Mas antes; Hispanic folklore of the Río Puerco Valley

Noted folklorist Nasario García has long devoted himself to preserving the folklore of his native Río Puerco Valley, the rural area northwest of Albuquerque. The places are abandoned today, but the richness of the valley's people and their folklore, intermingling with history, memory, and the tragedy and erosion of time, forms the heart of García's Más Antes. Recorded in English and regional New Mexico Spanish, this compilation of the oral and written culture of the Río Puerco includes dichos (sayings), adivinanzas (riddles), stories, love quatrains, letters, ballads, and songs within the context such forms were used by a society that, while modest in its means and largely uneducated, presented almost a formal gentility in the manner of its interactions.

Nasario García has edited and translated numerous collections of folklore, including Pláticas: Conversations with Hispano Writers of New Mexico. A former professor of languages at New Mexico Highlands University, he lives in Santa Fe.