View of Gallenas Mountains from La Luz Peak, Socorro County
Current Population: 1,100
Language: Navajo
Location: 63,000 acres, 30 miles north of Magdalena in Socorro, County
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Alamo is a non-contiguous chapter of the Navajo Nation.
The Alamo Navajo School Board (ANSB), federally funded, was used as a vehicle to have public works projects without needing to involve the Navajo Nation. It has become the de-facto government in Alamo. Their website says:
“It is the Vision of the Alamo Navajo School Board, Inc., that Alamo community members will attain physical, spiritual and emotional well-being; community and individual self-sufficiency; and realize harmony between tradition, cultural values, and the mainstream environment.
It is the Mission of the Alamo Navajo School Board, Inc., to provide the resources and services necessary to empower community members to attain good health and self-sufficiency through excellence in education. ANSB, Inc., will carry out its mission in the spirit of Indian Self-Determination and local decision making in the planning and administration of its programs.”
Alamo really only has one employer - the School Board. This is because Alamo is remote -so remote that it may very well be the most desolate and isolated reservation. There is only one paved road leading to the reservation - it runs south from Laguna, through Alamo, to Magdalena. There is no road that runs east/west. And, when driving north toward Albuquerque, this lonely road becomes unpaved for the last 15 miles, after it enters the Laguna reservation.
“Unpaved” is not really an accurate way to describe this road. It is 15 miles of washboard that is so bad you cannot drive more than 10 miles an hour.
If that 15 mile of road was paved, then Alamo tribal members could travel north more easily and perhaps get jobs in Albuquerque or elsewhere. It might also mean more people would visit Alamo, creating a tourism industry and economic development - which is not far-fetched, because the landscape around Alamo is beautiful.
From the School Board website
According to the 2000 census, the Alamo community has a population of 2072 with a 60% unemployment rate. Alamo is the poorest Native community - not only in the State of New Mexico but also in the United States. Currently 56% of the population lives below the poverty level and a per capita income of $6528. According to the Coalition of Native American grantees, Department of Labor, it has the lowest per capita income of all Native American communities in the United States. Separated geographically from the main reservation, the Alamo has long been the stepchild of the Navajo Nation, largely neglected by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as well as by the tribal government.
In 1968, the BIA placed Alamo under the administration of the Navajo Nation, transferring it from the Southern Pueblos Agency, Albuquerque Area Office, to Eastern Navajo Agency in Crownpoint, New Mexico, and the Navajo Area Office in Gallup, New Mexico. The Navajo Nation receives over 3 million dollars from the BIA for governmental infrastructure at Alamo. Less than 1% actually reaches the Alamo.
Even today, Alamo exists in a cloudy bureaucratic limbo. It’s not legally a reservation has no congressionally recognized boundaries, and no water or mineral rights for its 63,000 acres of land.
