Mesquite Street. La vecindad. Las Cruces, New Mexico. My neighborhood.

My father, Epifanio Chávez Jr., was born in Doña Ana but grew up on Mesquite Street, the very last street on the east side of the city in the 1920s. Beyond was desert, with mesquite trees and their cousins the tornillos, screwbean mesquite trees with spiral seedpods that were used to make flour and medicinal tea. He remembered walking through fields of rabbits to get to school.

Mesquite Street was the heart of Las Cruces’s original townsite. The historic district dates from the spring of 1849, when Don Pablo Melendres acquired federal approval to establish the new village. Lieutenant Delos Sackett, an army engineer who plotted the streets, erroneously became the official founder for many. Las Cruces, near Mesilla, was once the smaller town. Located directly on the Camino Real, Mesquite Street is one of the most intact neighborhoods of adobe homes from Brownsville, Texas, to Baja California, according to neighborhood historian Sylvia Camuñez.

The river went through here, and yes, the floods were legendary. I remember seeing beams of wood floating down nearby streets after a prodigious rain left the houses rimmed in mud. The east side was where mostly Mexicanos and Mexican Americans lived. In my father’s day, there was one lone Anglo, “El Güero Solo,” who chose this hardworking, colorful, and vibrant neighborhood to make his home.

The Mesquite Street population grew as many Black families moved to the street, some descendants of the Buffalo Soldiers who had founded Blackdom, a utopian settlement in eastern New Mexico. They eventually found their way to southern New Mexico, with many families settling in Vado and on Mesquite Street. Their families, among them the illustrious Petteses, Grimeses, Fielders, and Johnsons, were the true fabric of our community. Clara Belle Williams was the first Black student to graduate from New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now New Mexico State University. She was not allowed into the college classrooms and took her notes sitting in the hallway, nor was she able to attend her college graduation. She taught at Booker T. Washington School for more than twenty years, when Las Cruces public schools were segregated, and died in 1994 at age 108. Her birth home at 722 North Mesquite is now registered as a New Mexico Historic Site.

Lula and Alonzo Grimes, the fifth African American family to settle in the neighborhood, moved from Mexico, Missouri, and settled in the house that is now my bookstore, Casa Camino Real. The property was part of the Doña Ana Bend Colony Grant given to Francisco Espalín and his widowed mother, later acquired by the John Bumgardner family. Lula worked as a cook in local school cafeterias, and many told stories of her legendary corn bread and bread pudding. It’s said that everyone had to pass through “Mother Grimes’” bedroom at the back of the house and would be given admittance to the home only after meeting her approval. Some family members were born in what’s now the Bilderbeck Latin American Room, at the front of the house facing Tornillo Street. When my bookstore opened in 2012, the Grimes family asked if they could hold their family reunion there. Never a better red enchilada has been eaten in our building than surrounded by this large, multicultural family. Generations of Grimes family members passed through the rooms, many remembering this legendary matriarch and her saintly ways.

Few had money during those early years, and if they did, they lived on the west side near Pioneer Park and its gazebo. The neighbors were creative and resourceful. Whatever their skills, they found ways to earn a living. In the 1950s, Cecilia Fitch Oliver had the first drive-up restaurant, Cecil’s Snack Bar, which featured homemade taquitos, hamburgers, hot dogs, and raspas/sno-cones in the summer. The Jitney Café on Main Street was the first Black-owned restaurant, run by brothers Daniel and Cortez Hibler. Originally from Texas, the Hiblers also played a role in founding Phillips Chapel, a Colored Methodist Episcopal Church that became the first Black school for Las Cruces when the city implemented segregation in 1924.

In later years, when my people moved to west Las Cruces, a few relatives stayed on the east side because, after all, it was home. My tiny dynamo of an aunt, Trini Chávez, married to Elias, was legendary for the heat of her red enchiladas. They lived catty-corner to Klein Park. If there was ever a plaza in Las Cruces after the 1967 destruction of St. Genevieve Church, which left a permanent and living ache in our community, it was this park, in use long before it was named for our Jewish mayor, Sam Klein, in 1953. In 2016, the park became home to the Zoot Suit Pachanga and Car Show, a yearly festival celebrating pachuco and lowrider culture with food, fashion, cars, and music. To be Raza, and declare yourself Mexican American or Chicano, in those early days was challenging. Some wanted to get away from Mesquite Street and its history of struggle. One such person was my father, who in his later years always chose to have me drive him around “the old neighborhood.” He may have left to study law at Georgetown University, but the neighborhood never left him. His childhood home, where he always remembered sleeping four to a bed, now houses the Mesquite Art Gallery.

The Mandrake Fine Art and Botanica, a pop-up art space, sits across from the Sunshine Grocery & Grill. Now closed, the iconic and beloved store was owned by the Sánchez family for many years. Later the inimitable and lovely Bestina Sánchez held court outside the store, welcoming everyone inside to buy an orange soda and get free herbs to cure this and that ailment. Her red bougainvillea filled the windows, and there was a shelf of books free for the taking, the first free library in the neighborhood. Nothing was better than to idle the time enjoying a banana ice pop while Bestina regaled you with the local history and the best and most current chisme/gossip.

During the 1970s, my uncle Eduardo Chávez, my father’s brother, also known as Eddie or “Lalo,” opened El Jacal, a Mexican restaurant off  Mesquite Street near the Sunshine. Later his son Eddie Jr. ran it. It was housed in a wonderful old adobe and featured my uncle’s artwork on the walls. That restaurant closed in 1978, but one of his murals still graces the lobby of La Posta de Mesilla.

Mesquite today is a lively hotbed of culture, up-and-coming restaurants, and small businesses, and it shows signs of gentrification, a sign, some might say, of “success.” Others might say it’s about time for it to be “elevated.” I have heard it said that it will become another Mesilla, our nearby tourist town. I hope not. Mesilla is unique and so is Mesquite.

Mesquite Street boasts six galleries, each unique and special with art to please all tastes. Being home and hearth to Chicano and Latino culture as well as a wonderful multicultural mixture of folks who understand what community is about, the neighborhood offers some of the best Mexican food in Las Cruces. It’s best to visit galleries from Thursday through Saturday, as we work on Mesquite Time. Our bookstore is open those days and by appointment as well.

The bookstore has a well-used kitchen painted bright blue, named after my mother, Delfina “Fina” Rede Faver Chávez. Fina’s room has served many people atole, pinole, posole, and mole, as well as champurrado, many cups of Abuelita chocolate, and seemingly never-ending pots of café de olla. We add piloncillo / brown cane sugar, canela/cinnamon, and clavo/clove, sometimes with a bit of orange rind to heighten the flavor of the legendary Mexican coffee. I try to placate fearful coffee drinkers and assure them that they won’t grow hair on their face and that the coffee won’t keep them up all night—and that if it does, that elixir and its richness will be worth it.

One year we offered monthly cenas culturales, themed cultural dinners. Volunteer chefs would select a suggested entrée and all would combine our efforts to present a reasonably priced dinner to the public in a private setting. There was Italian food for a Mario Lanza–inspired event with opera singers from El Paso; a Ukrainian meal with special vodka; and a dinner of paella, tortas españolas, and the most olive oil I have ever cooked with in my life while we read from the work of Federico García Lorca. It was a grand and wild year of cooking great food.

I remember a friend coming into Fina’s room with a surprised and wondrous look as he exclaimed, “Not only are you selling books, but you’re also making candy!” I stood near the stove, harried, discouraged, and completely overwhelmed as my gooey white nougat refused to  harden. Inspired by a Christmas Eve tradition in Provence, France, this cena celebrated the Thirteen Desserts of Christmas, representing Jesus and the twelve apostles. My husband, French photographer Daniel Zolinsky, elected to serve calissons d’Aix, the marzipan-like candy made from almond paste and candied melon. The price of candied melon online being very high, he candied his own melon. Everyone was glad when that particular cena was accomplished, delicious as it was!

We are a make-do and get-it-done-with-gusto-and-joy neighborhood. We are a cheerful and alive neighborhood framed by San José Cemetery on one end, facing our beloved Organ Mountains. Not only on Día de los Muertos, but every day, we celebrate our antepasados, our beloved ancestors, who remind us of our temporal time on this planet, and how we should live it with ánimo/spirit/energy. We are a don’t-give-it-up type of neighborhood. We are a “dale el try” neighborhood. We understand challenge, yes, and struggle, and always we persist!

The names of the neighborhood’s founders and early settlers still resonate and attest to their strength of spirit, perseverance, and commitment to community: Clara Belle Williams, Clarence Fielder, Albert Johnson (the first Black mayor in New Mexico), Supreme Court Justice Daniel Sosa, Carlos Sánchez, and so many others who have given the neighborhood and our city valor/value. Their names are remembered like my loving aunt and uncle, Trini and Elias Chávez, who never left la vecindad for greater Las Cruces, because, after all, it was home.

Why write so much about the history of a place? Mesquite Street is my world, my home, and my food culture. I drive through its streets every day. I know its cats, and those dogs that come out in the evening to give the cats a hard time. I know what is new, what is old, what the “haps” are—what is happening. And I know its food.

To say that I live in a gastronomically rich place is an understatement. Each restaurant in the Mesquite area is unique, distinct, and special in its own way.

Nopalito’s is housed in what was El Templo Bautista, a Baptist church. You can see the alcoves as you walk in. In the front is a large proscenium archway that was the altar; it now leads to the kitchen. Ernestina Gallegos and her husband, José Ramón Gallegos, opened this hometown treasure in 1964 in a small adobe at 226 South Campo Street and later expanded to the church where they first met. Later still, a second location at 2605 Missouri was added when that street was still a dirt road near the outskirts of town. Nopalito’s Galería, created next to the restaurant on Mesquite with the vision of providing the community with all types of regional art, now hosts art events, visiting writers, and workshops, and offers artists and cultural groups a place of visibility and encouragement.

Continuing with its tradition of good family food, Nopalito’s is the heart of the community, an anchor of who we are in this sea of desert that was once part of a greater ocean. Their legendary green chile salsa, warm and savory, is brought to your table when you enter. The enchiladas, red or green, reign, as do the light and savory gorditas. Lately I have become enamored with the tostadas compuestas. And always, there are the sopapillas, the final touch, offered with the care and attention of servers who become family. The head server at Nopalito’s on Mesquite, Paulette Herrera, was my mother’s third-grade student at Conlee Elementary. She remembers that my mother took her under her wing just after Paulette’s own mother died. It was my great honor to give her a gift card presented to me by a giving platform named Crazy Good Turns “to give to a barista or server as a tip and thank them for their hard work this past year.” I knew immediately that no one deserved this honor more than the lovely and gracious Paulette, who always knows what I want to drink and brings it to me as I walk in the door. When I see her, I see my mother standing next to her.

Down the road at La Nueva Casita Cafe, another traditional and family-owned business, the homemade tostadas are wonderful, always crispy, and pair so well with their savory salsita. Breakfast here is blessed: huevos con chorizo offered with refritos or borrachos, the chile relleno omelet served with a side of the best hash browns in town. La Nueva Casita’s menu is among the few featuring fideos and calabacitas; I often order a large bowl of each with flour tortillas. And I would be remiss not to mention the green chile cheese tamales at Roberto’s Mexican Food, founded by community icon Roberto Estrada. I could go on and on. That’s how it is in la vecindad. We love our community and those who feed us. The newest places are The Bean coffee shop, purveyor of specialty coffees and teas, a dynamic and lively and humming place with energy to spare. Next to it is Miguel’s, the most recent addition to the neighborhood. Their menu is eclectic and uses staple foods to springboard into their own distinct style. I look forward to creating my world of favorites. Already I know I love the mojito with coconut juice.

Of course, there is also El Indio Tortilla Shop at the north end of Mesquite Street, owned by the Castillo family and home of some of the best corn and flour tortillas in town. That is the place to buy nixtamal—cooked masa de maíz—for your tamales. This family business embraces community and no one who enters is a stranger.

The history of Mesquite Street is memorable. People were entrepreneurs of the best kind, full of grit and a strong work ethic. If you knew how to sew, that was your business; if you were a good cook, that became your trade. The neighborhood was sacred, many refusing to leave. Why? What for? Many had left for California only to return, as did most of my Chávez family.

The neighborhood had an energy that was vital and real. Possibility reigned. You might find gold in “them thar hills” or become a farmer. You could become an artist or a doctor or a lawyer. The choice was yours. The ability to project, literally, and to transform, to extend yourself creatively was the norm and, yes, a mandate. The neighborhood was a mixture of both living space and workspace, and that is still its strength.

Our neighborhood is loved. To know its history, its struggles, its culture, its people, and its food is to celebrate our oneness with humanity. And in this knowledge comes the greater knowing of where one fits into the scheme of things. I’m a hometown girl. Always will be.

This is my challenge. My comfort. And my blessing.

Thank you to Mesquite Street vecinos for their input, knowledge, and support: Sylvia Camuñez and Las Esperanzas, Irene Oliver-Lewis, the Gallegos family from Nopalito’s, and Faith Hutson and the Mesquite Street Amigos, who are organizing events throughout the year to celebrate Las Cruces’s 175th birthday. Many Mesquite-lleros continue to protect and uplift the neighborhood.