With congregations dwindling and villages emptying out, maintaining hundreds of historic adobe churches – made with mud and straw centuries ago – is a daunting challenge across rural New Mexico.
Community leaders who are the churches' caretakers in the absence of regular clergy are trying to save them because they represent a crucial center of faith, family and cultural traditions for their struggling hamlets. But as youth leave in droves, their ranks are thinning, putting a unique faith and social culture under threat.
CORDOVA, New Mexico (AP) Besides their history, these churches anchor a uniquely New Mexican way of life for their communities, many of which no longer have schools or stores, and struggle with chronic poverty and addiction.
New Mexico's governor wants legislators to help her enact a new anti-hazing law in the aftermath of allegations by New Mexico State University basketball players that they were sexually assaulted by teammates and that coaches and staff failed to respond.
Residents in New Mexico are fighting to preserve the state’s historic adobe churches as depopulation and fading traditions leave their culture under threat.
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