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Pajarito residents have no utilities, and many can’t prove residency

BY WINTHROP QUIGLEY
Journal Staff Writer

The tall buildings of Downtown Albuquerque, maybe a 20-minute drive away, are easily seen to the north and east. Down the hill is the green Rio Grande Valley, squares of irrigated farm land, paved roads and big-box retail stores.

That’s the view from Pajarito Mesa, a 28-square-mile desert expanse that ends past the horizon at Rio Puerco. Dirt roads lead to trailer homes that have no running water or (unless the owner has a generator) electricity.

One late afternoon in mid-July, a mobile health clinic operated by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico was parked where the hill rising from the valley flattens out into mesa. Three physicians and a medical student from the University of New Mexico stood in the shade cast by the van waiting for people to stop in on their way home from work.

Here, the familiar statistics about New Mexico’s poverty, lack of health insurance and poor access to care acquire human faces.

On the mesa, said Arthur Kaufman, a family practice physician and chairman of UNM’s family and community medicine department, doctors see “out of control hypertension, out of control diabetes, a lot of injuries, dental problems, gum disease. Many women have had no Pap smears in 10 years.”

Many of the 400 families living on the mesa migrated from Mexico, said community organizer and 10-year resident Sandra Montes.

Most of the men work in construction, the women as house and hotel room cleaners, though Montes knows two residents who worked as a nurse and as a banker in Mexico and says some residents have degrees earned in Mexico.

It looks like Hollywood’s idea of an isolated village in some vaguely chartered waste between Mexico and the United States. A movie company this summer used Pajarito Mesa as a set for a film about a Border Patrol officer.

Going thirsty

Two boys walk by. They ask in Spanish what the van is doing on Pajarito Mesa. The taller boy’s front teeth are beginning to turn brown.

A man gets out of his pickup. In Spanish, he tells the group he is suffering from dizziness. Maria DeArman, a medical resident in UNM’s family practice program, and Erin Corriveau, a medical student, examine the man inside the van and discuss the effects of dehydration with him, which Montes said is a common problem given the lack of water here.

Gabriel Duarte stops by to get his blood sugar tested and to get a prescription. He is 60 years old and works as a painter. Asked why he lives on the mesa, Duarte points to the green valley below. “It’s better than paying rent down there,” he said.

“The people who live here have a great deal of dignity,” said Roberto Gomez, associate dean of students at the UNM Medical School and a psychiatrist. “They’re hardworking individuals. They love their land.”

Montes bought her land in 1997 from a broker who told her water and electricity would be installed the following year. The mesa is still waiting. Bernalillo County officials say Pajarito Mesa does not get services because it was never legally subdivided.

The roads are those that drivers have carved into the dust while getting to their homes, and the roads have no signs. Families haul water in containers they fill in town. Residents have been haggling with the state and county for years for permission to dig a community well using federal grant money for payment.

“They’ve created their own mini village,” Kaufman said.

‘They don’t care’

Health policy thinkers have long known health status is affected by housing, income, environment, culture and demographics as well as insurance status and availability of doctors. Pajarito Mesa has its own special problems.

A good health clinic that charges fees based on income is just a few miles away.

“They ask for proof of residency,” Montes said. “It’s very hard for us to prove residency. We have no address. We don’t get utility bills. They don’t believe that in this country there is a community like ours. Or they don’t care.”

Residents are also worried they’ll be asked for a Social Security number, that the staff will be rude or that it will cost too much, Kaufman said.

Since most families have no electricity, they have no refrigeration, so it is difficult to keep fresh vegetables, fruits, meats and milk on hand, Montes said. Diets suffer.

Romero wants to find a way to offer more dental services out of the van.
One of UNM’s goals is to connect people to a medical home — a clinic, a physician, a nurse practitioner or anyone else who can provide consistent care. “If you have a large minority not using services, that’s a health problem,” Kaufman
said.

UNM and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield van ended up on Pajarito Mesa because of Maria DeArman.

UNM’s family practice program requires its students and residents to find community-based projects to work on. “We’re trying to train very different doctors,” Kaufman said. “The health problems they see have very big environmental and social causes. We want them in the community. When she talks with the community, she sees a different reality. We can’t teach that in a hospital.”

DeArman attended a Pajarito community meeting and invited her brother, Jerry Miramontes, who was visiting from Las Cruces, to come along.

DeArman recognized the community needed health care and described what UNM’s Health Sciences Center offered.

Her brother, she said, leaned over and said, “Maria, these people need a mobile clinic. You’re asking them to schlep down to UNM.”

DeArman called the state Health Department, which told her about the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Care Van. “This is exactly what the van is made for,” said Robert A. “Bobby” Romero, the Care Van coordinator and driver.

No charge

The van has been at Pajarito three times this summer and sees 10 to 15 families per visit. Neither UNM nor Blue Cross and Blue Shield charge for the service.

“It’s our input to the uninsured situation,” said Becky Kenny of Blue Cross and Blue Shield media relations. “It’s how we can impact the problem in New Mexico.”

The Care Van is constantly on the road. It provides immunization clinics in cooperation with the Health Department, health fairs for Blue Cross and Blue Shield members, sports physicals for students in San Jon, AIDS testing in Albuquerque.

Romero would take the van the next day to the intersection of Pennsylvania and Central in Albuquerque where he would exchange clean needles for used needles with junkies.


That would help a lot, Montes said. When some people on Pajarito Mesa develop a tooth problem, “they just wait until they can’t stand the pain. Then they go to the hospital and ask them to pull it out.”

Facts about Pajarito Mesa

Pajarito Mesa is located in unincorporated Bernalillo County and covers about 18,000 acres, or 28 square miles. It is bounded by Coors Boulevard on the east, the Isleta reservation on the south, the Rio Puerco escarpment on the west and the Atrisco Land Grant boundary on the north.

Most of the parcels are about 10 acres in size.

About 400 homes were counted from 2006 aerial photographs of the area, compared to 100 in 1999.

The population is estimated to be between 500 and 1,500 people.

In the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Comprehensive Plan planning document, Pajarito Mesa is designated as a “Reserve” area, meaning the land can be used for a planned community or a very rural development.

There are few legally platted parcels on the mesa because none of parcels was created with rights of way, so no legal roads can be constructed.

Residents of Pajarito Mesa have purchased a road grader and have constructed a network of dirt roads so they may travel to and from their homes.

No public utilities are available.

Some Pajarito Mesa residents formed the Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association to lobby for construction of a water source on the mesa. The association has received $750,000 in state funding for a community well and is currently working with the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority on a solution.
Journal staff writer Juan-Carlos Rodriguez Source: Bernalillo County Department of Zoning, Building, Planning and Environmental Health.

Labels: health care, Pajarito Mesa, UNM