By Luis Torres, Ph.D.
Posted January 29, 2026
The public is invited to the celebration of a new book release, Borderlands, Living in Two Worlds: The Story of Hispanics in the American Southwest, by noted Denver author Mr. Angel Vigil. The event is sponsored by CALMA, the Colorado Alliance of Latino Mentors and Authors. The gathering will be held at the Denver Woman’s Press Club, 1325 Logan Street, Denver, 1:30pm—3:30pm Sunday, February 1st. It is free and open to the public; an RSVP is requested at info@calmaco.org.
Mr. Vigil’s Borderlands, Living in Two Worlds is a wide-ranging, encompassing study of the Hispanic population of the southwest, as the subtitle states. At over 300 pages, the book includes annotated listings of significant books detailing various aspects of the Hispanic communities, and a research bibliography for further review. The book’s seven chapters present a creative approach to detailing the culture, beliefs, traditions, and historical and contemporary realities of the Hispanics of the southwest.
Included are numerous helpful, enlightening photographs, figures, drawings, and charts of everyday—and therefore, crucially important—people, places, historical events, objects, and other material from our past and present. Such images include Father Francisco Garcés, Spanish missionary priest in the Southwest; a map of Mexican land grants in northern New México and southern Colorado; the Acequia irrigation system in New Mexico and Colorado; Betabeleros topping beets; Dolores Huerta with a Huelga flag; Daniel Salazar’s photo of young men and women Zoot Suiters in Denver; and Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales and a Chicano Youth Liberation Conference 1969 announcement from the Crusade for Justice, among numerous other images.
Of special note is the book’s Foreword by Federico Peña, former Denver Mayor, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, and U.S. Secretary of Energy. Secretary Peña refers to this 2026 year as being notably significant as the 250th anniversary of the United States’ birthday, as the signing of the Declaration of Independence was in 1776, and therefore of Colorado’s 150th birthday since the state was accepted into the Union in 1876. As Secretary Peña states, the book “invites us to rediscover a powerful and often overlooked part of history, the extraordinary contributions of the Hispanic community [to] today’s American Southwest.”
According to Mr. Vigil, the February 1st event, 1:30-3:30, at Denver Woman’s Press Club, will consist of his presenting several aspects of the book, with questions and answers, and with copies of Borderlands: Living in Two Worlds available for purchase. He discussed in our interview that he will cover several of the major themes of the book, in sequence, with the titles of the seven chapters suggesting the themes. For example, Chapter 1 is entitled “The American Dream,” but it does not recount the timeworn outline of this theme, about the payoff for working hard is getting ahead, but instead forges the “dream” as having a distinctly Latino foundation. As did Secretary Peña, Mr. Vigil begins with the U.S.’s 250th and Colorado’s 150th birthdays; but then turns the script and interjects the 1846-1848 Mexican-American War, ending in 1848 with México’s loss of much of the U.S. Southwest to the U.S., including a major section of Colorado. Mr. Vigil states in the chapter, El Norte, the southwestern United States, has for centuries been a crossroad of histories [and] these intersecting narratives have created a modern world of a tightly woven tapestry of Spanish, Mexican, and Indigenous people… This is their story.”
As another example of the book’s themes, Chapter 3, “History’s Journey,” covers significant events in our past, ranging throughout the southwest but focusing on crucial cases from Colorado, a very welcome difference from many Latina/o or Chicana/o studies nationally, which focus on California at the expense of our own state. Mr. Vigil provides backgrounds of numerous histories, such as “Mestizo Culture and Genealogy Discoveries,” “Property Rights, Land Grants,” “The Mexican Revolution of 1910,” and “The Pachuco and Zoot Suit Riots” in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Among numerous examples from Colorado, he notes the creation of the “Mestizo Face,” the trio of faces with the middle the mestizaje of Spanish and Indigenous, by Denver artist Emanuel Martínez; the creation of the Crusade for Justice in Denver, influential throughout Colorado and nationally; Denver poets Rodolfo Corky Gonzales and Abelardo Delgado, including his poem “Stupid America”; and the San Luis Valley’s Olibama López Tushar, especially influential “Scholar, Author, and Latina Pioneer.”
As Mr. Vigil states in this chapter, “For more than four hundred years, Hispanic culture has existed in the area now recognized as the American Southwest,” pushing the two “birthdays” of the U.S.’s 250 and of Colorado’s 150 years back by at least an additional 150 years of our Hispanic or Latino reality in our homeland. In fact, as early as 1513, which was 107 years before the establishment of the Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, Spaniards were exploring present-day Florida, setting off the 1528-1536 travels by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca from Florida into present-day Texas, possibly New México, and then down to México. His traveling companion was Estevanico, an African. Cabeza de Vaca published his Relación account of his trip in 1542. Such information complicates the “250/150” birthday celebrations somewhat. Our Indigenous background takes this history back to between 23,000 and 30,000 years, at least. And we are the ones called immigrants.
An additional theme is covered in Chapter 5, “Giving Witness: Latino/a Voices Speak Their Truth.” According to my interview with Mr. Vigil, attendees at the February 1st event will hear examples of these voices, from seven distinguished leaders in our Denver and Colorado community. Mr. Vigil stated that he could have featured at least 30 or more such figures, but as noted in the book, those he selected “represent a wide range of roles in the Hispano community: educator, administrator, activist, publisher…” and more. Included are the questions he applied during his interviews with the leaders, such as, “What does being an American mean to you?” and, “What are your memories of your family’s cultural traditions?” Those covered in the book are Dr. Juana Bordas; Dr. Ramón Del Castillo; Dr. Renee Fajardo; Ms. Nita Gonzales; Mr. Tony Ortega; Ms. Yolanda Ortega; and Dr. Lorenzo Trujillo. Mr. Vigil has indicated the possibility of introducing such individuals in attendance at the gathering.
The additional chapters in the book are equally informative and intriguing. Chapter 2 is “Naming Culture,” with discussions of the terms Hispanic, Mexican, Mexican American, and Chicano/a/x, among others. Chapter 4 is “Cultural Traditions,” about our bilingualism, La Familia with family celebrations, La Iglesia about our religious celebrations, along with music, dance, theater including Denver’s Su Teatro and its playwright Mr. Tony García, literary arts, and La Cocina y La Comida traditional and celebratory foods, among numerous others. Chapter 6 is a listing with brief introductory comments about some of our community’s most significant literary works, including novels, memoirs and autobiographies, philosophical social analysis, and poetry. The final chapter, #7, follows this approach with a listing of significant movies from our community, with such landmarks as The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, El Norte, Coco, and Selena, among numerous others.
Our community owes a debt of gratitude to CALMA, the Colorado Alliance of Mentors and Authors, for hosting this new book gathering and presentation, and for so much more. In my interview with Mr. Ricardo LaFore, one of the founders and leaders of CALMA, he noted the alliance serves to “preserve, promote, and protect the Latino written word.” As he stated, the alliance began with seven members at its founding in 2019 and now has some 65 members from throughout Colorado. They serve to mentor aspiring authors from Denver, and its environs, to Colorado Springs, Pueblo, the San Luis Valley, and literally throughout Colorado. As a mark of their success, in last year’s Colorado Book Awards consideration, Calma’s anthology Ramas y Raíces: The Best of Calma, was one of three finalists for the Colorado Book Award. Ms. Karen Gonzales, one of the principals of the alliance, shared with this reporter a significant review document, “CALMA 2025 Year in Review,” covering the extensive activities in which they are engaged. Anyone interested in joining is invited to contact CALMA for membership details.
The book for this gathering’s discussion is entitled Borderlands. Consider the term’s meaning and application today in the U.S. I note the title is in plural, referring not to just one borderland, but two or more. It used to be the border with México following 1848. Now that people can travel so widely, and U.S. society reacts nationally, the border has expanded, as we see in the current ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Agency and Department of Homeland Security enforcement operations in such far-flung northern states as Minnesota and Maine, including Colorado. The borderlands have stretched and become pliable.
Luis Torres, PhD, retired, served as Deputy Provost for Metropolitan State University of Denver for Academic and Student Affairs and professor of Chicana/o Studies. Torres is a noted advocate for equity in education, policy and community efforts. Torres is also a member of The Weekly Issue/El Semanario Advisory Board.
