Amalia residents decry national spotlight
AMALIA, N.M. — For the cavalcade of state and national media outlets that converged on Northern New Mexico last month, the isolated compound where five people were arrested and 11 children were taken into protective custody in early August was located, more or less, in Amalia, a tiny village of a couple hundred people.
But for those whose families have lived in Amalia for generations, the distinction is crystal clear: the site of the compound and their own community are two very different places.
“I do want to specify that where all that took place was not in Amalia,” said Berlinda Rivera, a resident of 58 years who works at the Río Costilla Cooperative Livestock Association in Costilla.
Others who live in Amalia have called The Taos News to make the same complaint, although local stories have explained the difference.
“Sometimes the people from the community are finding it hard to accept when we see Amalia all over the nation,” Rivera said.
The site of the compound was in the Costilla Meadows subdivision, where five adults were allegedly keeping 11 children in squalid conditions. Investigators also said an epileptic child died there late last year after he was abducted from his mother in Georgia.
Two of the defendants, the boy’s father and his partner, have both been charged with first-degree felonies connected to the death.
Other evidence presented in court suggests all five adults were planning to carry out armed attacks and were training the children to do the same.
The remote swath of high mountain desert where they lived lies north of Amalia, midway between Costilla and Ventero, another tiny unincorporated village.
Now some weeks after the dust quite literally settled from an international story that skirted their small town, Amalia residents believe the ongoing association with the compound stands to threaten the small, but vital stream of tourism that helps keep their community in orbit.
Rivera and her husband, Steven, were clear: What happens in the scantly populated area where the compound was located is not the same as what happens in their town.
They described Costilla Meadows as a low-population region where an inordinate number of outsiders settle. The subdivision falls into the 2,200 square mile area that uses the Amalia zip code of 87512, according to the U.S. Postal Service, but for residents, the areas are distinct.
Amalia, they said, is a quiet, peaceful town that has hit a bit of a rough patch lately, but for different reasons.
The Riveras spoke about a spate of break-ins they believe to be drug-related. Numerous others interviewed in Amalia in late August also noted the break-ins, but most did so anonymously, worried about attracting yet more unwanted attention.
“They broke into our post office and the fire department in
Amalia,” Berlinda Rivera said. “They broke into our park, where people put their envelopes of money. I believe they also broke into the Costilla post office as well.”
She and her husband said that visitors are always welcome in their town, but few newcomers actually settle in Amalia.
Randy Pijoan is one, a gallery painter who converted an old gas station into an art studio 15 years ago. Pijoan said he heard the news of the compound raid from a friend in Texas. He was equally surprised to hear Costilla Meadows associated with his adopted town.
“Hey, Amalia’s on the news,” his friend told him. “You’re kidding. How’s that?” Pijoan asked, going for the TV remote and switching on a national news network.
After a few minutes, a flyover of some sagebrush-covered desert appeared on screen. The headline “Amalia compound” scrolled below as a small dwelling ringed by tires shot into the frame.
“That’s Ventero,” Pijoan thought. “It’s the only place that’s that flat with that much sagebrush.”
He called his friend back to clarify.
But even Ventero residents have not claimed Costilla Meadows, perhaps because they, too, hope to distance their town from recent news.
Pijoan also commented on the recent string of breakins .
“Someone broke into the post office down the road,” he said. He then rattled off several other locations burglarized in recent months.
Sherrie Bice, a cook at the Amalia Senior Center, was also quick to dissociate her hometown with last month’s incident at the compound, while noting the break-ins in the same swoop.
“One thing that I would definitely like to clarify is that it’s not actually in Amalia,” she said. “It’s Costilla Meadows.”
She lives in the subdivision herself, and on her drive to work at the senior center Aug. 3, she said she noticed an unusual law enforcement presence on the road that leads there: a caravan of black unmarked SUVs surrounded by a crowd of uniformed personnel standing beside a cemetery marking the turnoff to Costilla Meadows and the Colorado border.
Visitors at the center already knew what had happened before noon, Bice said.
Then the rumors began to swirl.
“A lot of people are very scared, especially the homebound,” she said. “For the next two weeks after that, they were locking their doors to their houses or having people come by and check on them.”
But she also said the string of break-ins in recent weeks has presented another problems, which she believes may have local roots that have changed since she was young. At one point, she said, the biggest concern Amalia residents had was the snow.
Partly due to the spike in crime, she and her husband are planning to move to Washington state later this year.
“Everybody tells me it’s safer here and that everything is going to be better here,” Bice said. “But it seems now in the past couple months that it doesn’t really matter where you go, you’re just as safe as you make yourself.”
For Taylor Anderson, who lives in Costilla Meadows a couple lots over from where the compound was built, distinguishing his way of life from his neighbor’s is not as easy as pointing at a map.
Anderson said he and some of his neighbors had contact with at least one of the adults arrested at the compound, Lucas Morton. Morton owned property close to the one he has been accused of building on illegally this year.
“It was always Luke that you dealt with,” Anderson said, lighting a cigarette beside a makeshift dwelling he says he modeled as an “earthship,” an energy-efficient home made of tires and other recycled materials.
He pointed to his home with his smoking hand and said the compound is similiar to his own place.
“They had just barely gotten here,” he said. “Give them time. I’ve been here five years and I still have a small space.”
He said he had last visited the compound in May to deliver Morton some batteries for a solar panel.
He went inside the half-buried trailer, where he said he saw some of the children, but nothing that caused him concern.
After delivering the batteries, he said Morton offered to give him a box of Granola bars.
Even when guns were fired at the compound in the afternoons, he wasn’t worried. Many people in the area have and use firearms, he said.
Other neighbors also lent a hand to the compound residents, Anderson said, with one down the street providing the group with water on a regular basis.
As to the allegations of abuse and religious extremism levied at the adults who lived at the compound, Anderson said he and his wife are waiting to see what the facts bear out. He said they have their doubts as to what’s been presented as evidence so far.
Like his neighbors in Amalia further south, he mostly hopes his small community will soon be out of the spotlight, the very thing many people move here expecting to avoid.
“You’re probably going to hear it from (my neighbor) if he comes over,” Anderson said. “He and I put the gate up. We’re kind of sick of people driving through.”