Historias de la familia, amor, aventuras, y desventuras dichas por la gente de nuestro país

Voces de Nuestro País ~ Voices of Our Area are monthly story gatherings celebrating local voices and culture. Featured local guests share stories of family, community, history, love, land, work, adventures, and misadventures.

Voces de Nuestro País ~ Voices of Our Area are monthly story gatherings celebrating local voices and culture. Featured local guests share stories of family, community, history, love, land, work, adventures, and misadventures.
Coming up: On Saturday, September 11, 2-4 pm at Questa Library, Voces de Nuestro País will feature Bobby Ortega and his son and musician Dwayne Ortega in our fifteenth episode.

Bobby Ortega is a lifelong Questeño who chose to build his career and family in his hometown. He spent decades at Centinel Bank of Taos, starting as a teller and eventually rising to executive vice-president. He is also the owner of the Sierra Hermosa RV Park in Questa and serves as a Kit Carson Electric Cooperative board trustee representing the Questa area. Alongside his professional life, he continues his family’s ranching heritage as a permittee in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument.

Dwayne Ortega is an acclaimed musician who serves as the frontman, lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist for the Dwayne Ortega Band. Beyond his two-decade musical career preserving Northern New Mexican Spanish music, he works in environmental remediation at ENTACT and serves as a dedicated community mentor with local youth sports coaching baseball, basketball, and serving as varsity football coach for the Questa Wildcats.

Looking Back: On August 15, Kenny LaCome and Daniel Lamb transported those in attendance with their deeply moving and inspiring stories of their own lives and community history and experience. Kenny LaCome led us through his incredible personal journey of growing up in Taos, as a “little boy entrepreneur,” a motorcycle technician and racer, then into deep questioning of his life purpose and what followed. Through a life-transforming motorcycle road-racing crash in 1983 he became a paraplegic and went on to become a pioneer in adaptive sports, competing at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Paralympics and earning a U.S. patent for his sit-ski suspension design across 38 seasons of Alpine and cross-country sit-skiing. Through it all, he spoke of the importance of taking responsibility for one’s own life trajectory, gratitude and wonder, saying “We live in a benevolent universe…be astonished with your life!” He also referenced his dedication to nutrition and living foods. “That is a whole story in and of itself!” said Kenny in conclusion.

In the second half of this very moving session, Daniel Lamb shared his commitment and championing of rural communities and the heart of “la gente” through time. He shared his own family’s deep and ethnically complex roots in Taos County through the Dolans, his Mother’s family, from Oklahoma, who settled in Taos in the 1840’s, while his own parents settled in Red River in the 1950’s. He told of his Cherokee great grandmother’s tragic losses on the trail of tears, as well of his own extensive loss of family members during covid. He described growing up in Red River at a pivotal time and attending school in Questa, his challenges as a single parent, his academic career in Social History at UNM in Albuquerque and his work with Augustine Martinez to establish UNM Taos. Daniel shared about his family business, All Seasons Inc., being the Democratic Chair for Red River and currently serving his first term as a Town Councilor.

On August 22, we took our first Voces de Nuestro País field trip to Cerro Vista Farm for food-growing stories with Daniel Carmona & Gaea McGahee. However, the event took place after the press deadline, so look for a summary of that event in the September issue of this paper.

Each event is recorded and released as an audio and video podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music; search “Voces de Nuestro País” to find these new sessions. By sharing these stories virtually, we hope to extend and multiply the sense of community connection that is felt during the live gatherings. Please tell your friends and family!

MC Michael Rael and Claire Coté host these monthly gatherings and podcast episodes, in collaboration with Questa Library and Voices of the Northern Rio Grande, a program of local nonprofit, Localogy. Audio recordings, videos, and images from “Voces de Nuestro País” events are also added to the growing digital community archive, a local repository and resource established by Voices of the Northern Rio Grande and Questa Public Library with support from the Manitos Community Memory Project. Thanks to Wyman Edwards for Video Recording and Dan Kuehn for website design and podcast upkeep. Learn more about the community archive and listen to community stories at QuestaStories.org.

Don’t miss this month’s event: Saturday, September 11, 2 – 4 pm at Questa Library.

If you have stories you’d like to share,
please let Michael Rael or Claire Coté know. Email Michael at rael870@gmail.com
or Claire at QuestaStories@gmail.com
or call or text (575) 224-9066.

Voces de Nuestro País

Voces de Nuestro País
Saturday, September 11
2-4 PM
Location: Questa Public Library

Stories and music with Bobby Ortega and Dwayne Ortega. Hosted by MC Michael Rael and Claire Coté. Bringing people together through stories of family, community, history, love, land and adventure.
Voces de Nuestro País is a collaboration of Questa Library and Voices of the Northern Rio Grande, a program of local nonprofit, Localogy.

Can’t attend in person? Episodes are also available as a podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music. More information at https://questastories.org/