Why Albuquerque is the Baltimore of the Southwest

 

“Is it safe to park a company car there? Should we come strapped?” my boss’s boss asked over Zoom. They were going to be driving down from Santa Fe for a meeting in Albuquerque and seemed genuinely concerned about their safety in an office park at 10AM on a Tuesday. On another occasion an Uber driver in Santa Fe said he would never drive unarmed in Albuquerque, unironically evoking the Wild West days of train robberies and cattle rustling. Every day, the silent gym TVs flash news of shootings, assaults, dead bodies found, indigenous women missing. 

About eight years ago, when I lived in Baltimore City, I heard similar sentiments: “Aren’t you afraid, living alone?”, grimaces on the faces of friends when they learned where I lived, and waking up to “Are you okay?” texts whenever helicopters circled my block. I’d seen the headlines about the murder rates, passed the blood splattered bus shelters from the previous night’s tragedies, had Uber drivers chronically canceling trips after accepting the ride and seeing my lack of profile picture and pickup location. 

The blatant classism and subtle racism expressed by those living in the state capitals – which evoke an image of stuffy, rich white people in the popular imagination – belies the vibrant local culture and truly average lifestyles of most residents. 

Photo by Breanna Klemm on Unsplash

I assert that Albuquerque is the Baltimore City of the southwest. Besides both having zeitgeist-dominating TV shows dramatizing drug dealing, these two working-class cities suffer from a similarly bad reputation: drug filled, crime riddled, divested. Despite the ubiquity of these epithets on the FOX news cycle, both are located along important shipping and transportation routes that bring illicit drugs as often as it brings Amazon packages, serves as the liberal cultural capital of the state, and offers an affordable cost of living with a dose of a working-class charm. I will not deny that uneven geographical development, discrimination, and legally sanctioned segregation led to the Baltimore and Albuquerque of today, a history worth examining for what it can reveal about our current cities.  

Both have a history of racially restrictive covenants, or clauses in property deeds that state individuals of a certain race cannot live on the premises (though neither city were the originators of the practice). In Baltimore, these covenants targeted Jewish and Black folks, in Albuquerque, it was Asian and Black folks.

Nationally, racially restrictive covenants were enforceable until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and many of these neighborhoods are still incredibly white and incredibly wealthy to this day (is Sandia Heights the Roland Park of Albuquerque?). In Baltimore, the effects of discriminatory housing policy and its effects on the current shape of the city are clear and better documented, including the way that housing discrimination led to environmental crisis.  

Several years ago, Baltimore City’s Curtis Bay neighborhood, long beset by the consequences of living so close to industry, fought the construction of a trash incinerator, and won. The community’s environmental challenges date back to the ship building activities of World War II and only worsened after. Redlining and zoning ordinances contributed to the co-location of a residential community and heavy industry, and contributed to widespread cancer and respiratory problems among the people living there. 

Albuquerque’s South Valley faces a similar challenge, as residents fight a city council that is explicitly looking for “industry friendly members” to join the Air Quality Control Board – and trying to suspend the Board’s activities until such a member can be located. The South Valley has a similar story to Curtis Bay: proximity to industry (particularly the waste disposal industries) causing ongoing health problems, and the city’s desire to locate there industry that they wouldn’t dare put closer to wealthier ZIP codes. And, what struck me the most, was the use of the metaphor of a “dumping ground” to describe how their communities are being treated. 

While the history of housing segregation in Albuquerque is less studied, any Burqueño (demonym for Albuquerque residents) can glance at the maps produced by reporter Larry Barker, can see that some of the areas that had racially restrictive covenants are still white and wealthy, and some  - like the International District – are among the city’s hotspots for crime, substance use, and homelessness. The question remains – Why? Why did some areas stay wealthy and white while others fell into disrepute and divestment? Do the areas with restrictive covenants map on to other disparities like negative health outcomes or food deserts? 

Right now, I don’t have the answers though I hope to find out soon.  

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In many ways I miss Baltimore. The distinct identities and communities of each well-defined neighborhood, chit chatting on stoops when it’s too warm to be inside, the black ladies roller-skating around Lake Montebello, the bread factory smell drifting from Fells Point to the less fashionable neighborhoods. Yet I still feel like I get a tiny taste of that in my dusty fever-hot New Mexican neighborhood. Yes, this place has more lizards, dust storms, and tumbleweed than Baltimore, but it does have historic working-class neighborhoods, the General Mills cereal factory smells, and generally friendly residents.