minutes. Moderately successful efforts have been made in recent years to contain subsequent violence and unruly behavior on the plaza.

Zozobra is not the only local ghoul. La llorona, the weeping woman, haunts the nightmares of children and the waterways of New Mexico. Some details of her story, in particular the degree of menace, vary from one community to the next. La llorona is the ghost of a woman who drowned her own children and prowls rivers of the southwest, searching for new children. She dresses in flowing white and her wails of “mi hijita, mi hijito!” (My darling daughter! My darling son!) are heard in the wind. A fate similar to that of her own hijos awaits any children she finds. The story is a handy tool for parents who wish to keep their children from playing near the river, staying out late, or misbehaving in general.

Keeping the spirit level

The Santa Fe fiestas commemorate Spain’s reclaiming of Santa Fe in 1692, after having lost it in the Pueblo revolt of 1680. From the 16th century, conquistadors ventured north into New Mexico seeking Quivira, and the other imaginary seven cities of gold. The fiestas highlight the enduring influence of Spanish Catholicism in the region.

Crosses atop hills in northern New Mexico are a reminder of the penetentes, a religious brotherhood that began with the early Spanish Franciscan missionaries, and who are particularly active around Holy Week. In the 1920s, a poet called Alice Corbin Henderson was invited into the morada (meeting place) and allowed to witness Easter with the penetente brotherhood. She wrote about her experiences in “Brothers of Light: The Penitentes of the Southwest.”

Many Catholics from northern New Mexico make a Good Friday pilgrimage to El Santuario de Chimayo, about twenty-five miles north-east of Santa Fe, in the Sangre de Cristo (blood of Christ) mountains. They come on foot from surrounding towns; on roads around the region you can see them trudging toward the adobe church in darkness before dawn.

In Chimayo they collect dirt, which they believe has miraculous healing powers, from the shrine of the church, which legend says miraculously refills itself. Some leave shoes for El Santo Niño de Atoche, a manifestation of the Christ Child, who is said to wear out his own shoes doing good deeds and playing with poor children. According to Marta Weigle and Peter White in “The Lore of New Mexico,” the word Chimayo comes from the Tewa language, and a mud pool where the church is now used to be a curative Tewa Indian shrine.

The Santa Fe fiestas begin and end in fire. After Sunday evening mass, a candlelit procession winds from the St Francis Cathedral through the old winding streets of downtown and up to the Cross of the Martyrs on a hill overlooking the city. The cross was erected in remembrance of the friars who died in the Pueblo Revolt. No cross commemorates the many Native Americans who died in the Spanish conquest of New Mexico.

As the long stream of tiny candles reaches the cross, what began rambunctiously ends quietly. The flames blink out one by one. People disperse. Only the glow of the city below and the bright starry New Mexico sky above remain.

The road to Alamo, a deserted settlement, is a long dirt track east of Santa Rosa. Dust billows from the jeep tires and gramma-grass tassels bob as we drive by. We pause to open a gate; driving on, the track gets bumpier. The sky is electric blue, and there are no clouds in it to shield us from the sun. Each homestead out here was 160 acres, a standard designated in the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave that amount of public land to anyone who built a house, dug a well, ploughed ten acres and actually lived on it.

We are deep in what Rudolpho Anaya, Santa Rosa’s most famous son, describes as “the raw sun-baked llano.” Mr. Anaya’s book, “Bless Me Ultima”, features a curandera, a traditional healer and wise woman. Finally stop at some stone ruins, where I am told a partera, or midwife, used to live. Outside the stone markers indicate where the “angelitos” rest. Parteras and curanderas were essential to remote communities like this one, which were distant from other medical aid.

On the road to Alamo

We leave the partera’s house and drive through waist-high cockleburs and grass, dodging mesquite. Finally we pull over in front of an adobe ruin next to two creaky windmills. We wander into the old house, past defunct mattress springs, an old stove, and a huge cedar beam spanning what remains of the ceiling.

I am guided by one of the last residents of this area. He points to the rock bluffs in the distance, and tells me this is Los Portales, an old cattle-rustling haunt of Billy the Kid and Charlie Bowdre. We are not too far from Fort Sumner, where Billy and Charlie lie buried under a headstone (caged in to prevent theft) famously inscribed “Pals.”

Paul Hutton, a historian at the University of New Mexico, was one of a team of experts summoned by then-governor Bill Richardson in 2003 to determine, conclusively with DNA, whether Billy was actually killed and buried in Fort Sumner in 1881 (a popular conspiracy theory says he wasn’t).

In the 1930s, the Federal Writer’s Project (FWP) employed teams of unemployed writers to collect folklore from around America. In the Pecos valley, FWP interviews with the viejitos, the old folks, reveal a great affection for Billy the Kid. It appears from these texts that Billy, fluent in Spanish, endeared himself to the local Hispanic population, amongst whom he frequently hid from the law. In a 1936 interview, Jose Garcia y Trujillo says, in response to Janet Smith’s assertion that Pat Garret shot Billy the Kid: “I don’t want to dispute against you Senora, but in my mind which is the picture of my soul, I know it is not true…Maybe he kill somebody else in Billy’s place. Everybody like Billy…Su vista penetraba el corazon de toda la gentel (his face went to everybody’s heart).”

Mr. Hutton tells me that Billy has been the subject of more western outlaw films than anyone else. Billy’s fame, he says, is a twentieth century creation, generated largely after Walter Noble Burns’s 1926 best-selling “Saga of Billy the Kid” was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and turned into a film.

But why has Billy, who died at 21 and wasn’t a very spectacular criminal, enjoyed such enduring affection? Mr. Hutton credits his association with the underprivileged and dispossessed — he was a sort of Robin Hood of the llano. He calls Billy an accidental criminal — “a pure social bandit.”

To date, Mr. Richardson’s team has only managed to unearth parts of one person (a claimant to Billy’s identity called John Miller) and locate a blood-stained bench. Nothing has been proven either way and the project has gone quiet amid local resistance and Mr. Richardson’s unsuccessful presidential run. Despite the rumors, Mr. Hutton remains convinced that the real Billy the Kid rests under the caged headstone in Fort Sumner.